Worker’s Climb to Power Pole Shows Demand for Young Employees

Chris Housand dumped his job as a forklift operator in January to seek skills that would make him valuable over a lifetime.

“Being 22 and with two kids and a wife I had a lot of weight on my shoulders,” said the Tarboro, North Carolina, resident. Warehouse work “was pretty much a dead-end job.”

He enrolled in electrical-lineman school at Nash Community College in nearby Rocky Mount. After graduation on May 6, he was hired into a four-month paid internship program that holds the promise of a permanent position, at a time when 16.1 percent of men in his age group are jobless.

Housand is catching a wave of demographic change that’s likely to benefit younger workers. A generational replacement cycle is taking hold as companies such as General Electric Co., Norfolk Southern Corp., Boeing Co., American Electric Power Co. Inc. and Dominion Resources Inc. all try to hire skilled younger staff to prepare for a wave of retiring workers.
(...) By Craig Torres

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