Untapped High-Pay Jobs Beyond Finance: Fixing Skills Gaps in Trades & Services

The eFinancialCareers primary article spotlights a broad trend: many roles that pay as well as or better than junior investment banking now exist outside traditional sectors, yet they often go without candidates. Ford’s reported 5,000 vacant mechanic positions, each offering $120,000, underscore a particularly paradoxical example. The demand is not in wage level but in training and cultural perception. [1][3][6]

Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, emphasizes that the skills required—such as the ability to pull a diesel engine out of a Ford Super Duty truck—take approximately five years to learn. This signals that even significant salary increases struggle to overcome capabilities and training gaps. Moreover, it’s not merely a pay issue but an issue of trade education infrastructure: trade schools and technical programs, Farley and others say, have been underfunded, understaffed or disconnected from modern manufacturing realities like EV batteries, robotics and automation. [3][6]

Another axis of insight emerges from the luxury personal service sector. Elite nannies and household staff working for ultra-wealthy families are seeing salaries start around $100,000–$150,000 and in some cases rising toward $200,000 or more. These roles come with demanding expectations, including travel, full availability, and emotional labor. These jobs challenge assumptions about career prestige; a young professional might earn comparable compensation in finance but with less respect, visibility, or stability. [1][6]

From a strategic business and investment standpoint, multiple forces are in tension: rising labor demand in non-traditional high-paying roles, stagnant supply due to educational lag and culture bias, and disillusionment with finance-induced burnout. Companies and policymakers that ignore this may face persistent skills shortages, rising labor costs, and perhaps more importantly, brand and reputational risk as younger employees critique traditional career ladders. [6][3]

Open questions include: what incentives will most effectively attract entrants into these skills-heavy but traditionally lower-prestige roles? How can training and apprenticeship systems be reformed for scale and modernity? And what trade-offs are workers making—how much do issues like work-life balance, identity, and social status influence these decisions versus salary?