Overlooked and disengaged: How Gen Z’s blue-collar bloc could shape the 2024 election

ATLANTA – Aya Alhaddad loves the feeling of being in a busy kitchen. Plates clattering, oil swishing in the pan, sweet and savory scents mingling in the air.

When she first moved to Atlanta, working in the restaurant business was a means to an end. Her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, had begun to feel small after high school and Alhaddad wanted room to grow. Atlanta seemed full of opportunity and back-of-house jobs were plentiful.

Soon enough, Alhaddad, 22, began to see a prosperous career path. She dreamed of opening her own cafe and enrolled in business classes at Atlanta Technical College, a two-year community college, to make it a reality.

Today, she is part of a growing group of blue-collar Gen Z workers who say they don't believe that the results of the 2024 election will make a difference in their lives, even as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump seek their votes in a remarkably close race.

“They do whatever they want,” Alhaddad, who isn’t registered to vote, said of the two very different candidates. “I just stay out of it because I don't trust them.”

Nonvoters like Alhaddad say they have more important things to do than voting. As tuition costs at traditional four-year colleges have skyrocketed, young people have increasingly opted for vocational programs, trade schools and blue-collar jobs.

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Between 2010 and 2019, the number of students enrolled in four-year colleges dropped by 14%. Vocational-focused community colleges, meanwhile, saw a 16% uptick in enrollment between 2022 and 2023, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

These young adults in the workforce hold many of the same concerns about the direction of the country as their college-educated peers. And they’re among the key groups of voters Trump and Harris believe could decide the 2024 election.

Related: Kamala Harris says she'll end college degree requirements for some federal jobs

Trump is courting young men, particularly those without a college degree, by appearing on male-oriented podcasts and at professional fighting matches. Harris, too, has worked to energize young Americans ? leaning into meme culture on the campaign trail and proposing economic policies that benefit those just starting out.

But reaching these voters is proving a tough sell. They are less likely to vote and more likely to say politics isn’t relevant when compared with their college-going peers.

And those like Alhaddad aren’t buying either candidate’s promises.

Economic worries

For Malina Bordere, 25, the economy is a top concern. More specifically, the high cost of housing.

“I really want the market to crash,” she said after taking a cosmetology class in Atlanta one morning in September. Bordere laughed but was only half-joking.

Bordere's goal is to own a building of salon suites and lease them out to other stylists. She’s attending cosmetology school to learn the ins and outs and connect with people who may eventually want to rent out her suites. But with average mortgage interest rates in the U.S. hovering above 6%, she said it feels unattainable.

“It's really hard for people to come out of high school, college and try to buy a home,” she said. “Everybody needs to be able to buy a home.”

Anxieties about economic power and affordability are a through line across voting demographics, and particularly among youth. A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that the majority of people ages 18-34 believe the U.S. economy is stagnating or is in recession.

However, youth in the workforce are more concerned about different parts of the economy than their peers in college.

They're more focused on the day-to-day.

Where college students tend to care more about big-picture student debt, those who went straight into the workforce often want to hear more about candidates’ plans on creating jobs and lowering costs, said Kadida Kenner, CEO of the New Pennsylvania Project, a voting rights organization in the pivotal battleground state.

Youth ages 18-29 without a college education were also more likely than those in college, or those with a degree, to describe their financial situation as bad, according to the Harvard Youth Poll, a nationwide survey conducted in early September.

“It’s heightened,” Kenner suggested, “because they're experiencing adulthood quickly, without the installation of a college campus.”

Political engagement

Nitzan Pelman, CEO of Climb Together, an organization that helps low-income adults find well-paying jobs, argued that recent high school graduates who enter the workforce often feel economic pressure more acutely than their peers.

The high cost of tuition is often the main barrier preventing people from attending college, meaning that those who do not attend often already fall into lower income brackets.

“They don't really have the flexibility or the luxury of a school,” she said. “The cost of life and the cost of college has forced people to be more considerate or circumspect.”

More: How are college costs adding up these days and how much has tuition risen? Graphics explain

Kavaughn Moncrieffe, 23, said he has thought about going into a four-year degree program after he earns his GED certificate but, as a busy father of young children, programs in HVAC and audio engineering are more practical.

With little time for himself already, Moncrieffe is also among the large group of working-class young adults who are tuned out of politics.

Among people aged 18-29 surveyed in the Harvard Youth Poll, 27% of those without a college education said they probably or definitely would not vote in November, compared with just 7% of their college-educated peers.

Seventy-six percent of the noncollege population said they weren’t politically engaged, compared with 59% of those who had attended college and 64% who were currently in college.

Moncrieffe said that while he believes politics matter, he doesn’t believe they impact his life in a substantive way.

“These people are going to do what they want anyway,” he said. “Whether they make our life better or they make our life worse, we can't really control that.”

John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said the challenge candidates and voter registration groups have in reaching voters like Moncrieffe is in showing the connection between policy actions and real life.

In focus groups, he uses the example of how the Affordable Care Act, passed under former President Barack Obama, allowed youth to stay on their parents' health insurance until they turned 26.

“For that cohort of folks, we need to show them the difference that participation can make, and that government can make in their lives,” Della Volpe said.

Kenner said political operatives also need to meet young blue-collar voters where they are by providing information about the difference between political parties, where they can vote and how to vote. She's found that building trust also requires organizers to have a sustained, long-term presence in a community.

“You set up shop, you give out things to the community, and then hopefully they recognize what you're doing, and then they go in there and register to vote and support you,” she said.

It costs millions of dollars for political campaigns to invest in getting voters registered and to the polls. But when it comes to working-class youth, the untapped potential is immense.

Only 14% of youth with a college degree said they don't yet know who they are voting for in the 2024 election. Among youth not in college and without a degree, that number jumped to 24%.

“There are more people in this group than in the college group,” Della Volpe said. “And by the way, they really are up for grabs.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why Gen Z’s blue-collar bloc matters for the 2024 election