[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.
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