Gen Z workers tell their blue-collar stories on TikTok

Andrew Salgado knew college wasn’t for him

Andrew Salgado knew college wasn’t for him.

Still, after graduating high school in 2023, he was set to enroll in an accounting program at a local technical college a few months later because he thought he had to.

“I was the guy who figured, ‘OK, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can’t not go to college,’” said Salgado, 20, who lives just outside of Tampa, Florida.

But just weeks before he was set to start, Salgado’s mother convinced him to switch his major to a skilled trade by highlighting the opportunities across industries for someone with a problem-solving personality like his own.

After scouring social media for days for videos about various trade jobs, Salgado soon landed on HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air conditioning, because of his desire to help people in need. So he changed his major and eventually graduated trade school. Two years later, he’s an HVAC technician who helps fix cooling units in homes. And he can’t imagine himself doing anything else.