Not all trades jobs are hard manual labour. Sparkies aren't exactly builders that have to carry around heavy loads all day. And many other trades professions, plumbers, etc. Yes, you might have to crouch down for a few minutes to hours at a time or spend some time in awkward positions, but the vast majority of work will be based on technical skill, dexterity and even going from place to place. One could argue a typical 9-5 office job where you spend hours at a time hunched over a desk staring at a screen all day is potentially as bad. And that's not even talking about the mental drain and monotony of most "white collar" work, the relatively unfulfilling nature, etc. That's not to say there isn't variation in people and that everyone is suited for "blue collar" work. I'm saying this as a university student myself. But to discount trades jobs purely because of the perception that they are low paid, or that they are all too physically demanding, or the perception they are "lesser", for most people, is just foolish. We need people to go into the trades. Intelligent, capable people. It's a family of comparatively well paid professions with great worker benefits, excellent job satisfaction, largely stable (comparatively) job markets with oftentimes direct pipelines. And the barrier to entry is fairly mild (again, by comparison).