Why young professionals are swapping white collars for blue
Sept 7, 2025 – By Natalia Galicza
Ricardo Jimenez didn’t really know what he wanted to be. At one point, he thought he’d figure it out in college, like most young adults in America plan to do. He’d enrolled at the University of California, Merced, in August 2020, but just as soon as he started to make sense of the world around him, a pandemic morphed it into something else altogether.
He chose to major in a management, business and economics program to learn the ins and outs of enterprise. Rather than fall to the mercy of a volatile job market, he wanted to own his own business. Be his own boss. But even after he started his second year, he still had no clue what kind of business he wanted to run. The only clear thing was that any student debt would only delay his plans. So he got his commercial driver’s license and took a summer job hauling ice across central California to help pay his way through school.
The job entailed driving tens of thousands of pounds of steel through the Sierra Nevadas, stopping at turnout areas before driving downhill to make sure the heat and friction didn’t kill his brakes. Pulling into tight parking spaces at gas stations, getting cut off by reckless drivers and blocked in by careless shoppers. Carrying thousands of 20-pound bags from pallets in the truck bed into shops, struggling to catch his breath in the thin mountain air while doing so, then neatly stacking them up in freezers. It was always grueling and often thankless — except for the store owners who showed their gratitude for a job well done with complimentary soda and gas station snacks. But every time he hopped back into the driver’s seat, he saw miles of open road and canyons of granite that enveloped him. He looked down on alpine lakes and valleys filled with pine trees. And it felt worth it. Peaceful. Freeing, even. “I love the views. I love driving, listening to music and being able to look at the mountains,” he says. “Not a lot of people could say they have that view when they’re working.”
42 percent of Gen Z adults — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are now pursuing blue-collar jobs.