[HN Gopher] The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice... ___________________________________________________________________ The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z Author : rntn Score : 124 points Date : 2023-01-05 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.npr.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org) | abeppu wrote: | While the trend they're talking about may be real, the way they | provide evidence for it is sloppy. | | > The number of young people seeking technical jobs -- like | plumbing, building and electrical work -- dropped by 49% in 2022 | compared to 2020, according to data from online recruiting | platform Handshake shared with NPR. | | > Researchers from Handshake tracked how the number of | applications for technical roles vs. the number of job postings | has changed over the last two years. | | > While postings for those roles -- automotive technicians, | equipment installers and respiratory therapists, to name a few -- | saw about 10 applications each in 2020, they got about five per | posting in 2022. | | I.e. the evidence is in terms of applications per job posting, | but the claim is about the number people seeking jobs. These are | not the same. If it's understood that it's a job-seekers market, | the same number of job seekers in 2022 could reasonably each have | applied to half as many positions each, and be pickier about | which postings they pursue. | UncleMeat wrote: | "We need more tradespeople" seems to be an evergreen news | article. | | My brother in law is an electrician. He is paid alright, enough | to live on. But there are HUGE downsides. He does not receive | health insurance. He does not get paid vacation. In order to | match decent white-collar pay, he needs to work overtime. His | company pushes _hard_ to get jobs finished fast, causing people | to cut safety corners. Many of his coworkers have been badly (in | one case, nearly fatally) injured on the job. There are no | meaningful raises. | | It isn't a _bad_ career, but there are major reasons why it would | be unattractive. | pleb_nz wrote: | Is this more of a US issue? I'm ex tradesman and know a lot of | tradespeople in my part of the world and they're often some of | the best off and fittest people I know. Being on your feet all | day and moving around seems to be good for the human body | rather than sitting behind a desk for 8 hours which we now is | incredibly bad for you. | Workaccount2 wrote: | There is a spectrum here. Plenty of tradesmen "living the | retired life" at 50 with two blown knees and a bad back. | commandlinefan wrote: | > His company pushes hard to get jobs finished fast, causing | people to cut safety corners | | Man, this bothers me in software, where physical human safety | isn't even on the line. I can't even imagine dealing with that | when somebody could actually die. | verdenti wrote: | [dead] | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _are no meaningful raises_ | | Doesn't the career path in the trades lead to owning your own | business? Obviously, not for everyone. But the scope for | advancement and riches is certainly there. | SoftTalker wrote: | Yes, this is where/how you make money in the trades. Or you | specialize in something esoteric and potentially dangerous | like underwater welding or high voltage linesman. | | If you stay as a line worker in a union you will do OK but | won't be rich (unless you live frugally and save/invest a | lot). | UncleMeat wrote: | Not by default. A huge number of people work for corps. And | they don't teach you small business management in trade | schools. | eddsh1994 wrote: | This is why Unions exist, no? | | Personally I sometimes wonder if I'd have enjoyed plumbing | water more than plumbing code as I'd be meeting more people | face to face, physically active, and it can get surprisingly | complex (Berkeley, I think, offers a postgrad cert in plumbing | buildings like sky scrapers which I saw advertised the other | day) | peruvian wrote: | Tech people always say this but forget that being a plumber | means being on their knees wading thru poop water and likely | being unable to work when you reach a certain, fairly young | age. | | I get it, trades are important, but let's not glamorize them. | jonatron wrote: | Not all countries have toilets that block as easily as | American / Canadian toilets. So wading through dirty water | is less likely in the UK for example. | aksss wrote: | Well, being an outhouse carpenter sucks too! | dinkumthinkum wrote: | Nothing against them but I think glamorizing trades seems | like a kind of virtue signal. | eddsh1994 wrote: | I have done far worse than wade through poop water on my | knees when I worked as a teenager on a paintball site / as | a rifleman in the army! But to each their own :) | jfengel wrote: | Probably not. Maybe you just really like people, but in a lot | of trades, the people you meet are grumpy. They don't want to | meet you; they just want their problem solved. Either they're | building a new thing (and trying to meet an aggressive | schedule... and are probably behind by the time they bring in | the plumbers) or repairing an old thing (and dealing with | people who are cranky that the thing failed). | | It's probably not as bad as tech support, where you can | guarantee that the person on the other end of the phone is | angry. But it's probably at least as bad as retail, and | nobody ever says "I love meeting people so I'll go handle | cash from strangers". | | I know that there are extroverts in the world who get a | charge out of meeting new people every day. And there's a big | bonus to not sitting in a chair in front of a screen, | especially if you're one of those. But I've got a feeling | you're a lot happier with coding-level salaries and meeting | strangers after you clock out. | Dig1t wrote: | Yes! I grew up in California and my dad was a tradesperson. | The union is the only reason my siblings and I had health | insurance growing up. He never got any vacation time though, | insurance was the main benefit of the union I think. | | Unfortunately, other states in the US have much weaker unions | or none at all, especially in the south. | eddsh1994 wrote: | I am English but moved to the Bay Area a few years back and | became friends with a union electrician from Alabama so | this conversation comes up a little - it sounded like | unions are supported in the south even if they look a | little different. However I'm not American and am not | certain about that at all :) | nebula8804 wrote: | Does not seem like given a lot of the auto factories in | the south are not unionized and multiple attempts to | unionize them failed because the workers reject them. | | Then there was that famous failed attempt at unionizing | the Amazon warehouse in Alabama? I think? Yeah there was | a lot of shady stuff going down but it just does not look | good among all the other failures. | UncleMeat wrote: | Yes. | | My brother in law lives in SC where unionization and labor | protection is especially weak. I don't think that the balance | of power is going to shift away from the bosses and towards | him any time soon. | colechristensen wrote: | The people I've known in trade unions locally spent a lot of | time not working waiting on the bench for the next job. The | work was much closer to being a short term contractor not at | all in control of finding new work. | [deleted] | nemo44x wrote: | There's plenty of tradesmen in unions. And plenty of other | tradesmen willing to undercut them. | WalterBright wrote: | Every time I employ a tradesman to fix something around here, I | get an astonishingly high bill. | quickthrower2 wrote: | They are like meaty unreserved cloud resources. You want to | call a plumber at any time and they drive out with their | expertise, their $200k of vehicle and equipment, insurances | and fix something. It will cost! | nerdponx wrote: | This is the cost of not having a social safety net and public | services, where everybody pays a little bit and everybody | benefits. It's not just the people who are self-employed that | benefit. Their customers also benefit from lower prices, | because self-employed people don't have such high expenses. | Of course, it all gets paid for eventually anyway, but | consistently over time, and ideally proportional to wealth | and/or income, rather than randomly punishing people who | happen to need repair work done. | baremetal wrote: | There is an old joke about a doctor who calls a plumber. | | He gets the bill and says "That's outrageous, that's more | than I make as a doctor". | | The plumber replies "Yeah that's more than I made as a doctor | too." | vanderZwan wrote: | The _company_ sending you a high bill doesn 't automatically | mean the guy who fixed your house gets paid well though, does | it? | WalterBright wrote: | They were one man shops. | | 20 years ago, the going rate for installing a socket in an | existing wired and ready to go junction box was $50. It's | about a 5 minute job. I know it's about 5 minutes because | I've done a lot of them myself. | | I'm sure prices have gone up a lot in the last couple | decades. | [deleted] | lotsofpulp wrote: | The electrician is not charging to do a 5 minute job. | They do not know that when they accept the job over the | phone. | | They are charging for their time to drive to and from | you, the possibility that the job is more involved than | described, and the liability from doing the job. And the | opportunity cost of not accepting a different job due to | your job. | WalterBright wrote: | That's the price I was quoted to do the whole house, not | one socket. $50 per outlet. | | If I hired one to come out and do one socket, I'd be sure | to get a $200 site visit charge added on. | SoftTalker wrote: | This is what a contractor does when he doesn't want the | job because it's basically too small and would be more of | an annoyance than anything worth doing. Bid an outrageous | amount and then if the client says "yes" at least you're | making some money. | | He's probably got a backlog of large jobs he can make | more money on. So if he's going to come out and do outlet | installation on one house, he's going to bid an amount | that is worth delaying other work. | | For small/simple household jobs, you should call a | handyman not a trade contractor. | adastra22 wrote: | I can confirm that is the the going rate right now. | danielheath wrote: | It's hardly surprising that a 5 minute job that requires | travel to and from the customer site on your own dime | costs enough to cover their travel time & costs; 20 years | ago they had to read a map, plan a route to their jobs | for the day, drive to and from the site. | nemo44x wrote: | You're going to pay for a couple of hours no matter what. | He isn't just getting salary either. There's employment | taxes that need to be paid, tools and transportation | costs, insurance, benefits, etc. | karaterobot wrote: | One thing about contractors is that you're paying them | for the time they aren't working. | | As in, they're probably not working steadily, 40 hours a | week, every week, but they still have bills to pay, and | this down time must be factored into their rates for the | profession to be sustainable. | | On the other hand, if they DO work 40 hours a week, every | single week, they can probably afford to raise their | rates... | | Have not been an electrician, but I have been a software | contractor, and the idea is the same. | barbazoo wrote: | > He is paid alright, enough to live on. But there are HUGE | downsides. He does not receive health insurance. He does not | get paid vacation. | | First I thought the person you were referring to was self- | employed but if they're an employee, why don't they get | vacation or health insurance? | falcolas wrote: | > It isn't a bad career | | But there is a finite end to the career - when your body gives | out. | | That's the biggest problem with the trades, you're selling your | health and body. And eventually the body parts will wear out, | on a schedule decided as much by genetics as how you live. | Avshalom wrote: | >there is a finite end to the career | | this actually brings to mind something else: | | I think the idea of a career is dead for a lot of the 40 and | under set. The idea that you'll have the same job for decades | is just nonsense so any job that feels too specific also | feels like a it'll bite you in the ass in 5 years. | falcolas wrote: | A good point. I think it's even dead for the over 40 crowd, | as they try and slide into a new career which they can work | part time and make a living on. Given how questionable | retirement as a reality is these days. | ghaff wrote: | In general, reasonably lucrative part-time work for | someone coming from a professional role is tricky. And | even more so if you really want to have fairly fine- | grained control around both weekly workload and longer | vacations. Well-paying work that lets you just pick and | choose something here and there and then take a month off | if you feel like it are pretty uncommon. | falcolas wrote: | You're 100% not wrong. I think in many cases through it's | supplementing insufficient retirement funds, so even a | low skill low wage part time job (making/selling art, | garden fruits/vegetables, foods, etc) may be sufficient | to provide enough runway for existing retirement funds. | ghaff wrote: | Absolutely. And some people also seem to like that some | of these jobs provide human interaction. Some of my | private car drivers seem in this category. | | I'm more talking about situations where it's not mostly | for the money but rather continuing the things people | have enjoyed doing professionally without doing it full- | time and without most of the downsides. | gspencley wrote: | > I think the idea of a career is dead for a lot of the 40 | and under set. The idea that you'll have the same job for | decades is just nonsense | | We're probably just nit-picking over definitions but a | career, in my opinion, is not "having the same job for | decades." A career is a decision to specialize in a | particular craft, trade or profession. The opposite of a | career is someone who takes odd jobs. Hospitality one day, | transportation the next, might dabble in manufacturing. | These jobs pay the bills, and there's nothing wrong with | "just" doing that, but they are disconnected jobs; not a | career. | | I consider myself to have a career in software engineering | but I have had multiple "jobs" over the decades that have | contributed to that career. The career is the knowledge, | the experience, the speciality, the reputation, the time | spent focusing... all accumulated over my time developing | that career. A career could be made by having a single job | lasting from graduation until retirement, or it could be a | handful of jobs that put to practice and develop the same | skillset and knowledge. | Avshalom wrote: | >> We're probably just nit-picking over definitions but a | career | | No, that's fair. Like "carpenter" and "programmer" are | both very broad professions of course. I think there's | something about the way various industries get hit by | down turns more or less visibly (like when construction | goes down it feels like it's everybody, and so every | framer, every concrete layer) that creates an (often | false to be sure) sense of narrowness. | | But also Plumber, Electrician, Carpenter, etc. are very | broad trades and even though articles get written using | those words because everyone knows what they do, the | articles are often _really_ talking about the lack of | elevator technicians, crane operators, industrial HVAC, | PLC programmers, train conductors, air traffic | controllers those more niche trades. A lot of machine | operators end up so niche that their current company is | the only one in a state that could employ them. My sister | makes M &Ms, other than company policies about like | sanitation she'd be no better than a new hire on the Twix | line. | WalterBright wrote: | I'm not sure how your body parts wear out. | | Football players ruin their bodies through accumulated | injuries, not wearing their bodies out. | | Do athletes wear their bodies out? I've never heard of that. | How does doing plumbing/electricioning wear your body out? | baremetal wrote: | >How does doing plumbing/electricioning wear your body out? | | Climbing ladders. The knees go. | jorts wrote: | Plumbers and electricians contort their body and are moving | up and down into cavities of various sizes all day. It | definitely takes a toll on you. | WalterBright wrote: | Can't be worse than yoga. | | Edit: Downvote me all you like. I've done yoga, I've done | plumbing, I've done electrical. Yoga takes the cake by a | mile for most painful contorting. | | And yet I know an 86 yo woman who has been doing yoga 3 | time a week forever and is fit and sharp. | jjulius wrote: | Huh? Yoga poses are purposeful, they're supposed to be | beneficial. Contorting your body all sorts of odd ways | while performing a trade is an entirely separate thing | from a yoga pose. | WalterBright wrote: | Have you ever tried yoga? You might change your mind if | you had. It's not a joke. | cmh89 wrote: | If doing Yoga is causing damage to your body, it's | because you are doing Yoga incorrectly. | jjulius wrote: | I've done it many times, even hot yoga. I also have | extensive experience wiring up and decommissioning data | centers, involving lots of odd contorting. Yoga felt a | lot better for me than contorting my body in odd ways. | jjulius wrote: | >Football players ruin their bodies through accumulated | injuries, not wearing their bodies out. | | >Do athletes wear their bodies out? I've never heard of | that. | | Isn't "[ruining] their bodies through accumulated injuries" | the same thing as wearing their body out? | WalterBright wrote: | No, it isn't the same thing. Just like crashing your car | isn't the same thing as wearing it out. | jjulius wrote: | >Just like crashing your car isn't the same thing as | wearing it out. | | Not taking precautions, for instance, when driving over | potholes can wear certain facets of the car down without | doing significant immediate damage, the same way that | taking certain falls or hits can wear a body down. You | don't need a crash. | cityofdelusion wrote: | Not all injuries are at a gross level. Tendons and muscles | get micro tears, cartilage gets worn down into mush, bones | get tiny fractures. The human body repairs the best it can, | but there's a reason so many older tradesmen have bad | backs, bad knees, degenerative arthritis and so on. | | Not to mention major injuries are still a big risk factor. | Broken fingers, destroyed shoulder joints, missing | fingernails, deep burns, scarred cuts, etc. Often never | seen by a doc too and never healing properly. | ehmish wrote: | I've got a friend who went into the trades instead of going | to university, he (correctly) recognised that what he was | passionate about wouldn't even pay for the degree | (composing music) so he figured he'd do it on the side and | do a trade to earn a living. Unfortunately due to a | workplace accident he cut the tendons in his wrist with a | box cutter, which means he can't now play the piano for any | reasonable amount of time. So i guess it's less "the body | wears out" but more "you accumulate a lot of small injuries | that eventually prevent you from perfoming your trade" | | Edit:typo | WalterBright wrote: | I'd buy the cumulative injury theme, but not the exercise | part. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | >I'm not sure how your body parts wear out. | | Via cumulative tissue, bone, and sensory damage. Also known | as workin' hard. | falcolas wrote: | Ask a construction worker in their 50's how their body | feels. | | Respectfully, pedantically limiting the phrase "wearing | out" to some subset of conditions that conveniently | excludes accumulated injuries, the deterioration of | cartilage, and other load/repetition-induced joint | debilitation adds nothing to this conversation. | rightbyte wrote: | > How does doing plumbing/electricioning wear your body | out? | | Electrictions can work over their head with screw drivers | for weeks at an end. There are plenty of bad working | positions for their body. | LAC-Tech wrote: | Programmers get RSI from typing too much. You think | tradesman can't get worse? | ffwacom wrote: | My dad was an electrician his whole life, retired at 65 still | going out to job sites. | rednerrus wrote: | This is the reality of all jobs where you work for someone | else. You're selling your time, and your body to someone | else. | michaelbuckbee wrote: | You're right, but there's a gradient: there's selling your | time and then there's selling your time and being in | constant pain. | [deleted] | josephshaw92 wrote: | its completely normal for you to sacrifice your physical | and mental health to work for us with minimal chance of | ever progressing economically | falcolas wrote: | Sure, but the wear-and-tear on your brain from an office | job will always be significantly lower (and thus remain a | viable job for much longer) than a job in the figurative or | literal trenches. | WalterBright wrote: | Sitting in a chair all day is not good for your health | long term. | nradov wrote: | Right, but even when you're in poor health from sitting | in a chair all day you can keep sitting in that chair and | doing the same work. Whereas if you're a skilled trades | worker and break your back by falling off a ladder then | you can't work at all. So the downside risk is more | severe. | rednerrus wrote: | I wonder what the burnout rate is for the trades vs white | collar work. | lotsofpulp wrote: | No one is forced to sit. For example, sit stand desks, | and waking breaks. | JacobThreeThree wrote: | You can be the owner/operator of the business, and are | therefore not working for someone else, but you are | nevertheless selling your body. | gsatic wrote: | It's not going to get more attractive. This is where some | imaginative immigration policies can help. | cudgy wrote: | By imaginative, do you mean restrictive? | convolvatron wrote: | I assume the opposite. like other sectors in the US economy | (MDs), its likely we're going to have to keep importing | people to take care of us since we're all focussed on | winning and don't have time to wash our own socks or bend | our own conduit. | nebula8804 wrote: | Demographic implosion will catch up to the third world | countries. Then the US is royally screwed. Some places | like China its already too late. | mfer wrote: | This isn't the case for all trades people. It might be a bad | area or a bad employer. | | I've know trades folks who are electricians, plumbers, | carpenters, work in road construction, etc. They typically work | reasonable hours, have medical, and are paid at or above the | median income for where they live. They didn't rack up debt | getting into this either. This is not a bad deal for many | people. | ogre_battle wrote: | > it might be a bad area or a bad employer. | | Outside of big cities, there may not be enough demand, esp. | consistent demand, to justify good pay and bennies. | | My uncle is a welder, has a lot of specializations including | some underwater stuff. No shortage of offers... for 6 weeks | of work in nowhere-ville, often requiring you to supply your | own transport and housing. 3 months in FL, 6 months in NC, 8 | weeks in GA. And they all pay crap. | [deleted] | mfer wrote: | > Outside of big cities, there may not be enough demand, | esp. consistent demand, to justify good pay and bennies. | | I guess that depends how far outside cities. In the suburbs | there is demand. | | There is a shortage of trades and many trades folks are | older in age. When they retire there isn't the back fill | behind them. And all of this is happening as the population | is growing. | falcolas wrote: | There's a semi-retired craftsman I watch regularly on youtube | - Essential Craftsman. Almost all long-term success stories | in the trades which he tells directly or gets from his | friends involve transitioning from a tradesman to an | employer. | | You're selling your health and body as a tradesman. If you | can make the transition to running a trades business, then | you're selling your brainpower more than your body. | | Success stories in the trades are fairly consistent in this | matter. | throwaway5959 wrote: | Came here to say this. Growing up in the Midwest I saw this | all the time. The kids of plumbers that owned a plumbing | business lived in a very nice part of town, the kids of | plumbers still going to job sites lived in an OK part of | town. | UncleMeat wrote: | It might be a bad area. There aren't better employers in the | area. He knows he is being abused. He used to live and work | as an electrician in another country where he was treated | considerably better. He spends his days wiring new homes that | sell for 1.5M+ and gets treated like crap. Moving is | unfortunately not an option because my sister's career is | very location-dependent. | | "Well if you aren't in one of the good areas you'll get | fucked" doesn't tend to make it into articles like the linked | above and I think it is worth knowing. | SoftTalker wrote: | New home/residential wiring jobs are basically the entry | point for electricians. It's about as mindless and simple | as it gets. I'm not sure what the licensing requirements | are but those are the sorts of jobs that an electrical | contractor puts their new/junior people on. | nullsense wrote: | I know nothing about the industry, but out of | curiosity... what are considered the more interesting | jobs? | jxramos wrote: | commercial sites are supposed to be good; I know a | commercial electrician and he'd talk about the many tech | company headquarters and new buildings he and his team | would wire up and do all the equipment for. This includes | outlets, infrastructure like AC and any special equipment | like fire alarms smoke detectors, any everything in | between. He'd say working for government jobs were too | slow, they took forever to complete, it was always more | lucrative to go for private industry large construction | sites like new malls, big buildings with large square | feet footprints. Basically commercial real estate stuff. | jasondigitized wrote: | Higher voltage = Higher wages | prottog wrote: | I only know a bit more than nothing, but I'd wager | anything industrial is considered more interesting. | Single-family residential wiring, especially for new | construction where there's nothing in the way, is so | simple that even I, using just what I've learned being a | homeowner, could meet code with it. | baremetal wrote: | Industrial. | SoftTalker wrote: | Yeah, industrial/institutional, high voltage, multi- | phase, transformers, utility-level stuff e.g. generation | and transmission, etc. | nemo44x wrote: | Here's the problem with it all, tradesmen are all too eager to | undercut each other for some reason. There's so much work, | especially for trades that require a license that anyone that | isn't charging premium money is a fool. And there's lots of | foolish tradesmen with short term thinking and eager to sell | their services as a low price option. Often with low price work | to boot. | | You rarely see older guys going for cheap and it's because they | know it's a foolish thing to do. | [deleted] | quickthrowman wrote: | Your brother in law should join the IBEW (or leave Arizona or | whatever state he is in that has weak unions) as union | electricians receive all of the things he does not (I manage | union electricians). | | Is he doing residential wiring? That's the bottom of the barrel | for electrical work, unfortunately. The commercial market is | where the bulk of the good work is. | crawsome wrote: | This is why Unions are important, and electricians have the | IBEW has an option. | Avshalom wrote: | A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" | but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling | Gen Z that". I'm 35, from basically as early as I can remember | until sophmore year of college I was told constantly by every | adult (and I mean every adult not just the ones that had degrees) | in my life to go to college, get a degree, any degree. So yeah I | went to college. It was aggressively marketed to me for over a | decade and that affected my aspirations. | | Doesn't help either I'm sure that unions, the organizations | willing/capable of marketing-to, teaching/training people and | giving them some sense of camaraderie, have been attacked for | decades as being variously inefficient to straight evil. | [deleted] | mfer wrote: | Many adults were told college was the only way to go. Those who | went through college and those who didn't. Doesn't matter the | debt. It's always better. | | Except it's not. First, society is going to have too few | skilled trades folks in the coming years due to people retiring | and not being replaced. Second, a lot of college degrees can't | get someone a good job. I remember someone telling me they had | a business degree and couldn't get a job managing a store at | the mall. | cudgy wrote: | A business degree makes the candidate over-qualified for | managing a mall store is the likely reason. They are afraid | of the employee using the position as a stepping stone to a | higher paying, higher status job. | [deleted] | lotsofpulp wrote: | I am under the impression that business/communications | bachelors degrees were a signal that the degree holder took | the easy way out in school. | | It was considered the fallback degree when I went to | college 20 years ago, since anyone could graduate with it | with minimal effort. | joecot wrote: | I'm a millennial. First we were told that we needed the college | degree for a job. Any degree would do. So everyone went and got | a college degree, and since so many people had it it wasn't a | status symbol anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good | middle class job. And then a bunch of people were told they | shouldn't have gotten those degrees and they were worthless. | | Then we were told to go into STEM. So lots of people went into | STEM even though they didn't want to, there are not enough STEM | jobs for all of them, and in some cases the reason there are | always jobs available is because they chew everyone up and spit | them out (looking at you, Amazon). I got lucky. A lot of folks | did not. | | Then we were told what we really need is nurses. So folks went | to nursing school in droves. I'm not sure where we are with | that, because it seems like hospitals still never have enough | nurses but that those folks that went to nursing school also | didn't manage to improve their situation much. | | Now we're told the money and demand is in trades. And that | might be true, and that might remain true, but we've been given | the wrong advice for so long we just stopped listening. | yucky wrote: | > we've been given the wrong advice for so long we just | stopped listening. | | Shouldn't we recognize that things change and life can be | unpredictable? Rather than being jaded that every adult in | our lives didn't have a magical crystal ball, maybe there are | more productive things that can be done? | | Gen Z & younger Millennials constantly get shit for blaming | everyone else for everything always, and taking no | responsibility or being accountable for their own | actions...but I would argue that comments like the above | aren't going to dispel that. | | Maybe it reads different than it's intended, but a huge part | of being an adult is adapting to an ever changing world and | finding a path forward towards your goals. | | ( _Edited_ to remove what could be perceived as a bit | harsh..) | joecot wrote: | The original premise was that trades are where all the | money is, and Gen Z should be listening to that. My point | is that we were previously told: the money is in college | degrees, the money is in STEM, the money is in nursing. And | people invested a lot of time and money in taking that | advice and it went nowhere. Then we were called stupid and | foolish and entitled for believing that advice. | | So why aren't Gen Z taking this magical advice on trades? | Because they know older generations don't have a crystal | ball, they've seen what happens if they listen to that | crystal ball advice, and they're not falling for it. And if | you talk to Gen Z, they have very little hope for the | future, given we are doing very little to stop climate | change, runaway capitalism, and they're watching jobs get | automated without any change to the "cost of living" | agreement when people are watching jobs disappear. | | Boomers don't have to worry about any of that anymore. And | there's nothing more tone deaf than Boomers giving advice | on a world that no longer exists for younger generations. | yucky wrote: | > The original premise was that trades are where all the | money is | | Nobody has ever said the "trades are where _all_ the | money is ". This premise is flawed already. | > My point is that we were previously told: the money is | in college degrees, the money is in STEM, the money is in | nursing. And people invested a lot of time and money in | taking that advice and it went nowhere. | | It still is. It sounds like too many people have deluded | themselves into thinking college is a public jobs program | and if they show up and get a piece of paper they will be | the most in demand in those fields. However, that | requires an illogical leap _on their part_ to believe | that any and every person in a field will be at the top | of their field and thus command exorbitant salaries. It | defies logic. Plenty of people still make good money in | those fields, and still will years from now. But not | everyone is entitled to make a ton of money in any fields | their heart desires. | | Everyone learns the law of supply and demand before | adulthood, or if they haven't then they shouldn't be | going to college anyway. So if the supply of labor in a | field increases beyond the demand, what would we expect | to happen? | | Also, if you're really good at something people will | generally pay you more than they'll pay people who are | mediocre. Maybe the problem is younger generations can't | wrap their heads around the fact that a lot of people are | mediocre. Not everyone is special or a superstar or | whatever, so maybe this egalitarian mindset is the issue. | | This isn't boomer shit, I'm far too young to be a boomer. | It seems like common sense. Is this not common sense? | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _everyone learns the law of supply and demand before | adulthood, or if they haven 't then they shouldn't be | going to college anyway_ | | People learn it, but I don't think many Americans | actually believe it. Exhibit A is housing. Exhibit B is | this bandwagoning effect around career choices. | MrFantastic wrote: | What subject teaches Supply and Demand in High School? | | I was aware of it but I only remember seeing it taught in | Econ 101. | | Most majors don't require Econ 101 to my knowledge. | maxsilver wrote: | > Everyone learns the law of supply and demand before | adulthood, or if they haven't then they shouldn't be | going to college anyway. | | Yeah, the problem is that the "law of supply and demand" | is a simple metaphor to help children gently begin | learning economics, not how anything actually works. | Almost no price any real person encounter anywhere in | their daily life is actually determined in any meaningful | way by "supply" or "demand" -- unless you stretch the | definition of those two words so thin they're practically | meaningless. They're _potential factors_ , sure, but only | small ones. | | As one of a bajillion examples, see how every hospital is | short staffed (low supply) and desperate for nurses (high | demand), while we also see them constantly lay nurses off | or reduce hours (and nursing has consistently-fixed low | salaries, despite the shortages). Same for CNAs, nursing | home staff, etc. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _no price any real person encounter anywhere in their | daily life is actually determined in any meaningful way | by "supply" or "demand"_ | | Case in point. | | > _how every hospital is short staffed and desperate for | nurses (high demand), while we also constantly law nurses | off or reduce hours (and nursing has consistently-fixed | low salaries, despite the shortages)_ | | How many paying patients are they turning away on account | of this supposed shortage? | | There isn't a national nurse shortage. Nurses are being | overworked. And in some regions, there _are_ shortages, | though that 's out of an inability to pay traveling nurse | rates. | maxsilver wrote: | > How many paying patients are they turning away on | account of this supposed shortage? | | That's not how it works. Generally speaking, any publicly | funded hospital in the US _must_ take patients by law, | they _can not_ turn away patients except under very | specific circumstances. | | > There isn't a national nurse shortage | | Literally everyone disagrees with you: | | - The New York Times - | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/us/hospital-nursing- | short... - University of St Augustine - | https://www.usa.edu/blog/nursing-shortage/ - University | of California SF - | https://scienceofcaring.ucsf.edu/patient-care/nursing- | shorta... - Center for American Progress - | https://www.americanprogress.org/about-us/ - McKinsey and | Co - https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/policy-value- | based-care/st... - Both the US Democratic Party _and_ US | Republican Party - https://thehill.com/blogs/congress- | blog/healthcare/347826-bo... | | > that's out of an inability to pay traveling nurse | rates. | | If you pay extra to import a nurse (traveling nurses) you | remove them from the area they were previously. That's | great, but it's not a fix for a shortage, that's just | _relocating_ the shortage somewhere else. | | And, if they're short, why aren't they able to pay | traveling nurse rates? Medical revenues are at an all | time high, prices too. There's no reason a hospital | _couldn 't_ pay higher nursing rates, they just choose | not to, because again, _that figure is not determined by | supply or demand_. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _any publicly funded hospital in the US must take | patients by law, they can not turn away patients except | under very specific circumstances_ | | Not all nurses are employed at hospitals. I said paying | patient, but I should have said deniable. Someone seeking | out the sorts of care hospitals start denying when they | face an actual emergency. | | > _everyone disagrees with you_ | | Oh, I've seen the meme. I'm just casting it a bit more | cynically. Nobody wants to pay nurses more. So we need | more nurses, whether out of nursing school or through | immigration. | | > _if they 're short, why aren't they able to pay | traveling nurse rates_ | | They did [1]! When they needed them. Because there was | demand for them. When there wasn't, they didn't. | | > _no reason a hospital couldn 't pay higher nursing | rates, they just choose not to, because again, that | figure is not determined by supply or demand_ | | This is how supply and demand work. They're not paying | more because they don't have to. | | [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/the- | complexity... | Avshalom wrote: | "Common sense", "laws of supply and demand" imply kids | probably shouldn't all rush to go be plumbers because it | will decimate the pay and most of them will end up in | poorly compensated jobs because on they are, on average, | not special. | | And wow, look, we're commenting on an article about how | kids aren't rushing to go become plumbers so you're here | saying what exactly? | | Or did you just want to go on about kids-aint-shit and | the die landed on joecot this time. | yucky wrote: | > imply kids probably shouldn't all rush to go be | plumbers | | Correct, every kid shouldn't go be a plumber. Kids who | might enjoy being plumbers (or electricians, or HVAC etc) | should know that they can earn a good living doing it, | they don't need to rack up $60k in student loans to go to | an out of state college to get a useless communications | degree or whatever. | | Makes sense, right? | ghaff wrote: | I'm not even sure that all of the advice--with some nuance | applied--is even bad today. | | STEM is not a great term in general given how broad it is. | The pure sciences as a career path for someone with just an | undergrad degree have not been that great since I was in | school which was a long time ago. Those degrees can be | parlayed into other things that are connected to the degree | --or not. Pre-med was the historical reason a lot of people | majored in biology or chemistry. | | Engineering broadly is not a bad degree to have even if you | don't ultimately work in the area you majored in; I only | did so for about three years. | | Nursing was never near the level of doctors in terms of | compensation. But it has been pretty much middle class pay | at the cost of what, to me, would be difficult working | conditions. | | If someone's good with sitting in an office and developing | some appropriate skills for that, I wouldn't necessarily | recommend the trades. But, if someone doesn't like school, | book learning, etc. it seems a pretty reasonable option. | | And there are degrees of things. Trades also includes | working for things like construction engineering firms. | Have a friend who didn't go to college but has worked in | various roles of this sort. (My one real mechanical | engineering job wasn't all that different in many respects | at the end of the day.) | thevardanian wrote: | You expect kids to _not_ heed the advice of the adults | around them? And when those kids grow up to be adults and | realize that the advice they were given was all bullshit to | suddenly not see the utter waste of time and energy into | worthless goals put before them their entire lives? | | What are you talking about? | | The main responsibility of adults is to prepare the next | generation. Realizing that failure is not being jaded, it's | confronting reality about the failures of adults. | yucky wrote: | > And when those kids grow up to be adults and realize | that the advice they were given was all bullshit | | You think the advice of going to college is "all | bullshit"? It's still great advice for many people, is it | not? I think the point is that it's certainly not for | everyone, and because colleges aren't holding up their | end up the bargain there are plenty of other ways to earn | a living. Some people aren't cut out for the trades, just | like some people aren't cut out for many paths available | from college. | | The harsh truth is just because you can get a degree in | something doesn't mean you'll be any good at it, and | ultimately if you're not any good at something why would | you expect people to pay you money to do something | poorly? So the real question is: at what point should | young adults be responsible for recognizing their | aptitude and interests enough to make their own career | decisions without blaming others? 18? 21? 25? Never? | jeffrallen wrote: | The nurses start families and won't work night shifts | anymore. | dinkumthinkum wrote: | Who told you any degree would do? People have lambasted | underwater basket waving and things like that forever. | dionidium wrote: | > _First we were told that we needed the college degree for a | job. Any degree would do._ | | Something strange is happening here that I can't quite | understand. Jokes about English majors asking if you want | fries with that _are way older than me_ and I first started | college in 1999. Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of | "go to college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is | alien to me. | | _Of course_ I knew that some majors were more lucrative than | others. _Of course_ everybody else around me knew the same. | _Of course_ people my age at the time actively engaged in | conversations about "what will you do with this degree when | you're done?" _Of course_ people who majored in less | practical subjects thought about this (when they weren 't | actively trying to put it out of their mind). | | A character (played by pre-hairplugs Jeremy Piven) in the | movie PCU (released in 1994) ridicules a student for majoring | in Sanskrit, saying, "You're majoring in a 5000 year-old dead | language?" Everybody in the audience is supposed to get why | that's funny. | | And yet I keep hearing people say they had no idea that any | of this was true. It strains credulity. | | Frankly, people have been repeating this line about how they | couldn't possibly have known all this for so long that kids | in college today weren't even born yet when it started. | Eventually people are going to have to admit that they did | know (or should have). | svachalek wrote: | Yeah I'm 10 years older than you and never had any thought | that "any degree will do". Although perhaps I'm old enough | to see that this was legitimate thinking in my | predecessors. There was a time when just completing college | was fairly uncommon and acted as a class signifier. I | believe having a degree, any degree, would have made you an | officer automatically in the military (and still does?) and | would have opened the door to all kinds of business | professions. | | Now it's just too common for any old degree to matter. I | think perhaps for Ivy League this strategy still works. | nradov wrote: | Having any bachelor's degree is usually a necessary | prerequisite to earn a commission as a military officer, | but it's not sufficient. There are many enlisted | personnel who have degrees but don't become officers, | either because they don't want the hassle or don't meet | other criteria. | brewdad wrote: | I think the "any degree will do" mindset stems from the | fact that so many, especially in non-technical fields, | never really use their degree. Even my wife who has an | engineering degree has spent more than two decades | working and not a single day in a job that directly | relates to her field of study. | | Sure, she would have never gotten those jobs with an | English degree but stressing over whether to study the | exactly "correct" degree for your career goals isn't | necessarily worth the calories. | reidjs wrote: | I think they realized they weren't going to make as much | money, but I don't think they realized they would be poor. | Poor people generally have less privacy, less dignity, and | a harder life. So, maybe they are frustrated there weren't | enough safeguards to prevent them from making a decision | that lead to them becoming poor. | Xeronate wrote: | People didn't realize they would be poor if they were a | barista their entire life? | vsareto wrote: | If you had bad grades or your parents thought you didn't | have a lot of potential, you probably got the "any degree | would do" talk over "go into this hard STEM degree" | threetonesun wrote: | As someone who went to school for English in 2000, I can | say that while those jokes existed the context here is | misunderstood, they were told by business majors about the | liberal arts, or anything academic. Heck in 2000 a CS | degree wasn't positioned as that much more valuable than an | English degree, and if you looked at the preceding decade | you'd see that was statistically true. | | The change for the current generation is that for everyone | graduating in underwater basketweaving in say 2000, many | would find unrelated careers and, because they had a | college degree, do fine. With rising college costs and more | expectations that workers in high paying fields have | specific degrees, that's no longer true. | throwaway675309 wrote: | What? I'm not sure where you pulled this concept of that | English vs computer science were in anyway comparable in | terms of overall pay even in the early 2000s but you | might want to cite your sources. | | I went to school in 2001 and computer science was one of | the hottest fields around by that time, significantly | more so than a BA in English. The Georgia institute of | technology (Gatech), my alma mater, had a highly | competitive computer science career path. | | In fact the general advice was that if you really wanted | to major in English that it was better to pursue a degree | in an adjacent field such as communications so you could | more easily transition into journalism, etc. | | STEM (doctors, scientists, engineers, etc.) has almost | always been a safer career path than liberal arts, | assuming you're cut out for it. | michaelt wrote: | _> Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of "go to | college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is alien | to me._ | | I certainly knew people in ~2000 who were going to college | to study things like psychology, who felt the abstract | skills of 'learning to learn', writing, reasoning with a | bit of statistics and spreadsheet operation would help them | get jobs like marketing, sales, analysts, strategic | consulting, HR etc. | | I suspect if you got your degree in psychology from | Harvard, that might be true - but if your degree is from a | mediocre university, probably not. | Avshalom wrote: | >> Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries | | Sure but that never stopped anyone from pulling out BLS | statistics showing life-time earning potential of an BA in | english vs a highschool diploma. | | But the point of bringing up "any degree" isn't that any | student thought (or any guidance counselor said) that | underwater basket weaving and electrical engineering had | the same potential it's that we were told to go to college | even if we had no idea what we wanted to do with our lives. | A degree was the important thing even if it was in | something that we didn't want, even if we didn't want a | degree at all. | XorNot wrote: | On an adjacent note, I'm really tired of the "underwater | basket weaving" short hand being used. There's either a | real degree you think is useless (which the above thread | notes doesn't look nearly so useless by statistics) or | there's not. | | There's a fairly long history of people inventing what | they think is taught at colleges as a straw man to then | criticize them in some way and it doesn't contribute to | anything for the usual reasons a fallacy doesn't. | ryandrake wrote: | Same. Early '90s. Nobody was telling us "any degree will | do". They were saying "You should go to college, _and if | you do_ , major in computer science, engineering, pre-med, | biotech, (sometimes) business, and so on." I remember that | as a pretty consistent message during high school career | guidance talks and through freshman and sophomore years in | college. | freedomben wrote: | I'm a bit older, but my whole life teachers pounded into | our heads "go to college" and get any degree. My dad was | denied a management position purely because he had no | degree (any degree at all would have been enough and he | would have got it), so what they said wasn't necessarily | wrong, but it was reckless and has led to a lot of | hindered lives. I was sorely disappointed when I | graduated with my marketing degree and it didn't matter | to anybody. I went back and got a CS degree, so I'm ok | now, but I did miss the first few years of my kids' lives | working full time to support them and also doing a CS | degree in evenings and weekends for 4 years. It would | have been much better to have just done the CS degree. I | am a little bitter. | welshwelsh wrote: | >since so many people had it it wasn't a status symbol | anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good middle class job | | This makes it sound like a degree is worth less today than it | was in the past, which is not true. The income and wealth gap | between college degree holders and non-degree holders is | higher than at any point in history, and it grows bigger very | year. | | Most degrees have an unemployment rate of about 5-6%. That's | not bad, but it does mean that there are over 2 million | college-educated Americans who got degrees and can't find | jobs. This minority is much more visible today; they get lots | of press coverage and talk about their struggles through | social media. This makes it _seem_ like things are getting | worse, just like how people tend to think that crime is | getting worse, but the reality is things are getting better | and college becomes a better deal every year. | | >Then we were told what we really need is nurses. So folks | went to nursing school in droves. | | And generally this paid off, since nurses are in demand and | make well above the median salary. | | >Then we were told to go into STEM. | | Which is decent advice, with a caveat. Most people with STEM | degrees could easily pivot into something highly profitable | like software development. What people weren't told is that | it's difficult to land a profitable role doing research/pure | science, especially if you don't have a PhD. | | >And then a bunch of people were told they shouldn't have | gotten those degrees and they were worthless. | | Which is mostly incorrect. Even folks majoring in stuff often | touted as "worthless" like art history or gender studies | still tend to do better than people without degrees. The | catch is that you might end up working a business analyst or | a project manager instead of an Egyptologist or whatever you | actually majored in. The biggest offender here is Psychology: | many new graduates are shocked to discover that no, you | cannot actually become a psychologist with just a Bachelor's | degree in Psychology, nor are there profitable research | opportunities at that level. A psychology degree still looks | great on a resume if you're applying to be an HR | representative or something, though. | cutenewt wrote: | It wouldn't surprise me if the gap begins to reverse. | | The earlier comment about competent plumbers making more | than doctors in Slovenia; I can believe that. | | It's the white collar compensation inversion. | XorNot wrote: | > it's difficult to land a profitable role doing | research/pure science, especially if you don't have a PhD | | Honestly I'd modify this to say that unless your Ph. D is | in physics, mathematics (and you're willing to go into | finance) or data science... you're not going to be that | much better off. | | And the time you spend out of industry you'll never make | back. Take a CS degree, go work for any of the big ones and | get "senior" next to your name as soon as possible. | [deleted] | MisterBastahrd wrote: | I guess being a poor kid who went to college in the 90s and | chose his major before he had the internet had its perks. | | I never considered studying the things that actually interested | me because I knew they were going to end up in dead end | careers, and I didn't want to be broke my entire life. It's the | same reason I didn't go to the top schools that accepted me. | Hell, I didn't even go to the top schools that offered me | scholarships because I was afraid of the cost. It's also why I | ignore the pleas of people who came from substantially better | backgrounds during the internet era and claim that they | couldn't have known better and deserve debt forgiveness. | | They SHOULD have known better. They had every resource to know | better. | Avshalom wrote: | I think you (and sibling mfer) are commenting on "any degree" | instead of my point that "maybe people don't go into the | trades because they spend ~18 emotionally formative years of | their lives being told to go to college" vs the idea "maybe | people don't go into the trades due to wages offered" (which, | mind you, I don't mean to discount). | MisterBastahrd wrote: | The wages are going to have to necessarily increase, | though. Look at how home prices are increasing. Homeowner | insurance rates increase respectively, and deductibles | increase as well. Intelligent tradesmen are going to keep | track of this and price their services accordingly, | especially when it comes to maintenance contracts. | | I also think there's a stigma associated with the trades | which doesn't necessarily permeate mixed middle class | neighborhoods. I grew up in a situation where the majority | of adults in my hometown did not have college degrees. | Thus, college degrees became things to aspire to instead of | things we MUST have. Plenty of my classmates then, and | plenty of kids graduating now, are not going to college. | For some, they've been told by their folks that they can | stay at home and save up their money for the 4 years after | getting out of trade school to put a down payment towards a | house. Granted, the culture I'm from doesn't negatively | view 20-something men hanging out on a porch with beers | after dark. Cheaper than the bars, after all. | sngz wrote: | > "We have to recruit people to do these things or else our | bridges are going to fall apart," Iversen said. | | already happening and has not much to do with labor shortage. | jaredandrews wrote: | Any former software developers here who transitioned to | plumbing/electrician/etc? If so, what did the steps look like? | convolvatron wrote: | welder. learn to weld. take a community college class to get | certified. somewhere in there get a job at an abusive shop | making $30 migging tube fences and grinding all day. try to | find any lifeline to a higher paying less brutal work | environment hopefully without assholes constantly doing hinky | shit for a laugh | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Yes, at least do it once. Classes are very cheap! $500 for | about 30h with a welding instructor pays for itself in fun | alone. | badpun wrote: | Isn't welding especially nasty? You're essentially breathing | toxic gases and dust all day long. | Mikeb85 wrote: | Trades pay shit. I have friends that are electricians and they | made more a decade ago than the current journeyman rate. | Nevermind inflation, we're talking only nominal pay. | akgoel wrote: | I'm in Houston. A "manual" machinist (non-CNC) working in my | factory in 1980 could make $25 per hour. In 2020, I was still | paying the same machinist $25 an hour nominally, except now he | operates a CNC machinist and is vastly more productive. | However, his productivity gains have been competed away both | domestically and by oversees manufacturing, and via boom and | bust cycles in the oil patch that reset wages. | bluedino wrote: | My plumber and electrician bill the same rate that I do. | Mikeb85 wrote: | Yes, the way to make money is to own a business. | | Doesn't change the fact that the pay rates haven't changed in | 15 years for those who are getting into the career and will | have to work for others to learn. | mywittyname wrote: | My dad is a licensed electrician and sewage treatment plant | operator. I made more money than he did by the age of 19 with a | semester of community college under by belt. He owns a 1/4 | share in a business and I'm far from working in a FAANG | (meaning, he's near the top of his game and I'm close to middle | of mine). | | In 2009-10, he had no work. I don't think people realize how | hard recessions hit trades. You don't become "unemployed." You | have to go to work then stand around half the day not getting | paid until enough people stop showing up that there's enough | work. All of my friends working in trades from when I was | younger switched careers in the Great Recession (the military | was a decent option, since they'd fast-track skilled people to | E-5). | | This is the real reason why millennials are under-represented | in the trades. The media prefers to just call us lazy. | __derek__ wrote: | That "Handshake" platform went from 10 applications per role in | 2020 to 5 applications per role in 2022, but _the number of roles | increased_. Based on the stats provided, this article just seems | like another lamentation that labor has made gains. | | It's also not clear that this platform is representative of the | market. I've never heard of it before, but it bills itself as | "The #1 way college students get hired" which seems questionable. | rednerrus wrote: | It is disheartening to see a recurring theme of individuals | expressing frustration over their inability to afford a home or | advance in society, yet also expressing reluctance to engage in | activities that could potentially bring financial stability. Our | predecessors sacrificed their physical well-being in order to | construct and maintain the infrastructure and amenities that we | now benefit from. In order to maintain a functioning society, it | is necessary for individuals to contribute their skills and labor | to the greater good. Whether it be through manual labor or desk | work, every individual is essentially selling their time, effort, | and health to their employer. While it may not be the most | desirable circumstance, it is a necessary component of societal | functioning. | incone123 wrote: | "every individual" ha ha hah ha | beyond_based wrote: | I'm going to be deadass with you brother. We don't have a | functioning society, we have an immigration labor camp. | rednerrus wrote: | I'm interested in what types of media you consume that's | helped to shape your worldview. The idea that living in an | industrialized nation in 2023 isn't living in a functional | society, seems very foreign to me. Which nation and which | time period would you choose to live in over an | industrialized nation in 2023? | gradys wrote: | People not wanting to work is not the main reason we're seeing | more people find housing unaffordable. It's the extreme rise in | price of housing relative to income. | | I make dramatically more than my parents did when they were | buying their first house around my age, but as a fraction of my | income and savings, housing costs vastly more. | | (It's also not clear that the skilled trades jobs Gen Z | apparently doesn't want actually pay more than the | alternatives. See other comments on this post.) | Euphorbium wrote: | What America needs is to serve 20 people at the top. How many | plubers or carpenters do they need? Probably 1. Everyone else | better be dancing monkeys on tiktok. | digianarchist wrote: | I remember back when I was 17 back in 2004 I applied for an | apprenticeship to work at Jaguar-Land Rover as an Electrical | Engineering Technician. I turned up to the interview to be told | that there were 2 welding apprenticeships left and those would be | filled from the 150+ candidates that turned up. | | Without an apprenticeship you couldn't study a trade at college. | You couldn't get an apprenticeship unless you knew someone that | worked at the company or were highly qualified; enough to get | into university. That's what I ended up doing. Studying CS. | | Even if you were lucky enough to get one, they could legally pay | you far less than the National Min Wage which wasn't enough to | live for most people and is still the case today [0]. | | [0] - https://www.acas.org.uk/national-minimum-wage-entitlement | j-krieger wrote: | The latter is the exact problem in Germany as well. You work | full time in your apprenticeship, sometimes earning less than | 700EUR a month. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | The process operator positions at the local refineries back | home are all filled through nepotism. You either had to know | someone or your father had to be an operator in order to even | get an interview: hundreds of people would show up for the exam | and the ones who actually got positions were not the brightest | people showing up. They just happened to have dads and uncles | who worked there. | | The fun thing is that my dad got the job at the plant he worked | for because of my grandfather and older brother. During a tech | downturn, I applied for a few of these jobs. My dad refused to | vouch for me, claiming that he didn't want to continue the | cycle of nepotism. Sure didn't hate to earn huge bonuses from | that cycle, though. | polskibus wrote: | People now read that not only do the software engineers earn a | lot but they also get to work remotely. This is most likely what | influenced the change in 2020-2022 years - everyone else is | jealous and would prefer a job that allows for remote work. | tpmx wrote: | I do remote software work from a very picturesque but somewhat | remote coastal village in Sweden that has been largely left | behind by urbanisation. | | My impression is that there's no reluctance to go into these | lines of work for young local people here. I imagine it would be | the same in the US. | | In the cities where there are more office work opportunities for | young people, even without any qualifications to speak of: it | seems like there are a lot of people from eastern Europe working | in these fields. | sct202 wrote: | It is the same in the US, but there aren't always opportunities | to learn the trades everywhere. I was friends with a welder who | learned welding from the garage of an old dude who ran it as an | informal school in her town. If she was few towns over, she | might have missed out on that career option. | | Even in this thread there are people contemplating switching to | trades and asking how to even start. | tpmx wrote: | Taking on an unknown, quite likely flakey person could be the | death knell for a small company in these fields. You vouched | for this person and it worked. | | The often attempted solution in Europe is commonly funded | training in these fields. Germany does it the best, I think | with a very formalized education/trainee system. Not sure | how/if they deal with older people who need a new job. | dieselgate wrote: | From my impression and exposure to construction it seems the | wood construction techniques are different in Europe (to speak | broadly) than in the US. Without getting into details it seems | European (and also Aussie) carpenters (and "tradies" to also | speak broadly) are paid more than their US counterparts. Have | also heard a lot of the "best" carpenters and builders in the | States are from Europe - this may be slightly outdated info (a | few decades) - I had thought this being due to the more "timber | frame" -type construction styles in Europe. | waynesonfire wrote: | > Justin Mwandjalulu, 20,earns nearly $24 an hour as a carpentry | apprentice in Iowa. | | .. and folks, the mystery of dropping application rates has been | solved. | tsss wrote: | In contrast to most people here, I have actually worked outside | of an office chair, for a short period of time, in a factory and | also do woodworking as a hobby. The reason fewer people want to | learn the trades is because it sucks. It's usually too hot or too | cold, dirty (not just oil, I'm talking about spiders and bugs, | nasty customer's homes and so on), loud and dusty, it's hard on | your body (try standing for 8h straight without moving or holding | a vibrating tool for hours), it's less intellectually stimulating | than STEM office jobs and the low barrier of entry, combined with | a much lower margin than software makes for low wages. | | I'm happy with my home office programming jobs, even though it is | pointless and unfulfilling. | | The US and European economies are increasingly becoming service | economies and the middle class is eroded. People nowadays are too | poor to pay for skilled domestic labor, only cheaply produced | trinkets from overseas are still affordable. I think the only | time, if ever, that production and building will become popular | again is when China will finally cut us off und people realize | that you can't eat software, metaphorically speaking. | trynewideas wrote: | The article, maybe unintentionally, frames this in an interesting | way by starting with a first-generation 20-year-old immigrant. | | In the US, you're in "Gen Z" whether you're a 20-year-old first- | generation immigrant, like the carpenter in the lede, or a | 20-year-old 10th-generation American. | | But immigration's changed dramatically over the last 20 years. | Before the pandemic, the number of immigrants has increased, but | the age, class, and education levels of those immigrants have | also. Asia overtook Hispanic regions as a source of immigrants in | 2009; more than half of 2018 immigrants from Asia had a | bachelor's degree or better, compared to more than half of 2018 | immigrants from Mexico not completing high school. The proportion | of undocumented immigrants has also dropped, while non-criminal | deportations have increased.[1] | | This largely translated to a relative decline of younger, less- | educated, poorer immigrants for whom the trades are the most | accessible means of financial security, and a shift toward most | total US immigrants (51%) having already lived in the US for more | than 20 years. There's also a much larger proportion of recent | immigrants age 25+ with at least a bachelor's degree (more than | 45% from 2014-2019, vs. less than 35% for both US- and foreign- | born immigrants prior to 2014). And when counting both immigrants | and their children -- whether immigrants or US-born -- the | population _dropped_ by nearly 1 million between 2020 and | 2021.[2] | | Which leads to the pandemic: net immigration, across the board, | cratered so hard in 2020 and 2021 that there were fewer _total_ | foreign-born immigrants in 2021 than there were immigrant visas | -- not work visas, not student visas, but just permanent resident | visas -- in 2016.[3] | | The easy framing is to pin it on "Gen Z", but the missing context | that the lede just hints at changes the story dramatically. | | 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key- | finding... | | 2: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently- | requested... | | 3: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/net- | internati... | aliqot wrote: | An uncomfortable truth is that you can have open borders or high | unskilled labor wages, but seldom both. | asdff wrote: | You need open borders to have a labor market at all. Analysis | suggest that the labor shortages today are really from the | pandemic reducing immigration these past few years, affecting | the entire job market from the ground up. | sojournerc wrote: | 1) Carpenters and Plumbers (electricians, mechanics, etc) are | _not_ unskilled. There's a reason these trades have | apprenticeships - there's _a lot_ to know and learn before | you're capable on your own. | | 2) A path for immigrants to legally work in those fields would | likely push down wages, but it would also reduce the cost of | those services! Housing could become cheaper, so could the | ongoing cost of owning a home. That could potentially reach a | nice equilibrium. | jterrys wrote: | Hello, child of construction worker here! | | >Carpenters and Plumbers (electricians, mechanics, etc) are | _not_ unskilled | | Is a load of shit. At least in the USA, you can have one | person (typically business owner) get licensed in the trade | and then lease out that license for his unskilled immigrant | labor force. He can run his own business and his | "apprentices" are taught enough to do the work. This is the | vast majority of construction. You got union projects which | are a whole different ball game but union jobs do not | represent the vast majority of construction in the USA. | | >A path for immigrants to legally work in those fields would | likely push down wages, but it would also reduce the cost of | those services! | | It doesn't reduce the cost of shit because real estate is a | racket. It's not a free market economy driven by community | college level econ courses. In any metropolitan downtown area | that you visit most of the buildings are owned by a handful | of firms. Real estate properties are increasingly managed by | (you guessed it) management firms that are part of publicly | traded corporations (REITs). These guys extend way beyond any | downtown area and are the majority of rented out properties | in cities and adjacent suburbs. | | Construction is a ghetto that is flooded by illegal immigrant | workers. Business owners are complicit in the practice of | hiring said workers to squeeze out margins. As long as | liability can be passed down to _someone_ holding some kind | of license, that 's all that matters. | | If you actually want to enter a successful trade in | construction become an elevator engineer. You are 100% union | and obscure and niche enough with significant safety risks | that nobody is able to undercut you because there's a LOT of | regulation in place to make sure people don't get stuck and | die in elevators. | seydor wrote: | A lot of this is due to the ancient nature of construction. Allow | experimentation with new materials. Allow robots, prefabs etc. I | m sure genz would love to program your 3d home printer or | assemble your ikea home. | | They are not lazy, but forward thinking. Who wants to become a | plumber when that job may be automated in 10 years | garciansmith wrote: | Plumbing strikes me as one of the very last manual jobs that | will be automated, if ever. Every plumbing issue, even the most | basic, is different due to the fittings and hardware being | used. | | For example, I've been putting off hiring a plumber to replace | the old drum trap behind my bathtub with a p-trap. I can't even | fathom how a robot would go about doing such a thing when a | plumber needs to sit there and think about how to do this: open | access, judge where the pipes are going (without even seeing | some of them), the amount of space, whether they'll need more | space and cut in from the ceiling below, etc. | tpmx wrote: | Because our current houses and fittings are largely ancient, | non-standard and ad-hoc. | maherbeg wrote: | I think there's the additional question of "how often should | we just replace a building"? I've unfortunately made the | realization after remodeling our 60 year old house that we | should have just torn the house down. | renox wrote: | That depends on the construction material used for the | house.. | dsfyu404ed wrote: | The result of tech in construction so far seems to point to a | future where there's gonna be a few high skill people | supervising a lot of people who passed a drug test and did | 8hr of training/on-boarding. | | Things are already steadily marching this way this way. Drop | $5k on tools and the dumbest rock in the pile can assemble | propress or pex fittings leak free every damn time. The | capital investment that the business owner makes pays for | itself in short order by taking cheaper labor as an input and | getting results you didn't used to be able to get with that | input. In the electrical world they are always coming out | with new fancy connectors and fixtures that you literally | can't screw up no matter how dumb you are. Internet comment | sections of non-electricians love these, electricians don't | like them as much because they often trade off flexibility | requiring more parts kept in stock though sometimes they make | up for it in speed of install. | frou_dh wrote: | 4D chess in lieu of 3D printing opportunities? | anonreeeeplor wrote: | I would love some of the journalists who write these article to | volunteer to take these jobs by quitting and becoming plumbers. | | Why don't they do it? Because sitting in a nice cozy chair and | having opinions backed by nothing is much higher social status. | | It's like this constant gas lighting from elite sources: | | "Hey can't buy a house? How about being knee deep in toilets all | day and having zero respect in society." | akira2501 wrote: | It's even worse.. they way they cast it, it's Gen Z that has | failed to "catch on." | | The government and our society has completely failed to | "incentivize it" even as it was obviously necessary to do so. | | Yet, "try telling that to Gen Z." Pfft.. "try telling that to | Congress." | bruceb wrote: | I look forward to NPR producers and reporters pushing their own | children in to this field. | Eumenes wrote: | They're too busy studying underwater basket weaving at Vassar, | Wesleyan, Sarah Lawrence, etc. | [deleted] | barbazoo wrote: | I might be misunderstanding what you're saying but are you | implying that journalists are somehow responsible for fixing | the issues they report on? | jaywalk wrote: | I don't think they're saying journalists are any more | responsible for it than anyone else. It's more like a "do as | I say, not as I do" situation. | | As in "I'm not going to guide _my_ children towards the | trades, but you definitely should. " | burkaman wrote: | I think they are imagining a world where journalism is as | well-paid and comfortable as the tech industry, and therefore | it's somehow hypocritical for journalists to cover less | comfortable industries. I don't really think it's worth | responding to to be honest. | seydor wrote: | that does not follow from the parent comment. it's more of | "they are making the problem worse" by (presumably) sending | their kids to liberal arts or theoretical studies | fleddr wrote: | If I had to do it all over again, I'd be a plumber. | | You're not stationary, you're on the move and your day has | variety. You spend a lot of time in the physical world and meet | lots of people. Your work might at times be smelly but is | rewarding in a very direct way. You helped solve a tangible | problem and your customers are grateful for it. The range of | problems to solve is large, and if you widen your skills, you can | grow into a generic handyman that can fix almost anything. Pay | should be decent enough and by mid career you might even take a | plunge at freelancing. | | Where I live, the expensive cars are driven by the skilled | trades, not by office clerks. But money isn't my main point, it's | physical and mental health, clear purpose, impactful and | rewarding work. | | Bonus: AI isn't coming for you anytime soon. | | Extra bonus: no office politics. | | Frankly, it's exactly what Gen Z needs. They're all so cynical | and divorced from the physical world and real people. Should they | go into an office job, nearly 100% of their life would be | digital, perpetuating and accelerating their issues. | | Digital sucks. It has no soul. Chose wisely. | [deleted] | ebiester wrote: | Fancy cars also have a function of status. I don't need to | prove my status, so I drive an inexpensive car. | | That said, my friends in the trades are regretting their | choices as they age and their physical ailments add up. I think | it's a solid option for the first 15-25 years as long as you | have an exit plan as your body ages. | | (Note: I want to speak that this is perceived status and this | has side effects. That I don't prove my status through a car or | that there is a perceived need of those in the skilled trades | to do so does not make a value judgement.) | tw98521358 wrote: | Yeah but could your body handle 30+ years as a plumber? It's | hard physically work, shit hours and uncompensated commutes. | You are literally covered in poop some days and working in the | wet/cold others. It's only a good gig once you own your own | firm | fleddr wrote: | There's huge differences in the individual trades and what it | means for your body. | | The vast majority of my friends are in the trades (I'm the | outlier with an office job) and over the course of 20 years, | many things have improved. Better tools, machines to do the | very hard parts, etc. Some trades aren't super physically | taxing, whilst other are, like plasterers. | | So the comparison is complicated, and you'll also have to | take into account the physical and mental wear of an office | job. | slillibri wrote: | Sure, but the downside is sometimes having to literally deal | with other people's shit. | asdff wrote: | From experience doing other smelly jobs, if you shove a bunch | of vicks vapor rub all over your nostrils and wear a mask you | are immune. | potta_coffee wrote: | Trades are brutal on the body and don't pay very well. Few people | with viable alternatives would choose such work. | tamaharbor wrote: | A high school friend became a plumber for the City of New York. | Retired at 45 with 1-1/2x pension. I believe it's about $150k a | year. | lemoncookiechip wrote: | It's almost as if people are less willing to work jobs that | actively harm their long-term physical health (back-breaking | jobs) or those harmful for their mental health (generally ones | face to face with customers, customer support or high stress | jobs), for a relatively small wage to said job's demands and | lasting effects. | Eumenes wrote: | Staring at a computer screen all day, interacting with people | exclusively on video chat is good for mental and physical | health? Plumbers and carpenters can earn a high wage, with no | college debt, and often get a union job. Some of my best | friends from high school went into the trades, and owned a nice | home before most of our high school class was graduating from | college. | moe091 wrote: | If it's such a good deal they should have no problem finding | plenty of employees for those jobs. If Gen Z is opposed to | those kind of working conditions for some reason, then it's | just a matter of supply and demand - like how trash | collectors get paid a lot for a relatively low-skilled labor | job, because not many people want to deal with trash all day. | Whether we share the same aversion Gen Z does for certain | types of jobs is irrelevant, nobody gets to be the arbiter of | what peoples preferences are | asdff wrote: | Trash collecting is a much more a cushy job in most cities | these days. In mine they don't ever leave the truck. One | guy drives, the other operates the hydraulic arm. If a | piece of trash isn't in the bin or the bin is not grababble | by the arm, they just drive away. A different team handles | bulky items that are to be called in by the resident. | Benefits include an actual pension. | altairprime wrote: | > _for a relatively small wage_ | | This was found specifically to be the case for American men in | a Boston Fed study last month: as the wage paid for trade-skill | jobs shrinks over time _relative to_ the wages paid to school- | degree jobs, men increasingly refuse to work trade-skill jobs. | | > _The evidence from this study shows that the widening | earnings gap between highly and less skilled workers over the | last four decades is closely connected with the decreasing | labor supply of prime-age men_ | | > _The decline in relative earnings is associated with a 0.49 | percentage point increase in the exit rate, accounting for 44 | percent of the total growth in the exit rate among non-college | men over the 1980-2019 period._ | | https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-w... | | Caveats. There are almost certainly further coincident reasons | for the decrease in "blue collar" trade-skills workforce, both | for men and for all genders; this particularly study should not | be considered an exclusive factor, merely a relevant one. | Please consider the constraints documented at that link before | overextrapolating; for example, "non-Hispanic" which rules out | biological causes, and so on. | modoc wrote: | Where are you finding small wage plumbers or carpenters? All | the trades here (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, carpentry (perhaps | more on the finish side vs framing though) are extremely | expensive, with hourly rates between $80-$150/hour. (source - | did a lot of renovations on my house, and my BIL is an | electrician). | berkle4455 wrote: | Wages of an employee versus hourly labor rates a customer | pays are vastly different things. | UncleMeat wrote: | The laborer isn't seeing 100% of that bill. | nibbleshifter wrote: | Lol, the tradesman isn't taking that home. | | Neither is the apprentice that probably is doing half the | work. | peruvian wrote: | It's insane how uninformed all the "tell your kids to get | into the trades!" techies are. | orwin wrote: | I mean, carpentry is really cheap here and not at all | comparable to the other trades, and i know it's worse in the | US. | Adraghast wrote: | The median annual wage for electricians was $60,040 in May | 2021. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers | in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned | less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $37,020, and the | highest 10 percent earned more than $99,800. | newaccount2021 wrote: | [dead] | Ekaros wrote: | And how many billable hours there are on average in a month? | Does the rate include tools or some of the materials? | gedy wrote: | Everything would be fine in these industries if rent and homes | were cheaper. | | Instead people think they have to make top dollar just to survive | and avoid lots of otherwise fulfilling jobs. | dieselgate wrote: | Yeah it's weird right, how can we make homes and rent cheaper | without more supply of homes? | seydor wrote: | i think that , if land and materials were cheap, genz or genX | or any gen would learn to build their own homes. We ve | actually been doing that for thousands of years | nibbleshifter wrote: | Its not just a land/materials problem, its a zoning/permits | issue in many places. | gedy wrote: | Agreed, the amount of free info available on building a | safe, efficient home is great, as well as easy access to | modern materials. | dieselgate wrote: | yeah it's not that technically difficult to build a home, | all things considered. there are a lot of other things | involved for sure | asdff wrote: | We build houses differently now than years ago. 100 years | ago, sure, you can totally make your own house because that | used balloon framing. Today, with all the safety features | built into a modern house, its a lot harder to take a few | unskilled people and raise something up without it being a | fire hazard. | r00fus wrote: | If you have speculators (foreign/corporate) buying all the | new supply then does that really help in the long run? We | have more vacant homes than we have homeless, for example. | | What would help is restricting foreign speculation and | appropriately taxing corporate ownership of homes. A good | example is what's going on in Canada [1] & Vancouver [2]. | | It's not like other countries haven't made meaningful | attempts to address their population from buying homes. It's | just that the US doesn't want to do it because the elite who | own & constitute the political spectrum think it's bad for | their bottom line and don't care if it's destabilizing the | rest of society. | | [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/01/business/canada-bans-home- | pur... | | [2] https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty- | homes-t... | FooBarBizBazz wrote: | What if we convince them (and I think this is true) that | this will make the stock market go up? A lot of real estate | in "developed" countries is bought up due to capital flight | to relative stability. If that weren't an option, the money | would go into U.S. equities instead. | runesofdoom wrote: | Stop treating them as sources if profit for investors? | asdff wrote: | They only are a source of profit because they are made | artificially scarce through restrictive zoning. | [deleted] | adamsmith143 wrote: | Well for all the broohaha from the "YOU DONT NEED COLLEGE" folks | the reality is still that trades are very underpaid unless you | run your own business and your body will break down doing | physical labor for 8+ hours a day. | tpmx wrote: | In e.g. Scandinavia: | | The salary difference between say a software dev and a trade | worker is pretty small (perhaps 30% less after taxes). | | The body breaking down aspect is still an issue. Younger people | in these fields seem a lot more aware though - they're | practically health freaks compared to your stereotypical 50-ish | somewhat round trade worker with back pain issues. | | I guess we'll have to wait and see how that generation fares | with 4.5 decades of phyical work. Japan is probabably the place | look at for research. | Ekaros wrote: | 30% is few hundred to thousand euros. That is not actually | trivial change in income. Specially considering what you have | leftover paying for housing, transport and food. | Ancalagon wrote: | 30% is the difference between $100k and $70k. | | That's a lot of money... | adamsmith143 wrote: | Well relatively speaking your lifestyle isn't likely going | to change dramatically between those two incomes. In the US | the difference is several hundred percent. | nibbleshifter wrote: | The difference in lifestyle between those two incomes is | pretty decent. | tpmx wrote: | Do you think everyone should be paid the same | irregardless of the value of their labor/output? | tw98521358 wrote: | It's basically double discretionary spending | tpmx wrote: | Again, it's 30%. It's a _very_ small difference compared to | e.g. the US norm. I actually think it 's too small, but | perhaps that's just me. | Ancalagon wrote: | Same labor shortage as everywhere that the government likes to | pretend doesn't exist. 10 million working-age men can't or won't | work. Of the ones willing to work, almost none want to spend | their time learning skills for back-breaking, barely-middle class | skills jobs which they'll be forced to retire from at 55 because | their knees give out. | | Same answer for the shortage as everywhere that the economists | don't want to hear: pay more, allow more immigration, get better | benefits especially for parents. | | Edit: also in this case universal healthcare, universal mandatory | PTO, would also extremely help | tgv wrote: | > universal healthcare, universal mandatory PTO | | I'm all in favor, but that exists elsewhere, and there's a | labor shortage too. | bruceb wrote: | Pay more yet also increase the supply of labor which drives | down wages. | | Seems not the answer. | onion2k wrote: | Sometimes Econ101 supply and demand theory isn't nuanced | enough. Wages can go up at the same time as the supply | increases if the amount of money in the system also | increases. How do you think software engineer wages rocketed | up over the past 20 years? | bruceb wrote: | Apples and oranges. One assumes there is a relatively fixed | supply of plumbing problems. Software in the last 30+ years | has created new industries which require more software | people. | HDThoreaun wrote: | House sizes have doubled over the last 50 years. I would | not assume a fixed supply of plumbing problems. | falcolas wrote: | > One assumes there is a relatively fixed supply of | plumbing problems. | | The volume of plumbing problems is going to increase at | least linearly with the housing supply, which | (theoretically) increases more-or-less linearly with | population. Plus, people move around, so there will be | concentrations of problems, and those concentrations will | move with the population. | | That doesn't account for how technology and building | codes and material changes have made previously simple | plumbing problems more complex over time. | stcroixx wrote: | Outside of FAANG outliers and SV, have software engineer | wages really rocketed up? I've worked outside the FAANG | world at companies of various sizes and industries for 25 | years and haven't seen it. If anything, I'd say wage growth | has been kept artificially low by H1B competition from | folks born in low cost of living countries under threat of | deportation if they object to the abuse they receive. The | average corporate IT dept. looks more like a sweatshop now | than it did 20 years ago, the ones I've seen anyway. | jjk166 wrote: | I'm in Philadelphia, software jobs around here pay about | 2-3 times what other engineering disciplines pay for the | same level of experience. | brewdad wrote: | How quickly do you hit the salary ceiling though? That's | what I've seen. Software devs make a lot more than other | engineers when starting out. By 7-10 years of experience, | the gap is much, much narrower. | throwaway5947 wrote: | You could just do what happens everywhere else, price fixing. | (I mean everywhere else as in the real world, not the soft | interior of an "economics" textbook). | draw_down wrote: | [dead] | oceanplexian wrote: | Fitting pipes together is not "back breaking". We're not | talking about framing or roofing, in the contracting world | plumbing is a light duty skilled trade that anyone with half a | brain can earn a 6-figure income on. If you take care of | yourself and wear protective equipment, you won't have a | problem with your knees in middle age. There's no "forced | retirement", someone working as an independent contractor for | 25 years is likely more wealthy than the average software | engineer in most LCOL or MCOL parts of the country. | | The problem isn't "lack of immigrants". The problem is that | when surveyed, 25% of Gen-Z said they plan to pursue a career | as "influencers". My opinion is that younger generations have | been brought up in a world where they don't need to take | personal responsibility or ever get their hands dirty. | asdff wrote: | I'd be curious what your generation said they'd want to be | when surveyed. I'm sure during the height of beatlemania, | many people wanted to be a rockstar too. | bryanlarsen wrote: | The median income for a plumber is $50k, only 10% make above | $91k. https://insights.workwave.com/industry/plumbing- | electrical/p... | | 6-figure incomes for plumbers are rare. | megaman821 wrote: | Where is all the money people paying tradespeople going? If | I need any plumbing work done it costs me $200 an hour or | more. Even with overhead and expenses, 10 hours a week gets | you more than $50k a year. Twenty years ago my grandfather | was a marine plumber and made $200k a year. How many | apprentices and part-time plumber are in these datasets? | falcolas wrote: | Same places it always has? Insurance, materials, taxes, | wages, profits. | joecot wrote: | If retail stores are making record breaking profits, why | are service workers paid so little? If medical costs are | so high, why aren't nurses and nurse aids making more? | | It's not rocket science. People aren't getting paid for | the value of their labor, and productivity has rocketed | up while wages have stagnated for decades. Your plumber | charges 200 an hour and doesn't make anywhere near that | much, because they work for a company who profits | massively off their labor and exploits him as far as the | law and supply and demand will allow. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _plumber charges 200 an hour and doesn 't make anywhere | near that much, because they work for a company who | profits massively off their labor and exploits him as far | as the law and supply and demand will allow_ | | Do most plumbers responding to house calls work for an | employer? There aren't many economies of scale in that | work. | joecot wrote: | Being a plumber who works for a company means you are | given tasks and show up at those assignments. You need to | know how to plumb. | | Being an independent plumber means handling: marketing, | networking, customer service, etc, plus plumbing. Like | any other freelance position it's not easy to break in | and get enough work to live. And we're not in the days of | people just opening the Yellow Pages and calling a random | plumber. Now it's a labyrinth of competing search engine | results, yelp reviews, HomeAdvisor references, etc. | | Some people will take the time to find an independent | plumber. Most people call RotoRooter or whatever company | has advertised the most in their area. The plumbers, | electricians, handymen I call are all independent, but | they're also old, at the end of their careers, having a | set of regulars they could take with them going | independent, and having saved a bunch of money because | they _were_ getting paid fair wages in their prime. There | are economies of scale in the skilled trades, they 're | just not the trades themselves. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Agree that it isn't easy going independent as a plumber. | But it's easier than in, say, construction. That leaves | room for trade-offs between ambition and risk on one hand | and a safe, secure job on the other hand. | ajmurmann wrote: | Sounds like more reason the call by many here to stop | complaining and pay more seems spot on. | pnutjam wrote: | Tools, trucks, downtime, insurance, etc... All expenses I | don't have as a corporate linux guy. | pcthrowaway wrote: | If you're in Oregon or California, it looks like the | wages there are much higher. | | Also, you're probably paying the company which manages | the plumbers, of which the plumbers don't directly earn | that. | | If you're hiring a plumber directly, I'd assume it's a | more experienced one running their own business. In | addition to charging you $200/hr for the work, they're | probably doing their accounting and business management, | billing, ordering parts and equipment, replacing tools, | and communicating with clients. | | I could see that only resulting in 10-20 billable hours | per week. | | Also, if many of their jobs are paid in cash, it's | possible there's a significant amount that is unreported | to the agencies generating these statistics. | MrFantastic wrote: | You pay $200/hr for the work you see onsite. What you | don't see is overhead, drive time to site and back to HQ | and because plumbers aren't guaranteed to work 40 hours a | week. | | If there is no work, the plumbers don't get paid. | pcthrowaway wrote: | According to that site, the average in California and | Oregon is 6 figures for 7+ years of experience, so perhaps | not that dismal for HCOL | [deleted] | cudgy wrote: | Try crawling around in a 2 foot high crawl space amongst | spiders and snakes while ripping out old, stinky, dripping | plumbing with a sabre saw or arc welder and tell yourself it | is not "back breaking" or dangerous. | MrFantastic wrote: | Pipe fitters tend to have really strong hands because the | pipes are heavy and awkward. | | Working with awkward heavy things tends to wear out your | joints | jethro_tell wrote: | There was no one with dreams of being a rockstar or actor | before influencers. There have always been a good chunk of | kids that want to do as little as possible and then they tend | to figure something out or wash out. This isn't new or news. | dimator wrote: | Older generation complains about newer generation's work | ethic and goals, news at 11. | | Seriously, this has been done since forever, and it's such a | tired trope. | | And why the hell shouldn't they want to be influencers? | They're responding to the world they've been handed. Why is | that different than "I want to be an NBA player", or rock and | roll singer before that, or baseball player before that? | | Gen Z will be just fine, even if Gen X doesn't understand | how. | sometimeshuman wrote: | This is the first comment I have read where "Gen X" is | dragged into the generational culture war. The generic | brand of that generation made me think it would fly under | the radar and we'd break this tired pattern. | pleb_nz wrote: | Generations isnt even real. People change year on year | little by little not once in 20 years. It's a gradual shift | not some shift that happens new years eve one year. | prottog wrote: | The pace of change quickens due to technology enabling | our interconnected world today. | unethical_ban wrote: | I see this line about kids wanting to be influencers. Is | there a credible source? And is this any different than them | wanting to be a rock star, movie star, etc.? Most who have | this hairbrained dream can fail quickly and hopefully with | minimal cost or embarrassment and move on with their lives. | nullsense wrote: | My 7 year old routinely tells me he is going to be a | YouTuber. I routinely remind him about power law | distributions. So far he has made 2 YouTube channels with a | handful of videos each and even less subscribers. I can't | recall if it was for his 6th or 7th birthday but he had | been talking a lot about wanting his own "merch", so I | asked him what kind of design would he put on his "merch" | and he told me what he wanted. I whipped one up on a | t-shirt making site and got it for him for his birthday. He | still wears it and still refers to it as his "merch". | | I think it's mostly harmless and of course most kids will | grow out of it. It's definitely like wanting to be a | rockstar, but I think the scale is larger and the barrier | to entry so much lower that they seem much more convinced | it's actually a viable option than what I thought being a | rockstar was when I was a kid. | | My guess is for many of them it will be a second "wait, | Santa isn't real?" moment when they get a bit older and | realize that power law distributions are a thing and that's | just how it is. Followed by fun times reminiscing about it | with each other as adults. | giraffe_lady wrote: | Who do you think unloads the pipes from the truck, carries | them up the stairs or drags them into the crawlspaces on | their knees? I've never met a plumber over 50 who didn't have | chronic pain in their back, shoulders or knees. | | > My opinion is that younger generations have been brought up | in a world where they don't need to take personal | responsibility or ever get their hands dirty. | | An opinion as old as recorded history _at least_. It wasn 't | novel or insightful when Horace said it in 40BC and it isn't | now. | malandrew wrote: | I've done both kinds of work on my own home. Calling it back | breaking is pure hyperbole. Is it physical, certainly. But it's | something you can easily do until you're 50 without issue and | between 40 to 50, you can start taking apprentices that do the | taxes that benefit from youth. Of the plumbers and carpenters | I've hired, they are all in no worse shape than other adults | their age. | | I sit at a computer all day and it's not good for my body | either as I'm more sedentary than is healthy. I would say that | my work is equally unhealthy but in different ways. | Ancalagon wrote: | Doing one-off projects on your own home is not equivalent to | being a full time roofer or tile-layer, or even plumber or | auto tech where you are constantly working on your back, | hands, and knees. | | I have my own home too and the times I've done my own | plumbing work were hard. And that's one of the physically- | speaking easier jobs, never mind Roofing, I wouldn't last a | week. | eddsh1994 wrote: | My uncles a roofer and did it into his 40s but eventually | started his own company when he wanted to stop carrying | slate around on roofs in the miserable British winters. I | think that's the usual progression - you're not literally | laying tiles till you're 67. | Ancalagon wrote: | Is starting a roofing company a viable career path for | _every_ young roofer that wants to make roofing their | career? | | If not I think that still hits the "knees give out by 55" | issue. | eddsh1994 wrote: | No, but supervising/managing is pretty viable. Also these | aren't FTSE100 companies, these are small groups of like | 3/4 people who spin off and have a few commercial | clients. | mrcrumb1 wrote: | Relying on entrepreneurship for your livelihood and | retirement as you age sounds like it'll only work for a | select few | Ekaros wrote: | Unless there is massive population growth. Single older | person can employ only so many juniors. Or other older | people have to exit the market. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | It's like a MLM spread across generations of workers. You | recruit two workers and they recruit two workers each and | then they recruit two workers each.... You even get to be | your own {Personal Pronoun}Boss! | notch656c wrote: | If you spend 2/3 of your career as one of the 2 | underlings it's not MLM. Body is dunzo by say 50 for | trades, which means you get 30 years as a tradesman and | 15 years employing two tradesman. Retire at 65. | eddsh1994 wrote: | Or there's an increase in new buildings, or the number of | buildings needing repairs increase over time, etc... With | trades the number of self-employed or owners is quite | high - you can either do Job A by yourself for $X for | company Foo, or be self-employed and do Job A by yourself | for $X++. Same number of jobs exist, just less | monopolized by larger companies. I don't know _why_ , but | this is what I found in the south-west of England when I | lived there. I think the experienced people tend to start | those orgs to charge more then get older and need to hire | apprentices to do the work for them, and so the cycle | continues. | Adraghast wrote: | More than 10% of tradespeople are addicted to painkillers. I | suspect your weekend warrior projects do not qualify you to | understand why. | bavent wrote: | Working on something at your house is very different from | doing it day in and day out, year after year. I have worked | many manual labor jobs over the years and after just a few | years started having constant pain in my knees, feet, and | lower back. My father has been in a trade his entire life and | in his late 50s, he was already having many physical issues | from it. Not everyone can just take on an apprentice - | especially since this article is stating that nobody wants to | do these jobs. | mrcrumb1 wrote: | I grew up in a family of laborers and this feels very far | from my experience. Can you do this through your 50s? Yes, if | you avoid a major injury (your risk of this is high in these | jobs). Even if you do avoid injury, your ability to do the | jobs starts to rapidly decline because doing a job like this | day in and day out does take a toll on your body, even if a | single day of work isn't back breaking. | bubblematrix wrote: | Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn | $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal | healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with | this. | | Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the | weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber | skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever | benefit society. | teawrecks wrote: | What do independent plumbers have to do for healthcare for | them and their families? Is there a better option than COBRA? | I honestly don't know. | dangerwill wrote: | COBRA is for temporarily keeping employer provided | healthcare after leaving a company and is basically a non- | option except as a short term bridge to a new employer | provided plan. I believe independent workers generally go | to the health care exchanges and buy a private health care | plan. Rates vary wildly by state, coverage details, and | your age but I've recently looked in Washington state for | midrange (silver) plans and they are around ~$400 a month | (with no dependents). | r00fus wrote: | I know people who surfed the COBRA wave - ie, joined | full-time for a company for a month every year or two to | keep COBRA going and then going back to contract work in | the interim. | convolvatron wrote: | I just left FTE and took COBRA and they are giving me | 18mo! | r00fus wrote: | I mean Obamacare exchanges exist but (as the insurance | industry wants) it mostly sucks in terms of costs/coverage. | COBRA is still better because you get tied to your former | employer's risk pool even though you pay employer share of | healthcare costs. | lotsofpulp wrote: | You can buy the same health insurance on healthcare.gov | that businesses buy from the same insurance companies. | | They even have metal levels so you know you are getting | the same actuarial value. A silver BCBS plan from an | employer is basically the same coverage as a silver BCBS | plan from healthcare.gov. | ericbarrett wrote: | I had to dip into this for a few years. In the U.S., an ACA | ("Obamacare") plan is $500-$2000 a month, depending on the | state, with extra assistance for low incomes. There are | bronze, silver, and gold plans with higher tiers decreasing | copays and annual out-of-pocket maximums but significantly | bumping the monthly dues. Private insurance also exists but | almost universally has inferior terms (payout caps, gaps in | coverage, weasel wording, etc.). | | In my experience, for a typical ACA bronze plan, the annual | maximum out-of-pocket payout is roughly $20,000, and the | monthly dues are about $700, meaning worst case you're | looking at ~$30,000 out pocket for a year. Add about 50% if | you have children. Sadly, none of this is tax-deductible as | far as I can tell. | | Another issue with ACA marketplaces that I found was they | churn a lot; every year when you have to renew coverage you | can have an entirely different set of providers and plans. | The constant enrollment and transfer paperwork becomes non- | trivial, even without trying to qualify for an income-based | discount. | dml2135 wrote: | If you have a high-deductible health plan, generally you | can open an HSA account, which does allow for medical | expenses to effectively be tax-deductible. | | There are a bunch of restrictions and loopholes though. I | once opened an HSA and then actually had to close it | because it turned out my insurance plan had *too* high of | a deductible to be eligible, go figure. | lotsofpulp wrote: | >the annual maximum out-of-pocket payout is roughly | $20,000, | | https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket- | maximum-li... | | The annual max family out of pocket is legally capped at | $18,200, but most plans will be less than that. | | >Another issue with ACA marketplaces that I found was | they churn a lot; every year when you have to renew | coverage you can have an entirely different set of | providers and plans. | | This is not my experience, I have been able to purchase | the same BCBS health plan from the same insurer for many | years. | | In NJ, I would budget $30k per year for premiums for a | gold level plan for a family of 4, assuming you are not | getting any premium tax credits. Of course, out of pocket | maximum is up to another $18k. | | https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ih | cra... | | >Sadly, none of this is tax-deductible as far as I can | tell. | | It should be tax deductible if you are self employed: | | https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/self-employed- | heal... | | And if you are working for a small business that does not | offer a group health plan, you should be able to get | premiums reimbursed from employer with pre tax income: | | https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/qsehra/ | Eumenes wrote: | You can find a bronze plan on the healthcare market place | for < $300/month. I'm self employed, paying around that for | an HSA eligible plan, and haven't seen a doctor in 5+ year. | Mostly keep it for the HSA account/investing, or I'd forgo | it. If your spouse has a FT/W2 job, they'd likely get solid | health insurance to cover the family. | ericbarrett wrote: | This varies wildly by state. Where I live the cheapest | bronze plan in 2022 was $700/mo with no dependents. | lotsofpulp wrote: | It varies more by age. A bronze plan under $300 per month | is only possible for someone in their 20s. | | You can see premiums for 2023 for NJ here for all ages | and plans, and adjust up or down 20% for other states.: | | https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ih | cra... | | https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ih | cra... | Adraghast wrote: | The median annual wage for electricians was $60,040 in May | 2021. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers | in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned | less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $37,020, and the | highest 10 percent earned more than $99,800. | bluedino wrote: | Get a job with the local power company, or one of their | contractors. You will have to work in bad weather, after | storms, and travel a little bit. | | _The average salary for a journeyman lineman in Michigan | is $161,000 per year_ | stonogo wrote: | No it isn't. You cherry-picked that single report, which | was based on 76 turbotax returns. I suspect their data is | wrong or corrupted, because making $160k as a journeyman | lineman is only achievable with a decade experience and a | truckload of overtime. Look around a bit further, or talk | to actual linemen or unions, and you'll see the average | salary for a lineman is about a hundred thousand dollars | a year less than that. | | https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/journeym | an-... https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/DTE-Energy- | Journeyman-Linem... | https://www.linemancentral.com/states/michigan | bluedino wrote: | Read some Reddit posts where people ask linemen how much | they make. People reply with over $200k. | Tokkemon wrote: | Yeah, because that's more reliable data. | hotpotamus wrote: | Have you considered that they may not be telling the | truth? | bluedino wrote: | I know a lot of linemen and they do pretty well. $70k | would be zero overtime. | | Do you think they don't earn 30-40 per hour and have the | ability to make tons of overtime? | | The power company pays office workers time and a half to | do "line watch" where they just park by a downed power | line with a light on their roof until a crew shows up to | fix it. | artemonster wrote: | The downvotes should be a hint for you to re-evaluate your | position and maybe look for logical errors. Instead you've | doubled down and threw in some ridiculous piece of your | worldview (that thing with wokeism) to shift the blame away | from yourself to everyone around you. | standardUser wrote: | How are you "not sure" what healthcare and independent | workers have to do with each other? | SideQuark wrote: | So instead of "barely middle-class" jobs, they choose no job? | | That will turn out well for them. | Ancalagon wrote: | You'd be surprised. Sometimes quality of life is better spent | not working when you can lean on family and friends Or your | own small retirement fund. | | Not saying someone's life choices are right or wrong one way | or the other in this case. I'm very grateful for my position | but would be lying if I didn't say I day dreamt occasionally | about quitting work and living like a backpacker. | SideQuark wrote: | >Sometimes quality of life is better spent not working when | you can lean on family and friends Or your own small | retirement fund. | | And then when enough do, and the result becomes a lifetime | of un/under-employment, then they want the retirements or | lives of those before or around them, who do you think will | pick up the slack? | | Sure, quit and be a backpacker. Doing it a while is fun, | probably even healthy, but a lifetime of it will not end | well for many people. And generally if enough people do it, | then society as a whole will have to pay for it. | fleddr wrote: | Pretty funny thing to say on HN, which consists of people | in the industry of automating things. | hypertele-Xii wrote: | > who do you think will pick up the slack? | | Machines? Volunteers? Hobbyists? Artists? Researchers? | Bored people? | orwin wrote: | I mean, if enough enough refusing to enter the rat race | makes society hurts, maybe a new way of social | organization will be creted? | moe091 wrote: | I mean, have you seen how much pay has gone up in low-skilled | jobs? There are signs at all the local businesses in my area | offering $15+ an hour for cashiers and fry cooks and whatnot. | The same kind of jobs I worked 7-8 years ago for $8 an hour. | They are taking advantage of supply and demand to force jobs | to pay them a closer-to-fair wage, instead of selling their | time for less than it's worth and perpetuating the problem | indefinitely. | | To be fair, I do agree that on an individual level there are | tons of people screwing themselves over and messing up their | lives, being a burdon on their parents or whoever ends up | supporting them financially, etc. I don't think most of these | people are refusing to work out of activism or anything. But | from a sociological perspective it's a natural response to a | problem(a problem that goes much deeper than low wages imo, | but I won't get into that) that acts as a corrective measure | to one of the main symptoms of that problem. | | In other words: there will always be a bell curve of in terms | of competence and work ethic, and from a relative perspective | the curve will maintain it's shape throughout time | periods/generations among large enough populations. The | people on the low end of that curve deserve the same amount | of criticism(how much, if any, they deserve, is up for | debate) regardless of whether the curve itself shifts towards | one side or the other - as movements of the curve in it's | entirety can be attributed to social/environment factors. I | do think we've seen the curve move towards it's lower end | recently, and I have plenty of headcannon about why that may | have happened, but I can't see any reason to blame all | individuals within an entire generation, and I can't see the | point in condemning the low end of the curve for a certain | generation over that same portion of the curve from other | generations. | SideQuark wrote: | >I mean, have you seen how much pay has gone up in low- | skilled jobs? There are signs at all the local businesses | in my area offering $15+ an hour for cashiers and fry cooks | and whatnot. The same kind of jobs I worked 7-8 years ago | for $8 an hour. They are taking advantage of supply and | demand to force jobs to pay them a closer-to-fair wage, | instead of selling their time for less than it's worth and | perpetuating the problem indefinitely. | | Those jobs also result in products being more costly, so | that the current low end wages are actually lower nominal | value. | | I find people using terms like "fair wage" end up making | wishes and policies that end up hurting the poor, not | helping them, by not understanding economics. | | Fair is what a person can command from competing for jobs, | and jobs competing for workers. Anything else ends up | unsustainable, which usually ends up hurting the least able | workers. | | Mandating wages leads to lower employment - so sure you can | help some by pricing others out of work. | | >To be fair, I do agree that on an individual level there | are tons of people screwing themselves over and messing up | their lives, being a burdon on their parents or whoever | ends up supporting them financially, etc. | | Agreed - but who it will hurt the most is future workers, | including them, as the economy is not as good and then | there are less resources for everyone, including them. Of | course they will continue to blame a "system" when they got | what they earned. | | >I do think we've seen the curve move towards it's lower | end recently | | Total remuneration, even at the low end, is higher than | nearly all of history. And post-tax transfer it's much | higher. | | For example, the lowest 20% of households saw their post- | tax income go from $18,900 in 1979 to $32,800 in 2018 [1], | and that's not even including that households on average | have shrunk in size. Per worker the returns are even | higher. | | A good analogy: if you tell kids that blue eyed kids are | the devil, they will act like it, pass laws, and believe | it. If you tell people immigrants are killing them or | taking jobs, people start to believe it, and enact laws | that hurt all. Similarly, if you tell enough people how bad | the economy is, regardless of solid evidence, they will act | like it, and in the case of an economy, they bring the doom | to pass. | | >I can't see any reason to blame all individuals within an | entire generation | | I wouldn't blame them all. But if enough act a way to make | their economic outcomes worse, then all of them will suffer | over time. And they'll take others along for the ride. | | [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical- | income... | fleddr wrote: | "Fair is what a person can command from competing for | jobs, and jobs competing for workers. Anything else ends | up unsustainable, which usually ends up hurting the least | able workers." | | Unsustainable, huh? I'm from the Netherlands where we've | had minimum wage since 1969. The job market hasn't | exactly broken down in those 53 years. Actually, we have | the lowest unemployment in recorded history. Also, | minimum wage just got upped by more than 10%. | | You know why? Because otherwise people working full-time | can't even afford the basics. Even if you have zero | empathy in you, how exactly does it benefit society to | have productive members of society suffer, become | homeless, resort to crime, go hungry and freeze? | dogman144 wrote: | Seems like a trade + honesty + can run a business as an IC/MBA | hybrid, you'll clean up and have a good or very lucrative career. | Especially as billing peers cost of living. | | Probably a big caveat exists for businesses that get into | contract bidding, as that's different. | | There's 1x old plumber in my town who does honest and on time | work and he's a spry 70 year old. And charges a hefty but honest | hourly rate given the service. There's no plumbers behind him. | | Whenever Ive thought I might not make it in tech, a trade and | running a business on it was the backup plan. | | *edit the nuances I've seen that are worth mentioning is if | you're not in that owner/operator role, the work can get bad. | Know enough friends who: | | - slipped in a construction site moonlighting a demolition job | and now limping and can't afford a doctor. | | - Electricians who got their in around a strict union hierarchy | but also zapped themselves pretty bad early on. | giantg2 wrote: | Well of course not as many gen Z people want to be in the trades. | You have 25% wanting to be influencers. You have to take that 25% | from somewhere. | | https://www.projectcasting.com/blog/news/gen-z-influencer/ | jrm4 wrote: | Could this be a place where "automation/globalization/whatever" | has actually destroyed the jobs? I'm not overfamiliar with a lot | of them, but I could see that e.g. being a carpenter or | electrician today might be different from in the past owing to | "cruft" -- fewer unions, more gatekeeping in the form of | regulations and guild type deals, the unreasonable scale of | business, more proprietary crap to deal with, etc? | nibbleshifter wrote: | Not really. | | I've family members who are tradesmen, this issue has been | coming down the pipe forever. | | What's killed em is apprentice wages haven't kept up with | inflation for fucking years, and as for the treatment of | apprentices and helpers? Garbage. | | Basically decades of absolute pisstaking and abuse of newcomers | ("hey, everyone goes through it, its fine!") has predictably | resulted in a shortage of newcomers. | | Are they willing to up the apprentice (and journeyman...) | wages? Fuck off, of course not. | | Almost every tradie ends up telling their kids to go to college | and whatever the fuck they do, stay out of the trades. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | I live in slovenia, and the situation here is so bad, that a | competent plumber or electrician can easily outearn a doctor plus | there is a lot of potential for not paying taxes and that means | even higher net earnings. | nostrademons wrote: | Tradespeople will be the new software engineers in the late 2020s | through 2030s. Enough that I'm considering leaving my cushy FAANG | engineering manager job to become an electrician. | | On top of the huge supply shortage, consider that the majority of | the U.S. housing stock was built during the Baby Boom | suburbanization from 1950-1970, and that the average lifespan of | a house's internal systems (plumbing, electrical) is about 65 | years. There's a _massive_ maintenance bill coming due right | around 2025. Right as the housing stock is largely owned by | boomers on fixed incomes who won 't have time, money, or health | to fix it. Millennials will start inheriting houses en masse | around 2035, which solves the housing crisis, but they're going | to be houses in various states of disrepair. | | There's probably also a lot of room for innovation in home | construction and repair - possibly an area where robotics could | make a big difference. Unfortunately this is a known "hard | problem", where past attempts at mechanization haven't really | helped much. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | I think that's mostly accurate. Demand won't be high forever. A | hybrid approach will develop. Software and tech in the day, | welding and plumbing in the evening. Eventually, whatever the | young employee values more will be prioritized for a career. | UncleMeat wrote: | Tradespeople will definitely not be making 300k+ off a few | years of experience five years from now. | Ekaros wrote: | And if they were, who could afford to pay them that? Other | tradespeople? Ultra-rich? | nostrademons wrote: | That part is relatively easy to answer. When there are only | enough tradespeople to maintain 10% of homes, the top 10% | of income earners will get their services, and the top 10% | will spend a majority of their wealth on home maintenance. | It's already happening in areas with a lot of rich people | and few tradespeople - it costs me $1000 to run a camera | down my sewer line, $4K to roto-root it, about $20-30K to | fix a collapsed pipe. The top-10% has been doing fine in | terms of income, but now that it's so un-economical to go | into a field other than tech or finance, they're going to | have to spend a lot of that on essential services. | ryandrake wrote: | Most of the trades companies around me won't even pick up | the phone for a job less than $10K. And even then, | they're booked out months in advance. These companies are | making a fortune. Not sure how much of it trickles down | to tradespeople wages, but from reading other threads on | this article, it doesn't look like those guys don't get | paid a lot, as a percentage of what's billed to the | customer. | nostrademons wrote: | Extend that out to 10 years from now and I'll take that bet. | | Price goes up dramatically in the face of supply shortages, | because when there's a shortage you pick your customers | instead of them picking you, and some customers have _a lot_ | more money than others. Same reason software engineers make | $300K /year after a few years experience (when I started my | career 15 years ago $100K was considered a very good mid- | career salary, and still is in some locales), and good | childcare in the Bay Area now runs about $3000/month, and | homes are $3M. | oceanplexian wrote: | I think this is actually one of those predictions that might | not turn out the way you think. Economies are all about | supply and demand, not how long or complicated the job title | is. | | The government is increasingly ignoring the problem, the | higher-education-industrial-complex is grabbing workers that | would otherwise go into the trades, mass-importation of | unskilled labor is slowing down as it becomes more of a | political minefield (In the EU and the US). | | The confluence of all those factors will squeeze a limited | labor pool, and prices will continue to increase. I think | it's not unlikely that in 5-10 years we enter a crisis where | critical infrastructure starts failing and the government has | to start up a "Learn to Weld" program instead of "Learn to | Code" program because things have gone so far out of balance. | UncleMeat wrote: | Economies are about supply and demand. But _wages_ are not | directly tied to the demand for the trades. Wages are | controlled by the bosses. Even if the price of wiring up a | new home goes up, I would not expect the bulk of that | increase to be reflected in the wages of the electricians | (at least in the US). | [deleted] | nostrademons wrote: | Trades are one of those areas (along with software | engineering) where it is relatively easy to be your own | boss. The market in general is pretty competitive on both | the buyer (lots of individual homeowners needing work | done) and seller (lots of small independent contractors | selling their labor) sides; that should make overall | prices & wages reflect industry-wide (or at least local) | supply & demand pretty well. | | ConstructionPhysics has a pretty good series about why | the construction industry never really realized economies | of scale the way most other industries do. Even when you | have large homebuilders like D.R. Horton, their primary | competitive advantage is usually reduced cost of capital, | which goes away if capital becomes expensive for | everyone. | | https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-there- | so-... | confidantlake wrote: | You are going to leave your mid 6 figure job to do a physically | demanding mid 5 figure job? Good luck! | nostrademons wrote: | I don't believe those relative wages are going to hold. | | I got into software engineering when it was a high-5-figure | to low-6-figure job. At the time, conventional wisdom was | that the money was in finance, law, or medicine. Medicine has | held up well, but wages in finance and law have fallen well | below what software engineers make. Hell, lawyers frequently | make less than plumbers do now, hence this joke: | | https://unijokes.com/joke-929/ | seydor wrote: | Nah, tradespeople will be replaced with lego buildings, the | same way that furniture makers were replaced with ikea | akavi wrote: | Will that happen faster than the shift of AI into knowledge | work? Because the current trajectory has robots taking our | "manipulate bits" jobs far faster than our "move atoms" ones. | nebula8804 wrote: | Who knows. On the one hand there have been attempts to get | rid of the "manipulates bits" people forever, GUI/Drag and | Drop code editors, outsourcing etc. and it always comes | back to the edge cases never working and every projecting | having tons of edge cases. Maybe this will finally be the | time or maybe the AI still can't handle the edge cases. | Seeing as how the market is slowly walking away from self | driving promises(probably due to the edge cases) maybe we | aren't there yet. | nostrademons wrote: | That's the plan, but reality currently falls far short of | that. My sister's currently looking at modular houses. There | isn't much of a price difference between them vs. building on | site, and you deal with a lot of hassles around | transportation, site preparation, and permitting/paperwork. | dogman144 wrote: | I've thought similar. | | With a nest egg you keep in your back pocket that can get you | out of a shop hierarchy and into ownership quickly, accounting | for Lego houses and whatever other innovations, programming | some of your own stuff as needed, there's a path for honest | workers who are really good and on time to make good money. | Pick a wealthy area as your operating zone. Leverage the SWE | social class and your trade skills. | | My relatives who own mom and pop contracting and plumbing | companies have carved out solid lives for themselves and their | kids. The downside is they're working into their 60s, but with | a good nest egg from tech that might be different. | | My relatives who rode the MBA and finance paths ended up all | over the map - didn't survive the Great Recession, did fine, | are in tech but it's lost the shine, ended up as a total goober | as retired executive without a company to exec... | meetingthrower wrote: | Man, I'm in PE buying these companies and if you want to get rich | in America be competent in skilled trades. If you have a little | bit of management skill it is very doable. I've been offering 40 | year old high school grads $30M in cash for their companies (and | they would get that much again as we are doing rollups and they | maintain significant equity.) | | What is amazing is that these guys just do this again and again. | You want to know who has boats and planes? These guys!!! Richer | than I'll ever be. | Gud wrote: | I'm a so called "blue collar worker" - I supervise the | installation of high voltage equipment. I make pretty good money | - seems few people want to travel as much as I do. Most sites I | work at, the guys are mostly freelancers. They make about | EUR100/h, pre taxes. | SamoyedFurFluff wrote: | How much of this is class signifiers in the age of increasingly | tenuous existences on anyone but the wealthy? I wouldn't own a | farm even with existing subsidies on agriculture specifically | because it will destroy my body and then I'll be on the hook for | all that healthcare. | dieselgate wrote: | It's more nuanced than that for a lot of people I think - many | people inherit "the family farm/ag. business" so to speak and | even if they don't want to get into it they do anyway | asdff wrote: | If you own the farm its your farmhands that are breaking their | body while you sip coffee and order seed. | verdenti wrote: | [dead] | bluedino wrote: | I was working for an aerospace manufacturer for a while. We were | getting 40/50 year old apprentices for the trades, guys coming | off the production floor. | | Electricians, millwrights, CNC machinists... we couldn't find | enough of them. | | I get it. Nobody wants to stand in front of a machine (or 5-6 | machines) for 10 hours a day. Nobody wants to be in a 90 degree | factory all day. Nobody wants to work 2nd or 3rd shifts. | | The pay isn't incredible. $25-30/hr. You get overtime. You get | health insurance. You're a union member. As long as Boeing and | Airbus are still flying planes, you'll have a job. | | But we just flat out didn't get many applicants. And the people | that we'd get, would only work for a couple days, or a couple | weeks. | | Some people think it's because there's drug testing. Some people | say young people "don't want to work". All I know is if I needed | a job, I'd apply. | greatpostman wrote: | 25/30 hr is not great. Hate to tell you | bluedino wrote: | It's relative | greatpostman wrote: | To what? Working at McDonald's? | prottog wrote: | Relative to what other jobs in the area pay and the cost | of living, of course. The competition may in fact be | McDonald's paying $12 an hour or Walmart paying $14. | Wojtkie wrote: | It's extremely easy to clear more than 25-30 an hour | waiting tables in a lot of places. | prottog wrote: | The places where you can easily clear more than $25-30 an | hour as a waiter are also places with high cost of living | and expensive housing. As a counterexample, in my area (a | midsize city in a low cost-of-living state), restaurants | universally suffered from sharp labor shortages last | year. $25-30 an hour would let you live comfortably here, | meaning they should have had a lot of applicants; | therefore the money just wasn't there. | sethammons wrote: | My wife was a waitress for years (but not in the last | decade or so). A four hour shift at Sizzler (yes, the | stake house that everyone loves to hate) would get her | about $25/hr on average easily. A decade ago. In a small | town in the Inland Empire of SoCal, amongst the lowest | cost of living in California. | omginternets wrote: | I'm curious, has your employer tried paying more? There are a | fair few desk jobs that pay $25-30/hr, and it's entirely | possible that people are trading job stability for something | that isn't so physically demanding. | bluedino wrote: | There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here. | | However, our Seattle location has that problem. It was almost | closed down because of competition. | | edit: can't reply to the person who replied below, but if you | have a contract to sell parts to a company you can't just | increase your worker pay to whatever you want and have it be | sustainable. | thatjoeoverthr wrote: | > There's not that many jobs that pay that much around | here. | | So, I shouldn't be around there? | | > you can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you | want | | I respect that it's a challenge, but job seekers aren't | responsible for solving Boeing's supply chain problems. | Either the job is important enough to draw people into it, | or it isn't. | lotsofpulp wrote: | >but if you have a contract to sell parts to a company you | can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want | and have it be sustainable. | | Renegotiating a contract sounds more sustainable than not | having workers. | | The bottom line is always that the pay to quality of life | at work is insufficient. | | >Nobody wants to stand in front of a machine (or 5-6 | machines) for 10 hours a day. Nobody wants to be in a 90 | degree factory all day. Nobody wants to work 2nd or 3rd | shifts. | | >The pay isn't incredible. $25-30/hr. You get overtime. | | For this much, there are lots of office jobs in front of a | computer with zero risk of injury where you can sit. And | overtime is not worth much if you do not get to enjoy life | outside of work. | peruvian wrote: | Your current pay rate isn't working -- who cares what other | jobs pay in comparison? Pay $10-15 more an hour and you | will see more applicants. | bluedino wrote: | You can't do that in a union shop. You have to increase | everyone's pay and there isn't money for that. | jjk166 wrote: | > if you have a contract to sell parts to a company you | can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want | and have it be sustainable. | | Fire whoever quoted the job such that the contract doesn't | pay enough to hire workers to fulfill the contract. They | are worse than useless. | jbigelow76 wrote: | _There 's not that many jobs that pay that much around | here._ | | But that doesn't answer the question. If you can't get | people to apply for a physically demanding job, despite | other benefits like stability, unionization, etc, at | $25-30/hr then it seems rational to try $35-40/hr unless | the need really isn't there. We've been living with so much | inflation relative to such little wage growth that if I was | told things are more expensive because machinists want a | wage they can use to buy a house with I would still chafe | at the inflation but the justification would be a lot more | palatable than "the board raised the prices and did a stock | buyback with the profits". | rcme wrote: | > There's not that many jobs that pay that much around | here. | | Hiring movers to pack your stuff and move it across the | country costs a few thousand dollars, and it's never been | easier to rent an apartment via online showings. Your | competition is a lot broader than your immediate geographic | area. | bluedino wrote: | You can't use that argument because uprooting people blah | blah | | The funny part is fifty years ago people were moving to | the area to work here. | t-writescode wrote: | This is a few thousand dollars when something like half | the nation can't afford a $500 surprise bill, right? | tayo42 wrote: | The target worker in this case is people in Gen z? | They're young out of school and own nothing. It doesn't | cost anything to move in that case. I moved across the | country with a suit case. My only cost was the plane | ticket | asdff wrote: | So that didn't cost you nothing then. Then what did you | do when you got off the plane? Presumably you paid a | security deposit for an apartment and didn't just camp on | BLM land. For someone with no credit history, a landlord | might ask for 4 months rent as a deposit these days. | tayo42 wrote: | i moved into someones spare room | asdff wrote: | That's nice you found that, but oftentimes these | arrangements are not so easy to find or otherwise take | some time to line up. | notch656c wrote: | When I was working shit jobs for minimum wage in | Washington I hitchhiked to North Dakota's oil rush and | slept in a train yard. It literally cost me nothing. | | When an able bodied, single, mentally competent and | healthy young person says they don't have enough money to | move across country it is actually code for "I have no | initiative so I will sit and cry like a pathetic child." | Meanwhile people are successfully walking across the | Darien gap and the Sonoran desert with entire families to | find success. | asdff wrote: | You made it fine, and others who try and hitchhike | sometimes end up robbed, kidnapped, or worse. Don't blame | an entire generation for not doing something that you | know for a fact comes with a ton of risk. | notch656c wrote: | Making a significantly lower wage is probably more | dangerous in the long run than hitch-hiking a few trips | in a lifetime to relocate to higher wages. That is the | relative risk is likely actually negative. | floor2 wrote: | That much-repeated factoid is the result of sloppy, | clickbait reporting of a lousy survey. | | People were asked "If you had a sudden $500 expense, how | would you pay for it?" with options like ["cash", | "checking account", "credit card", "pay-day loan", | "borrow from family"] and unsurprisingly many people said | "credit card". This then got repeated and reported as | "Americans can't pay $500 without going into debt". | Rapzid wrote: | Yeah, would like to see the source of that. My generation | puts everything on rewards cards even if they have no | debt; so of course $500 is going on a card first lol. | cgio wrote: | If you have a contract to sell parts then your incentive to | give higher salary would also be greater, given contracts | would have penalties for failure to deliver. The companies | are apparently in equilibrium with this situation, so | either shortsighted in management or complain because | effectively they want to pay less than they currently do. | bluedino wrote: | It's not the pay that's the problem. if it was, people | that work at McDonald's or Walmart would be beating our | door down to double their salary | cwkoss wrote: | Does your company train unskilled workers? Or are | previous skills or credentials required? | sethammons wrote: | McDonald's in my small 5k population town in Montana | (which has a bit of a reputation for shit wages) was | advertising $20/hr (might be $19 and I'm mentally | rounding up) last summer including paid leave. McDonalds | is nearly to your starting pay. The market has adjusted. | bluedino wrote: | McDonalds has $11/hr on their signs here | | https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=4c142ca25712bc94&from | =se... | rco8786 wrote: | > You get overtime. | | I think this comment represents a fundamental disconnect in | cultures. The days of people "wanting" overtime are kind of | gone. If I saw "overtime pay" on a job description all I am | seeing is "work long hours, never see your kids, no time for | hobbies, etc". | | Maybe that translates to me "not wanting to work", but that's | the situation. | prottog wrote: | There's a similar disconnect in expectations of outcomes. The | same days when people "wanted" overtime were the days where | people expected to get ahead by busting their asses; sure, | you could work short hours, play with your kids, have time to | develop a hobby, but then you wouldn't become wealthy. | | That option is still there today, to work only enough to | sustain oneself at a lowered standard. But it seems that | there is a part of the millennial/gen-Z culture that expects | ass-busting outcomes without the busting of the ass. | rco8786 wrote: | > ass-busting outcomes without the busting of the ass. | | Perhaps. But one only needs to look up to the original post | to see that is not what we're talking about here. Busting | of the ass for $25-30/hr plus overtime...not exactly | getting wealthy here. | prottog wrote: | I don't know where GP's old employer was located, but it | sounds like it's in a low cost-of-living area, the kind | where homes can be had for under $100k. Earn $50-60k a | year, pay off your house in maybe ten years instead of | thirty, save a little each month and invest and let it | compound over time; at the end you could have enough for | a comfortable retirement and maybe even have some left | over to hand down to your children. | | It's not "fly to Paris on a whim"-level wealthy, but it | sounds like a life well lived to me. What is your | definition of wealthy? | rco8786 wrote: | Certainly nobody can reasonably conclude that "working | long hours to live a basic life in an extremely low cost | of living area" is "wealthy". | | We can all agree that we have different definitions of | wealthy. But I think we can also all agree that your | description of that life, which is maybe "well-lived", is | not one of wealth in the context of this discussion. It | is certainly not an "ass-busting outcome". | prottog wrote: | OK, I grant that the life I described is perhaps not | aspirational for anybody born and raised in a first-world | country in the last 30 years or so. (I know many from | other backgrounds whose idea of unimaginable wealth is | exactly that.) But if it's not an ass-busting outcome, | would you say it's a middling outcome? Or the most | minimal outcome that anyone should have, regardless of | how hard they work? | | What makes you say that this middle-class life where you | own your home free and clear and have time and money for | the occasional indulgences of life is a "basic" one? In | other words, why is your bar calibrated so high? | cwkoss wrote: | The ratio of power between labor and capital has swung hard | toward capital over the past 30 years. | | I think the number of people who become "wealthy" due to | salary income alone is probably small and shrinking. You | used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 | months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so | working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead | of 17 years. | prottog wrote: | > You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead | of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics | make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 | years instead of 17 years. | | Actually, if 50 years ago you used to be able to pay for | a house in 18 months, today you should be able to pay for | a house in ~30 months: | https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual- | inco.... You're thinking of a time that didn't exist, | perhaps outside of when people were granted plots of land | and built their own houses on it. | | Blame the Fed and idiotic policies at every level for | that, anyway; the economics of housing is totally skewed | by artificial scarcity on one hand and asset inflation on | the other. | | I don't disagree that capital has more power now due to | the effects of technology, but I also believe that | culture has been shaping away from the idea that we are | masters of our fate; both due to technology, which | becomes increasingly harder for laypeople to understand | as it gets more advanced, and regulation forced by that | technological advance, where the universe of economic | activity one can engage in without needing the state's | permission is getting smaller and smaller. Not to mention | all the effects that social media has on envy. | | Perhaps I sound like I'm repeating the age-old mantra of | the old complaining that the young are ruining the | country ;-) you decide. | ffwacom wrote: | Well the old installed the fed and regulated the housing | market. Will probably take violence to fix. | rco8786 wrote: | Sounds like you're blaming the fed and idiotic | policies...all of which were put in place by old people. | ;-) | cwkoss wrote: | Yeah, my napkin math is probably superlative. The biggest | factor is certainly housing - 1950s homes that cost $20k | would easily cost 50x that today with similar lot size, | layout and location. I think perspectives on what housing | is 'comparable' are pretty squishy. | | Inflation only accounts for 12x since 1950. | | I think "median' might be adding some error to your | analysis: I suspect skilled trades were probably earning | more relative to median in 1950 than today's skilled | trades earn relative to today's median. But wasn't able | to find good historical numbers with a quick search. | ManuelKiessling wrote: | One could argue that they HAVE caught quite well: if you consider | jobs like web development (opposed to, say, AI/ML development) as | a new skilled trade in a world that is becoming more digital. | cuteboy19 wrote: | Trade typically means manual work so even tech freelancing | won't count | dragonwriter wrote: | > America needs carpenters and plumbers. Try telling that to Gen | Z | | Look, as long as we have a market economy, here's how you tell it | to Gen Z: raise the wages for carpenters and plumbers (and if | necessary shift some of that forward into subsidies and | incentives for people to _train_ as carpenters and plumbers) | until you get as many as you say you "need". | | If America isn't willing to pay enough to get X carpenters and Y | plumbers, it doesn't "need" them. | | Most "we need more blue collar labor" arguments trace back to | elites who want to retain more profit by paying less per unit | blue collar labor. | mfer wrote: | There is a psychology problem with skilled trades and younger | generates in the US. | | I've known Gen Z folks who thinks it's better to work at a | sandwich shop or small restaurant than skilled trades. They | were raised up (through the schooling environment) to look down | on trades. Even if it pays them significantly more with better | benefits. | | Many places in the US school system they only prepare people | for college. Schools do this in subtle ways like providing AP | courses while cutting hands on shop classes. | | When it comes to subsidies... there are some trades areas where | you can be trained for free. The people are needed so the | training has already be made really easy. Sometimes it's on the | job training and you're paid well while you learn. | | This is very much a cultural view of skilled trades. | dragonwriter wrote: | > There is a psychology problem with skilled trades and | younger generates in the US. | | People work preferences not being what you'd like may make | the cost of motivating them to behave the way you want higher | than you would like. | | That's part of how market's work--you don't get to choose | other people's utilitt function. If you "need" for them to | act in a particular way, that means you need to offer them a | sufficient incentive to do so _given their actual utility | function_ , not the utility function you wish they were | operating under. | | > I've known Gen Z folks who thinks it's better to work at a | sandwich shop or small restaurant than skilled trades. | | Yes, some people's subjective preferences aren't yours or | those that would be most convenient for your preferred | outcomes. | | > This is very much a cultural view of skilled trades. | | "Cultural view" is just another way of saying "subjective | preference", and, yes, that's how utility functions work. | | Blame whatever you want, Gen Z is mostly a little late for | changes to parenting or schooling policies, even if one had a | set in mind and the power to wish it into being, to shift | this much, so, the bottom line still is, if you want to "tell | Gen Z" about your perceived "need" for more tradespeople, you | need to do it through sufficient incentives giving their | actual values and preferences. | waynesonfire wrote: | I don't understand who is getting paid $24 an hour when I paid | over $125 per hour to get a sub-panel installed. | | Could it be that after starting their own company, they found | it difficult to hire additional journeymen at the rate of $24 | per hour which they themselves had previously earned as a | journeyman? | | When everyone can get $125 an hour, there is suddenly a | shortage of cheap labor! Big surprise. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-05 23:00 UTC)