481: Jason Altmire—Trade Up
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
4.9 • 40.8K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 82 minutes
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Summary
Former congressman Jason Altmire has spent years in Washington—and even more time outside it—making the case that America's biggest opportunity isn't behind a desk, but behind a welding mask, a set of tools, or the wheel of a big machine. Now leading Career Education Colleges and Universities, he's on a mission to close the skills gap and reconnect hard work with real opportunity.
In this episode, Mike and Jason dig into why millions of good jobs go unfilled, why the stigma around skilled labor refuses to die, and what it'll take to convince a new generation that "college for all" might not be the answer.
Along the way, they unpack the ideas behind Jason's book, Trade Up: Why the Future Belongs to Skilled Trades and How Career Education is Transforming the Workforce—and make a compelling case that the fastest way to achieve the American Dream might be to pursue a skilled trade.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What an interesting conversation you're about to listen to. |
| 0:07.6 | This is Micro. |
| 0:09.0 | You're listening to the way I heard it. |
| 0:10.7 | And, you know, I wasn't sure what to expect, Chuck, because as a rule, we don't really have politicians on the podcast. |
| 0:18.0 | Although this guy is technically no longer one. |
| 0:20.8 | Former. |
| 0:21.2 | Former. |
| 0:21.8 | Yeah. |
| 0:22.2 | Yeah, he's a congressman out of Pennsylvania, a Democrat named Jason Altmeyer. |
| 0:28.0 | But well regarded, really by, well, as well regarded as one can be in that body. |
| 0:35.2 | In the center, yeah. |
| 0:35.9 | He's a blue dog Democrat. |
| 0:37.1 | He's a blue dog Democrat, yeah. |
| 0:39.0 | And he wrote a book called Trade Up, and I skimmed through the PDF enough to realize I liked it enough to write a blurb. |
| 0:48.4 | You know what? |
| 0:49.2 | And forgive me if that sounds somewhat lazy as a guy who runs a work ethic scholarship program. I do intend on reading |
| 0:55.5 | the book, but it hasn't come out yet in real time. It's out now as you listen to this, |
| 1:02.1 | but I didn't have a physical copy. And I wanted to talk to the guy because everything that I saw in the book, I not only agreed with, I agreed |
| 1:14.0 | with wild enthusiasm. Yeah. I mean, the subtitle is why the future belongs to skilled trades |
| 1:20.6 | and new career education is transforming the workforce. Now, if that's not in your wheelhouse, |
| 1:26.4 | you don't have a wheelhouse. |
| 1:28.4 | Yeah, true enough. In his book, he mentions what we're doing here at the foundation. He |
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