[HN Gopher] The Great Electrician Shortage
___________________________________________________________________
The Great Electrician Shortage
Author : cocacola1
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-04-24 17:13 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Fast track the learning process to catch all the white collars
| who are on the cusp of being automated out of a job.
| [deleted]
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Industry: we don't have nearly enough electricians.
|
| Electricians: maybe pay us more.
|
| I: It's a complete mystery. We can't figure it out.
|
| E: pay us more
|
| I: Maybe we should try to use AI to figure out how to install
| wire more efficiently.
|
| E: or you could pay us more.
|
| I: we should create a billion dollar fund to pay for graduate
| students to research why we don't have enough electricians.
|
| E: or you could pay electricians more.
|
| I: SHUT UP, PEASANT!
| DrThunder wrote:
| They have unions. Unions are doing a terrible job of
| negotiating and/or keeping the prices low.
| GalenErso wrote:
| Isn't it almost impossible to become an apprentice electrician if
| you don't have family connections to unions? A few comments from
| this Reddit thread:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/104fooe/america_...
|
| > It's hard, because the formally decent paying apprentice
| programs pay has stayed about the same while working, fast food
| or whatever has gone up a lot. Working at Taco Bell for $18 an
| hour is less physically demanding than being a grunt laborer for
| 15.
|
| > Our local IBEW apprentices start at $19/hr with another 9.50/hr
| in benefits. First raise is an extra $2 on the check and another
| $2 in benefits after 1000 hours or roughly 6 months.
|
| > I almost accepted a plumbing apprenticeship when I was 26 but
| the starting wage was so low I just wouldn't have been able to
| live. If I could go back in time though I'd try getting into a
| trade or automotive work by 18.
|
| > I tried becoming an electrician after the military. No where
| had any interest in taking on an apprentice.
|
| > One friend of mine saved and left her corporate job to become
| an electrician, only to find boomer electricians wouldn't
| apprentice a woman. Just one anecdote, of course.
|
| > I got out of the Army, and tried to join the local union as an
| apprentice. It was a 6-8 months selection process before I could
| even start. It took longer and was more challenging to try and
| get into a trade then the military.
|
| > The trades pay shite. I'm a third term apprentice and it's hard
| work for not much more than McDonald's.
|
| Maybe the whole journeyman/apprentice system needs to be
| dismantled.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| Yup.. the system takes forever to advance through. If you don't
| start at 18 it's hard to justify doing. Regulations need to be
| changed but I don't see that happening.
| [deleted]
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| One of the best High Volt electricians we have at work is a
| woman. She's an integral part of keeping out data centers
| working, and we're actively hiring for an apprentice High Volt
| electrician!
| jandrese wrote:
| The funny thing is the rate charged to customers has
| skyrocketed in the past decade, yet the wages for the
| electricians are apparently stagnant?
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| That's the case with so many things.
|
| If a nickel can be squeezed out of the working class and
| diverted to the wealthy, it surely will.
| vkou wrote:
| Middlemen and managers are pocketing the difference. When you
| hear about tradespeople pulling in mid-six figures, they
| generally aren't in the trenches, laying down pipes or wiring
| cables.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Productivity and wages (across the board, not just
| electricians) diverged around 1980.
|
| https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-
| gro...
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| It never trickled down. It floated up.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| More central management with large
| shops/conglomerates/chains, fewer small shops and
| independents, maybe?
|
| You know, "market efficiency".
| geodel wrote:
| Yup, _leveraging the synergy_ all the way.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Compare it to farmers who get less for their produced goods,
| while in the shops prices go up. What part of the ticket
| price of a litre/gallon of milk ends up with the farmer? I
| never understood this.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Based on the profit margins of the largest publicly listed
| retailers, the shops are not ending up with it either.
| bsder wrote:
| California IBEW seems to start an apprentice at $27 and goes up
| to $54. Seems eminently reasonable?
| GalenErso wrote:
| $27 in a HCOL state like California in 2023 is ... not great,
| even for an entry-level position.
| bsder wrote:
| What other job is open to a non-college graduate and
| guaranteed to go up to $54 an hour at the 5 year mark?
|
| I know a whole lot of people who will never earn $54 an
| hour in their lives would love to know the answer to that
| question.
|
| While the pay is decent, it _is_ hard, physical work.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A friend is a journeyman lineman in NorCal and makes
| ~$300k/year + pension rebuilding PG&E infra. Lives in a
| lovely rural $800k home. Started his career climbing poles
| in Illinois, straight out of high school.
| akavi wrote:
| Your friend is a massive outlier in the pay distribution
| of electricians. He's either gaming the overtime system
| somehow, or has a unique set of specialized skills (or
| some regulatory arbitrage combo of both).
| briffle wrote:
| I have a lineman in the family. The pay is great, the
| 'hey, there is a storm 4 states away they are sending me
| to help with, i'll be back home in 2 months' is not so
| great. But all the overtime you want..
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Have you seen what linemen do? Work with heavy
| transmission lines dozens or hundreds of feet in the air,
| at night, in the rain, etc. They earn every penny of
| whatever they make IMO.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Based on the state of PG&E infra from public records and
| committed capex/infra spend, I'm more inclined to believe
| the overtime is warranted due to This Is All Terrible And
| Will Take Decades To Fix. I'll ask! Where there is chaos,
| there is usually money to be made.
|
| https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-
| release/2022/10/safet...
|
| https://theintercept.com/2019/10/11/pge-power-shutdown-
| calif...
|
| https://www.naturalgasintel.com/pge-bets-big-on-
| infrastructu...
|
| https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/about-
| pge/environ...
| artsytrashcan wrote:
| Consensus seems to be that "straight out of high school"
| is an advantage, and not one all of the people who are
| interested in the work can partake of.
| [deleted]
| prpl wrote:
| In n Out starts at $20
| poisonarena wrote:
| actually its more now, and Mcdonalds starts at $18 an hour
| mcbishop wrote:
| My hack was to offer two months of free work to a local
| electrician (I was fortunate to be able to do that). He took me
| up on it, and it worked out. He and I now have an arrangement
| where I can do my own electrical (solar) projects under his
| license (with his availability for questions) for a flat per-
| project fee. ...This pays much better than the hourly rate as
| an employed apprentice.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Varies a lot by state. I have a friend (was ringbearer at my
| wedding when he was a wee lad), and he did a lot of research on
| which state to go through this in (he chose Colorado, btw).
|
| The journeyman/apprentice system, for all its problems, is
| probably a net bonus to the lifetime wages, since it prevents a
| huge surge of new entrants in a short time. Also, although it
| may not be all we would want, it does probably prevent the
| worst safety/incompetence concerns that we would have if it
| were left to the market (since people hiring electricians often
| don't have the knowledge to tell if they are competent or not).
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| The regulatory requirements for electricians and plumbers take so
| long to advance through that if you don't choose it at a young
| age it's hardly possible to justify doing later.
| robcohen wrote:
| This is so correct it's absolutely ridiculous. I learn new
| skills as a hobby. I have a degree in construction. There is no
| way for me to learn to be an electrician that is authorized to
| do anything unless I drop everything else I'm doing for a
| minimum of 4 years.
|
| This is clearly ridiculous. Electricity isn't hard. This is
| precisely the sort of thing that standardized tests, both
| knowledge and practical, can effectively fix.
|
| No one wants to fix it though.
| [deleted]
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > Electricity isn't hard.
|
| Famous last words. Maybe the real issue is that it's treated
| as a "trade", ie, something you can get accredited with in 2
| years of vocational school or community college. But as we
| know from all the actual regulations about it, the reality is
| much different.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Residential/Household electricity isn't hard. Learning
| everything you need to know and putting in the time to get
| licensed as an electrician is. And for good reason, there
| are plenty of fools who would try to call themselves
| electricians otherwise (as there are many fools who try to
| call themselves software developers but make more of a mess
| than anything else).
|
| Learning how to do your own household wiring as a homeowner
| is not hard.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Wiring houses is maybe 5-10% of electrical work, the rest
| is commercial and industrial.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| yeah and all the illegal work is being done in
| residential because of onerous regulations..
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Exactly. Running basics circuits is very straightforward.
| Why don't we just tier the licenses from super easy on
| up? Run 110, license A; run 220, license B; install main
| service from the street, license test C; running three
| way switch, badge 1. That way you can then get a handyman
| to do a light fixture change without him breaking the
| law.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| It also isn't hard to find an electrician that will come
| sign off on self done home wiring work to satisfy the
| regulators. To me that is a sign of overregulation.
| Electricians concede that non-electricians are capable
| enough to do their own work but the law requires somebody
| with a license to sign off on it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not about being capable enough to do the work, it
| is about having enough reputation and liability insurance
| to be liable for damages resulting from faulty work.
|
| The city government most certainly does not want to
| shoulder most of it via their inspectors, so they share
| it with "licensed" electricians who have to put their
| assets, or the insurance company's assets, on the line.
| briffle wrote:
| Of course they don't want to fix it. Those barriers help
| drive up the value of the people that control those barriers.
| In my state, its also a huge problem with Nursing and Police
| Certification. Especially over the last 3 years. If you hire
| a police officer in Oregon today, you will wait at least 9
| months until they can start at the state run academy. And
| they might not graduate. So you have to pay them for 9 months
| to 'study' and not be police, and hope they graduate. Most
| deparments here put their recruiting efforts into getting
| licensed officers from other departments, with a huge bonus.
| (and of course, massive overtime for existing officers, and
| complaining about the shortages, turnover, etc)
|
| As the average age of Nurses, Police, etc over the years
| crept up, there was no movement to increase the capacity of
| training replacements, as the senior people liked the wages
| they got.
| nradov wrote:
| How is that a problem? Policing is a hard, complex job.
| Even 9 months of training isn't nearly enough. Law
| enforcement officers ought to have a minimum of two years
| of full time training before being sworn in and sent out on
| patrol with arrest powers. Many of the problems we see with
| police brutality and poor community relations come down to
| lack of proper training.
|
| This is a issue for small police departments which can't
| afford to pay a non-productive trainee for years.
| Realistically some of them aren't going to be viable going
| forward and will either have to merge with departments in
| neighboring cities, or dissolve and rely on a county
| sheriff's department.
| petsfed wrote:
| Given some of the controversies around poorly trained
| police, I'm not sure the problem here is that it takes too
| long to become a police officer. Rather, there aren't
| enough people trying to become officers, so the normal
| latency exacerbates issues surrounding the existing officer
| shortage. The absence of good candidates also drives down
| the quality of the average candidate, and has downstream
| affects as you mentioned.
|
| Maybe, like with the other trades, something should be done
| to make the job more appealing, so more people try to enter
| the pipeline.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >Electricity isn't hard.
|
| I agree that we absolutely need to make regulation here more
| efficient, but I think this attitude is not effective.
| Electricity is hard, and getting it wrong ruins lives. It's
| OK to say that something is both hard but also perfectly
| learnable by most people. They aren't mutually exclusive. As
| soon as we learn something, we tend to say "it's not hard,
| really" to people starting that same journey. I think a lot
| of people unjustly reserve the word "hard" for only the
| highest degrees of complexity. But it's a useful word - we
| don't want to discourage anybody, but we also want to
| maintain a healthy respect for how much work you need to do
| to properly learn some things.
| ars wrote:
| > Electricity is hard, and getting it wrong ruins lives.
|
| No it's not hard. You can learn to run the majority of
| residential electricity (outlets, switches, lights) in a
| week. Another week or 2 and you can install panels.
|
| It's commercial and especially industrial electricity that
| is hard. But we insist on training electricians to do all
| of it, when we mostly need the easier stuff.
|
| And it's pretty hard to ruin someone's life with
| incorrectly installed electricity. Incorrectly meaning: "I
| didn't realize I needed to do this", rather than "I'm doing
| garbage work, like not tightening screws".
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Both theory and practice IMHO can be learned by motivated
| person in a year, but to get even a journeyman license one
| needs to work 4 years (may vary by state) as an apprentice
| being paid pennies and not necessary receiving all
| necessary knowledge.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| A requirement to work 4 years being paid very little
| before you can get license and be paid for the work
| strongly reminds me servitude. If it was only about
| knowledge it should have been possible to demonstrate it
| by passing a hard exam, but one not allowed to take an
| exam until servitude if paid off.
| notatoad wrote:
| "electricity isn't hard" is obviously oversimplifying
| things a bit. there's definitely some skill involved in
| electrical work.
|
| perhaps it would be better to say that a lot of electrical
| work is well within the skillset of a general contractor,
| and doesn't require a multi-year apprenticeship to learn.
| something like installing fixtures is a task that anybody
| is capable of, but instead the contractor has to call the
| electrician back in after the finishes are installed to do
| it, because we don't trust the general to do it safely.
| that's a waste of everybody's time and resources.
| jadbox wrote:
| Why does no one wants to fix it? Clearly there's a lot of
| demand for more electricians.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| because the people in charge are the ones profiting and
| they have regulatory capture.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Who are the people in charge? How do they make money off
| this? Which industry has captured the regulators?
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| The advisory boards, lobbyists, industry insiders that
| advise the regulatory agencies are all vested in keeping
| the apprentice, journeyman, master licensing scheme going
| as it gate keeps entry into the field. If someone
| proposed that it should be a skills based test with oral,
| practical, written portions where you simply had to prove
| your knowledge instead of spend years and hours in the
| trade then they would come up with tons of reasons around
| safety, etc that it would be a bad idea just so they
| could retain their titles and keep more people out of the
| field.
|
| Similar to any regulated field like Doctors that have a
| vested interest in keeping residency spots competitive.
| chasd00 wrote:
| No one wants to say the unions but the answer is the
| unions. Unions reward seniority and not much else. You
| have to pay your dues!
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Yep, absolutely. I'm an EE, and was interested in doing my
| own electrical work - there's no recognition of prior
| learning, as far as I can tell. In Australia you _must_ have
| completed a 4 year apprenticeship. No ifs, buts, it maybes.
|
| For reference, it's not uncommon for contractors to send out
| apprentices with a year or two of experience to do jobs solo
| (it's illegal, but that never stopped anybody). I appreciate
| the need for experienced workers to do jobs to a high
| standard, but it seems clear to me the currents regulations
| are too onerous.
|
| It's not surprising a there's a shortage, when the
| apprenticeship pays like shit, the actual job is not paid
| especially well, and the work sucks. The only people who make
| money are the contractors with a team under them.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I made a big mistake when I was a young man. Back in the early
| 1980's you could get a contractors license by just passing a
| test. I thought maybe I should get one. Being dumb and young
| never did.
|
| Now you need to work for four years under a licensed contractor
| to get a license.
|
| If I hadn't been young and stupid I'd have a contractors
| license and be able to legally pull permits.
| vkou wrote:
| If the pay (At the lower/upper/both certification levels) were
| better, people would justify it.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| The pay will never increase because you need the master to
| hire you to become a master yourself. So they have so much
| power. You just have to suck it up when you're young and then
| capitalize on your master license later. That's one reason it
| won't easily change. The masters have the power and they are
| entrenched with it. Will the masters that sit on these state
| regulatory boards or however it works ever vote to decrease
| the requirements? No it would have to be a revolution or
| coup.
| morkalork wrote:
| In smaller towns, some masters aren't even interested in
| taking apprentices because they don't want the future
| competition.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| Wife's Dad was a plumber. He made better money running
| hydraulic fluid to the machines at the GM plant than he did
| bringing clean water to people and disposing of their waste.
| This boggles me my mind. Clean drinking water and the ability
| to safely and sanitarily escort your shit out of your house
| is so vital yet these guys get paid shit. Capitalisms don't
| always reward what really matters.
| mdorazio wrote:
| https://archive.is/qKH9C
| seabird wrote:
| There's a lot of talk about apprentice pay being too low and the
| process taking too long. What a lot of people seem to be missing
| is that being an apprentice is a young man's game, that
| journeyman wages being bad or good is highly regional, and that
| the path to running your own business is fairly direct. It's an
| entirely different path from the two-step college to white-collar
| job pipeline most of us probably went through. You work hard
| pulling horsecock wire or cleaning shit out of sewer systems
| fresh out of high school to have the option of either pushing far
| and hard after your journeyman's card to make incredibly good
| money, or making a wage that ranges from kind-of-bad to kind-of-
| good wholly depending on where you live.
|
| If you had a rough start in life, bad grades, no applicable
| skills, no money to go to college, no family support, etc. but
| are willing to show up and get your balls busted for a while
| while you learn, you could do a hell of a lot worse than the
| average journeyman's wage, and you stand a chance to make a hell
| of a lot more.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| My brother went to school for residential and commercial
| electrician stuff. He quit after a few years because of low pay,
| long hours, traveling, and unexpected layoffs.
|
| I almost forgot the craziest part. The Christmas bonus at his
| company was funded by all the copper they were able to take from
| jobs and sell
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| So workers were incentivised to downgrade 10 euro/meter wire
| paid by customers into scrap of 40 cents per kg? No respect for
| customers, no respect for the workers and no respect for the
| environment.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _He quit after a few years because of low pay, long hours,
| traveling, and unexpected layoffs_
|
| In my area of Canada, demand for this work is so high you can
| work as much or little as you want, independently, for $50+ an
| hour. Nothing to sneeze at. Just need that entrepreneurial
| itch.
| briffle wrote:
| And a license, insurance, transportation, a place to sleep,
| eat, proably storage for all your stuff that doesn't fit in
| your vehicle, etc.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| This was over 10 years ago in North Dakota.
| tennisflyi wrote:
| Look up the median on BLS and tell me if this is all it's made
| out to be.
|
| Wow. $45k/year...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| But electricians working for themselves must be making a lot
| more than that? Last time I called an electrician it was $100
| for him to step in the door and $150/hr for the work and that
| was about 10 years ago.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If they are working for themselves yes. But remember they
| have to not only pay themselves but pay for their truck,
| their tools, their fuel and their time to drive out to your
| house, their accountant or bookkeeper, maybe someone who
| answers their phone and does their schedule, etc. If they are
| working for someone else, they need to cover all the overhead
| of the business.
| the_only_law wrote:
| It's like comparing a software developer with a very
| successful startup founder who started a software business
| and saying: "Look programmers can be billionaires" to goad
| kids into going into software development.
| redavni wrote:
| If they can pay for the insurance.
| ars wrote:
| The typical answer to this is "pay more". But that just shifts
| the problem to some other field "not enough plumbers", "not
| enough something else".
|
| There's just not enough people to do all the work that needs
| doing, and not enough money available to pay _all_ of them.
|
| For any individual trade you can "solve it" by paying more - but
| how do you solve it for all the work that needs doing?
|
| We need to dramatically simplify how much work it takes to do
| something, or make things last longer, or both.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I have wondered if stagnating wages has meant a growing
| population that basically can't afford a professional for any
| purpose. Someone who works for $15 an hour is going to have
| obvious difficulties hiring someone that asks for $100 an hour.
| 7speter wrote:
| Yawn. The story that starts the article (that tells the same
| story about the trades that all of these articles tell) takes
| place in Connecticut, but in NYC, homeowners aren't allowed to
| touch anything electrical behind a wall. You have to pay an
| electrician to do the work. Meanwhile, every year on the news
| there are people camping out for electrician apprenticeships
| (theres a shortage in the city as far as I can understand) and
| most get turned away.
|
| Anyways, the funny thing is that if you're college educated and
| willing to take things step by step, and buy a good set of tools,
| and read your local municipalities code (the most recent copy of
| electrical code in nyc is something like 180 dollars instead of
| being freely available, dunno if its like that elsewhere), you
| can probably do your own repairs, arrange a schedule to have
| anyone who needs to jackhammer and run a connection somewhere on
| your property, have the electric company run whatevers needed
| wherever and have an inspector look over the work to either
| certify it or tell you whats wrong.
| emptybits wrote:
| Canadian perspective here. The median wage of an electrician in
| Canada is CAD$30/hr (approx EUR20/hr or USD$22/hr).[1] Not great.
|
| That requires a four to five year apprenticeship and the
| prospects for electricians in the near future is considered "very
| limited" in the province I live in (BC), which is among the
| nicest places to live and also the most expensive.[3] (And pays
| electricians _lower_ than the national median.)
|
| So IMO that hourly wage standard needs to go WAY up before it's
| considered tempting. Most electricians here work on new projects
| and there is great reluctance to increase the cost of
| construction projects (e.g. worker pay) any more than it has
| already jumped in the last few years.
|
| [1] https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-
| occupation/2068...
|
| [2] https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/outlookreport/occupation/20684
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe the job bank numbers here are
| incorrect, based on what it lists for software engineers, which
| seems a bit low: https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-
| occupation/5485...
|
| Assuming 1880 hours per year (52 weeks * 40 hours - 120
| vacation hours - 80 stat day hours), that would imply the
| median wage in BC is $99414
|
| Levels reports a median pay in Vancouver (where I assume at
| least 60% of the software engineers in BC are) of $156K, and
| $130K in Victoria. While Levels may be off, I think real wages
| are somewhere in the middle.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It's just an effect of the market right? Why become an
| electrician when you can become a programmer (with no license
| requirements whatsoever) and make double.
|
| All while working from home, or in a nice office.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| 100% this. I've been getting into home improvement and I was
| wondering what it would be like to do that for a living. Took a
| look at the wages and noped the f out of that.
| poisonarena wrote:
| "100% this"
| eldavido wrote:
| I've noticed this with a lot of professions. Comp is back-
| loaded. They start much lower than software, but the good
| ones make it up in the end by being owners and having a crew
| of 10-20 work for them, and earning margin on their labor.
| Regulation and professionalization (e.g. you need to be
| licensed) seem to encourage this.
|
| Software, assuming one doesn't go into management, seem to
| have a more linear comp structure. You start much higher, but
| it doesn't ramp as dramatically as most trade/licensed
| professions as you go up. Probably because there's less
| regulation/capture so even entry-level people keep more of
| what they produce, vs the almost-feudal nature of many
| trades/professions.
|
| Just what I've seen, anyway.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > the good ones make it up in the end by being owners and
| having a crew of 10-20 work for them, and earning margin on
| their labor. Regulation and professionalization (e.g. you
| need to be licensed) seem to encourage this.
|
| Good luck with this strategy after decades of declining and
| still to decline fertility rates.
| dylan604 wrote:
| A few years ago, the small company (4 people) I was at relocated
| to a new space that was as-is so we had to do the custom build
| out for it ourselves. Two of us are hardcore DIY types, so we
| took on the build ourselves. Part of that required electrical
| work. We found an electrician that worked with us on the plans
| and permits, but then allowed us to do the work for the internal
| wiring to the panel before he ran the mains with the explicit
| understanding that if there was anything that did not meet specs,
| he would not connect mains until it was corrected. So we bent
| conduit, pulled/labeled wires, wired the breaker, then held our
| breath when he came back for inspection. It was very satisfying
| when the electrician said it was better work than 90% of his
| employees. I wish I could find the pics I took of how clean the
| breaker panel was. The bending of the conduit and measure 3 times
| cut once was fun and frustrating at the same time, and the
| decisions on which way to run based on which route needed the
| least amount of bending was challenging and fun. I definitely
| have a much deeper appreciation of what electricians go through.
| It also made it very clear why I did not pursue that kind of
| construction career path my dad took and did everything he could
| do to have me not follow those footsteps. To this day, I find
| myself looking at the conduit work in places and admiring the
| work more than your normal person
| kencausey wrote:
| In my opinion, actually caring about the result makes all the
| difference.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Right, but it's hard to care to the same level when you're
| doing the work for your own use vs caring enough to do a job
| for someone else you may or may not know or like. Caring to
| do a good job for the sake of doing a good job is so not a
| common thing any more. Also, having the time to care and do
| everything to that precision for a single one-off type of job
| vs doing it every day is a whole other level of discipline.
| briffle wrote:
| Every time you see an article about "we cant find enough
| employees" its like they need to also include a second half of
| that sentance: "to match our requirements, at the wages we want
| to pay".
| mdorazio wrote:
| My brother is in HVAC, so my perspective on this is biased, but
| in general there's a blue collar shortage because the job still
| sucks.
|
| First, you have pretty high barriers to entry in the form of
| apprenticeships and per-state licensing requirements. Then you
| have the shit hours and shit customers that expect those shit
| hours. My brother got angry calls from customers because he dared
| to say no when they wanted him to ditch his daughter's birthday
| party on a Saturday to go fix their AC immediately. Then you have
| the actual pay which just isn't that great unless you're an
| established business owner with a good clientele - as others have
| pointed out (and the article itself points out), the real pay
| after you sort through all the outlier stories is pretty low.
|
| So, option A is you go to college, immediately get a job with
| zero hurdles up front, sit behind a desk from 9-5, and collect a
| solid paycheck. Option B is you go to trade school, then make
| next to nothing apprenticing for years, then you make somewhere
| around median income while driving a truck all over the place
| working in shitty conditions and getting chewed out by people who
| expect you to be available 24/7.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Not to mention the dating and marriage prospects without a
| college degree, even if you outearn a degree holder, are worse.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > My brother is in HVAC, so my perspective on this is biased,
| but in general there's a blue collar shortage because the job
| still sucks.
|
| It is not biased, it is common sense. The barrier to entry to
| being an electrician is sufficiently low in the sense that many
| people have the natural ability to learn and physically do the
| work.
|
| That must mean the pay to quality of life ratio is insufficient
| to attract enough workers (including excessively low pay to
| quality of life ratio during training).
| elbigbad wrote:
| > shit customers that expect those shit hours. My brother got
| angry calls from customers because he dared to say no when they
| wanted him to ditch his daughter's birthday party on a Saturday
| to go fix their AC immediately.
|
| Somewhat cautiously optimistically I think this sort of
| behavior will slowly disappear, one funeral at a time, as the
| Boomer generation finds the urn. I do not know or know of a
| single millennial in my first or second order groups that would
| ever dare to treat any service/blue collar person with anything
| but the utmost respect and deference.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Wow, what's the secret to being so awesome? A whole
| generation just gets it.
| Arrath wrote:
| Growing up, my dad would always reply "If I was in that
| much of a hurry, I would have come in yesterday." whenever
| e.g. a bank teller or cashier or whoever apologized for a
| slight delay. That kind of laid back attitude really took
| hold with me. Over the years I have realized that the rush
| and push really just adds stress (both to yourself and
| others) for no true benefit. Just as how for the average
| commute, speeding will generally save you at most a few
| minutes.
|
| To the GP's point about screaming at HVAC folks to come fix
| their equipment right now? Currently I'm waiting for a
| service guy to come look at my swamp cooler, when I reached
| out he was 10 days out thanks to being quite busy this time
| of year. To be expected, certainly. Sure, maybe I'll spend
| a day or two a little more uncomfortable than I might
| otherwise be since the cooler is not in service and its
| forecast to get warmer in the coming days, but what of it?
| Short term uncomfort is no big deal, maybe I'll sweat a
| little. I can always turn a fan on and take a cold shower.
| My grandparents didn't even have the luxury of a swamp
| cooler.
|
| I spend enough of my day under the gun of project managers,
| lawyers, owner's reps and schedulers all breathing down my
| neck to gain a day or two on a schedule, to make up for a
| delay that ate into float. That stress just isn't cool, I
| won't turn around and pass it on to anyone else, especially
| if they're going to be doing something good for me.
| uoaei wrote:
| Growing up in a time when the to-be-inherited extractivist
| mindset was challenged by the broad-range scarcity of
| affordable housing and other necessities caused by those
| who were extracting before they had capital to work with.
| calculatte wrote:
| I wonder which generation would have small children around
| this time. 75 year old boomers or 28 year old millenials?
| Must be the boomers
| elbigbad wrote:
| calculatte said: " I wonder which generation would have
| small children around this time. 75 year old boomers or 28
| year old millenials? Must be the boomers"
|
| I'm picking up sarcasm here, maybe mistakenly. The person
| being yelled at to leave his daughter's birthday party was
| not the Boomer here. The Boomer was the person making
| unreasonable and hostile demands that the person leave his
| daughter's birthday party.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Option A only exists for a select few STEM degrees. Otherwise,
| that solid paycheck doesn't really exist for a 4 year degree.
|
| Option B means you're getting paid while learning instead of
| shelling out $50k+ for a 4 year degree.
|
| "Shitty condtions" is subjective. A lot of people would call
| staring at a screen in a cube, under harsh fluorescent lights
| while breathing in your coworkers farts and getting obese from
| zero movement shitty.
|
| Also, you're severely underestimating what kinda money a
| tradesman can bring in. It's on par/better than a lot of 4 year
| degree holders without the debt part.
| [deleted]
| xattt wrote:
| > First, you have pretty high barriers to entry in the form of
| apprenticeships and per-state licensing requirements.
|
| Your brother's story can also be applied to the shortage of
| nurses/allied health staff in Canada.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > So, option A is you go to college, immediately get a job with
| zero hurdles up front, sit behind a desk from 9-5, and collect
| a solid paycheck.
|
| Ask the cohort of 2008-2011 how well that worked out for them.
|
| And in case it isn't obvious for someone - that's been the
| largest labor participation rate drop in modern history. On top
| of that, many people with college degrees from that period
| never actually landed a well-paying job and are still stuck in
| service and low-wage manual labor jobs.
|
| I bet many of them would have loved to have a trade job
| instead.
|
| Meanwhile, HVAC guys near me charge $700 to run a thermostat
| wire 5 feet.
|
| I mean maybe it sucks to work trades in a low COL area, but the
| tradesmen where I live make bank and have no trouble charging
| $80+/hr
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| How many hours per week are they billing?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And how many hours do they spend traveling from place to
| place? I suspect the total pay divided by total hours is
| nowhere near as impressive, even assuming they are W-2
| employees with a full set of tax advantaged benefits that a
| usual white collar employee would have.
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| > I mean maybe it sucks to work trades in a low COL area, but
| the tradesmen where I live make bank and have no trouble
| charging $80+/hr
|
| My neighbor just paid $100 an hour to have his fence painted.
|
| Actual tradesmen earn a lot more. I've talked to more than
| one plumber who has a _really_ nice house, better than
| anything I can afford as a software engineer, unless I get
| lucky with stock options at some point.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Everyone I know who does blue collar work echoes what you said.
|
| It's pretty broken on the other side of things too, presumably
| because the work sucks so much and is so variable that they are
| incentivized to milk every penny from those who appear like
| they can afford it.
|
| As a busy professional homeowner that is well-paid, I would
| gladly pay 50% more than the current going rate in town to know
| that a decent, workmanlike job would be done.
|
| The quality of the work is completely decoupled from the rates
| charged though, which kind of makes sense, as there are plenty
| of people in town who need HVAC/plumbing/electrical &c. work
| done who can't afford to pay over the going rate.
|
| It took me a decade to find a plumber that is honest (luckily
| they do decent work as well, but honest was hard enough of a
| bar to reach).
| cashsterling wrote:
| Counter anecdote...
|
| A good friend of mine in HS did one semester of college, said
| "nope. not for me" and became an electrician. Fast forward ~30
| years, he planning on retiring in a few years (could retire now
| if he wanted to).
|
| He's smart, worked hard, learned and taught himself as much as
| possible. Took & passed all tests asap, got his contractor's
| license asap, etc. Branched out to learn industrial controls
| and electrical too.
|
| I think pursuing a trade can be a really good way to go... but
| you need to go into it planning to learn & teach yourself and
| push the excel.
|
| I know welders who make >200k USD a year working 4-6 months a
| year. They are crazy skilled and know their craft inside and
| out... they know more metallurgical science than me (and way
| more practical knowledge about metal alloys) and I was chemical
| and materials engineering major.
|
| I know a master carpenter/craftsman who makea >500k a year,
| profit, doing high end cabinets, woodworking, furniture,
| building, kitchen remodels, etc.
| balderdash wrote:
| > Then you have the shit hours and shit customers that expect
| those shit hours.
|
| Not saying this is your brother's situation - but pretty much
| all of the HVAC companies I've dealt with tout their emergency
| repair services (if not 24/7 availability), and many of them
| include that when you buy a new HVAC system - so it seems
| pretty rational to expect those service provider to honor their
| claims
| meetingthrower wrote:
| It's a truly amazing market failure. Up here in New England, you
| can't get an electrician for love or money. And if you do, you
| are paying $75 an hour for the lowliest apprentice.
|
| But you go on Reddit, and the poor schlubs in the rest of the
| country are making <$20 an hour to start. You can make more at
| McDonalds.
|
| I talked to a friend of mine who runs a big corp electrician unit
| for a utility. He cannot hire anyone at the rates he wants to
| pay, and says he cannot pay them market because then he'd "have
| to reset the comp for his entire 100 man crew." The journeymen
| coming in are asking for more than supervisor pay (and they
| should be getting it!)
|
| I predict we are in for more inflation as this works its way
| through the system.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It's a truly amazing market failure.
|
| > He cannot hire anyone at the rates he wants to pay, and says
| he cannot pay them market because then he'd "have to reset the
| comp for his entire 100 man crew."
|
| A buyer not being able to afford what they want to buy is not
| market failure. Your friend cannot pay market rate either
| because the business they are in is no longer viable, or the
| business is inefficient (paying extra for someone or something
| it could be paying less).
| wizofaus wrote:
| Curious...why are his 100 man crew sticking with him if they're
| currently getting well under market rate?
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Humans don't like change.
| vkou wrote:
| Because when nobody actually pays market rate, market rate is
| what he pays them.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Security, comfort, etc. there's a reason many businesses
| habitually underpay - many don't leave regardless of pay.
| GalenErso wrote:
| This is where YouTube and DIY forums come in. It doesn't
| require advanced knowledge to perform most electrical repairs
| and maintenance oneself, and young people's practical skills
| have atrophied compared to their parents and grandparents at
| the same age, and I say this as one of those young people.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Hah! Exactly. You are talking to a guy who GCed his own house
| build, all trained off YouTube. And I've done a LOT of
| electrical as part of it. (But for the sake of speed I hired
| a crew to get the house wired up in 2 weeks. Also needed them
| for permits / inspections since it was a new build.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes I can't really think of any electrical job around the
| house that I could not do myself. Calling in an electrician
| to change an outlet is expensive because such trivial work is
| boring and they don't really want to do it. Sort of like
| hiring a senior developer to change a heading on a web page.
| So they charge a lot. They also have to cover the cost of
| travel to and from the house, even to change a $5 wall
| outlet.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| The issue is "on the job" training. Law, medicine,
| accounting, plumbing, welding, electrical, civil engineering
| all requires a certain amount of "working hours" measured in
| months and years before they let you take the
| certification/licensing exam. You can't always do it yourself
| and stay compliant with regulatory codes. This is a big
| problem because it allows existing players to exploit and
| play gatekeeper. Get rid of this requirement and many labor
| shortage issues will sort itself out. Don't allow
| institutions to be the gatekeeper. The certification exams
| are sufficient.
| PKop wrote:
| Partially because those parents and grandparents didn't think
| it necessary to teach them anything. At least there is
| YouTube now
| lutorm wrote:
| It requires a license though, otherwise it's illegal in most
| places. Youtube can't help with that.
| gota wrote:
| That is true - but the few hours I'd have to invest in this
| are better spent doing something else (or nothing at all,
| which is valuable).
|
| And I don't need to do these repairs and maintenance at a
| frequency which would make learnings 'stick'.
|
| Furthermore, I am afraid (or 'excessively cautious') of
| electricity, although that might stem from ignorance
|
| In contrast, I've learned to be my own accountant, of sorts,
| because I have to deal with it frequently enough, and have
| never heard of a person dying or becoming gravely injured
| from dealing with a spreadsheet in error
| samtho wrote:
| I apprenticed as an electrician in California briefly as my
| father was in construction. I decided quickly that I did not like
| crawling in hot attics, getting bit by black widows, and (worse
| of all) dealing with customers who think this is a minimum wage
| job.
| rcarr wrote:
| At this point in my life, I think I would quite happily become a
| tradie. Would anyone pay me a living wage whilst I was an
| apprentice? No. Will the government top up my wages so I can
| survive whilst on the apprenticeship? No. Will the government
| offer free or subsidised training so I can learn in my spare time
| whilst working another job? No.
|
| Will the government give a bunch of money away to their mates in
| dodgy covid contracts? Yes. Will they let bankers get away with
| tanking the entire economy? Yes. Will they do anything and
| everything they possibly can to support landlords who don't offer
| anything productive to the economy? Yes.
|
| In the words of the Joker, you get what you fucking deserve.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| The clear best option would be to get rid of the apprenticeship
| system - test for what they actually care about, greatly
| shorten the working experience period (engineers have to do
| 3-6mo on an education). If it was possible to get a sparky
| license in 3-6 months I'd probably do it!
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