77% of Gen Z Want Ownership; Trades Beat College Careers

By Nathan Brooks

Undergraduate certificate enrollment rose 10.2% in spring 2026, adding 86,000 students to short, career-focused programs that include many trades, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Iza Montalvo’s analysis puts that increase in a broader shift. Gen Z is taking a harder look at blue-collar work, with many workers looking beyond a first paycheck toward eventual ownership.

What are Gen Z workers saying?

Jobber’s 2026 Blue Collar Report found that 77 percent of Gen-Z respondents hope to own a business someday. Nearly twice as many named the trades as the best route to ownership as named college careers, at 46 percent versus 24 percent.

The 22-point gap makes the trades choice almost twice as common in Jobber’s results. More important for employers, the survey connects the preference to ownership ambition rather than interest in a trade alone.

Wells Fargo’s 2026 Money Study found a similar pattern. Eighty percent of Gen-Z adults said owning a business would let them control their own destiny, according to the study.

The surveys point to broad interest in business ownership, but they do not show how many respondents will start or retain a business. Enrollment and ambition are early signals, not proof of a new generation of owners.

What does this change for employers running crews?

Montalvo calls the ambition “good news for anyone running a crew.” Montalvo argues that a young worker who hopes to own a business has every reason to learn how one runs, and that a blue-collar job is “a great place to start.”

For employers running crews, the shift creates a development angle alongside staffing needs. Workers who see a trade job as a route to ownership may have a stronger incentive to learn how a business operates.

Junk Teens shows the basic sequence: start with the work, learn the business from the ground up, then take responsibility for multiple trucks, a warehouse and a student crew.

That does not mean every trainee becomes an owner. The cited Jobber and Wells Fargo surveys do not measure business formation, and Montalvo’s account describes no formal ownership-transfer program at Junk Teens. The case demonstrates the value of operating experience, not a proven conversion machine.

How Junk Teens scaled from one pickup

Montalvo uses the company as a practical playbook for blue-collar owners hiring the next generation. According to the company:

• 2021: Brothers Kirk McKinney, 22, and Jacob McKinney, 21, started the Massachusetts junk-removal company with one pickup truck while they were still in high school.
• Today: Junk Teens runs six trucks, a warehouse and a team of 17 student workers.
• 2025 revenue: The company brought in $3 million, up from $1.268 million the year before.
• Homes served: Its crews have served more than 15,000 homes.

Based on the company’s figures, revenue increased by $1.732 million, or about 137%, in one year. That is more than a doubling. The current operation spans six trucks, a warehouse and 17 student workers.

The brothers built the company by learning the business from the ground up, Montalvo says. That experience makes Junk Teens more than a growth story: it offers owners a concrete example of how trade work can prepare the next generation to run businesses.

The analysis also flags refreshed leadership advice from CEO Stephanie Mehta alongside the Junk Teens case study.

For blue-collar owners, the practical change is bigger than filling trade vacancies: companies can treat workers’ ownership ambitions as a reason to build operating knowledge from the ground up. The next test is conversion—whether enrollment and ambition become new business formations. Junk Teens shows what two brothers built from one pickup; the surveys establish the appetite for that route, not the number of owners it will produce.