17 ms·

A labor market conundrum: Skilled and high-paying blue-collar jobs go unfilled

29 points by fern12 9y ago

barnaclejive 9y ago
> The company pays manager trainees about $40,000 a year, and that’s just the beginning. Those in charge of top-grossing stores can earn $200,000, and in a few cases more than $1 million, including bonuses.
- richardwhiuk 9y ago
  That's definitely misleading. Lots of professions can earn $1M in a few cases.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    Heck, you only earn $200k running a "top-grossing store"? How rarified is that air? Even just limiting it to "managers" is grossly skewed, given they likely represent a fraction of the company's total headcount. The real question is, what is the median salary for an employee in each title/level in the organization.
- alttab 9y ago
  So, don't go to college and become a regional manager of a lumber company. I feel like the only reason they can even joke with a headline like this is technically the entry level positions don't require college degrees. My second guess is the current regional managers making over $1m a year have some type of extended formal education. I could be wrong here, but probably not. A casual search for "84 lumber manager" on LinkedIn produced 6 relevant listings on the front page - 5 of which had university degrees.
  - Merad 9y ago
    According to Wikipedia, 84 Lumber has about 250 store. I would hazard a guess that there is one manager and perhaps three assistant managers per store - about 1000 "well paying" jobs. I'd also bet that only a very small portion of their store managers, maybe 10-15%, make $200k+.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
fuzzybeard 9y ago
> “You can go to college and learn the theology of the Roman Empire,” says Kleis, who just completed a three-day training program at 84 Lumber’s rural Pennsylvania headquarters. “You learn all this ridiculous nonsense, and when you get out, what are you applying that to? I know how to frame a house.” This is so incredibly vapid and such a poor argument to make in favor of what is otherwise a valid case being made by the author. I can't believe Bloomberg used that quote.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- d-sc 9y ago
  As someone who has been surrounded by blue collar workers growing up. (Live on Farm and parents ran construction company). I would tend to agree with the quote. I am sophomore in college and it would appear that friends in high school who skipped out on college and are working now are economically and socially farther ahead in life than most of my classmates in college.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    I am sophomore in college and it would appear that friends in high school who skipped out on college and are working now are economically and socially farther ahead in life than most of my classmates in college. You're a sophomore. That makes you, what... 21? It's a bit early to be coming to conclusions about relative success. At that age, they could be managing a gas station and would appear to be "economically further ahead." The tortoise and the hare spring to mind. Wait ten years and then see how you're all doing.
  - crispyambulance 9y ago
    Give it a few years. There are exceptions, but for the most part those friends who never made it to college are going to be in dead-end or precarious jobs for much of their working lives. Some of your college buddies will too, but not nearly as many.
- StevePerkins 9y ago
micaksica 9y ago
While this is a clickbait article, it's probably worth many high schoolers recognizing that compensation is simply unevenly distributed. There's an increasing realization that going to college does not give you a fast track to FTE status in many industries anymore, and there needs to be a better understanding of the fact that the job market is, well, a market, and salaries will adjust based upon the supply of that market. I think a lot of current CS hopefuls coming in as freshmen are going to see a shocking market adjustment when there are tens of thousands of juniors competing for the same jobs, just as we saw with law degrees after the last recession. There are way more JDs than there are good attorney jobs, and even fewer partner positions that really bring in the money. Market dynamics affect one's well being less when you are not shooting simply for compensation, but also job satisfaction. Of course, in our society, highly indebted students are forced to be all about the money and not about the satisfaction. This doesn't lead to successful careers. It leads to burnout, disillusionment, and ennui.
- trendia 9y ago
  I'm not sure the comparison between CS and law is totally appropriate. Law protects existing wealth, while CS can create new wealth. That implies that there is not some "fixed" number of CS jobs for which everyone is competing; some CS grads will start companies that will employ 5 or 10 other CS grads.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  >> Market dynamics affect one's well being less when you are not shooting simply for compensation, but also job satisfaction. Of course, in our society, highly indebted students are forced to be all about the money and not about the satisfaction. This doesn't lead to successful careers. It leads to burnout, disillusionment, and ennui. ------ Can confirm. Had to leave university at the onset of the last recession (starting 2007-2008). From then until very recently I was able to make reasonable coping money, but not doing anything I really enjoyed. Sold televisions on commission, worked my way up in a warehouse (film/tv) equipment maintenance and repair to management, drove forklift, freelanced (much harder to make enough money there to cover student loans). I'm, after nearly ten years, just getting into a pace where I'm making a little more money, and in a field I can leverage to greater effect in the future. It's still not overly satisfying, but I live better than I have. Ennui and disillusionment are familiar modes... my most common feeling is that of boredom and worry that I'm wasting the best years of my life. I really don't want that to happen to a new round of minds. It fosters the worst thoughts and feelings in people, especially in those who are or become emotionally vulnerable in any way. And let me say, getting by on $10 groceries a week will help to render one vulnerable real quickly. edit: Well aware of my first world problems. This is very much in the context of North America.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dang 9y ago
We have replaced the article's title with a representative phrase from its body in the hope of saving this thread from the dreaded title fever.
- fern12 9y ago
  Thanks, this is my first case of title fever. Hoping to develop some immunity.
  - dang 9y ago
    Heh. It's actually fun to find just the right phrase embedded in the text, that can be swapped in as an HN title—it's like mushroom hunting. There almost always is something suitable, but this time it was a perfect specimen, down to punctuation. Of course we only need to do this when the original title is baity or misleading (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but we've learned that when it is necessary, it's far better to take language from the article itself than to make up one's own. If you find the right phrase, ideally you don't even to change a word. The only thing I did after pasting the above was s/a/A/.
southphillyman 9y ago
Betting on any kind of physical retail profession seems pretty risky to me now days.
RealityNow 9y ago
> 84 Lumber’s owner, Maggie Hardy Magerko, has something in common with the president. Both inherited businesses from their fathers that have made them fabulously rich. Magerko owns almost all of closely held 84 Lumber, whose stores cater primarily to residential builders and contractors. She is worth $2.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. > Magerko, 51, is not afraid to flaunt her wealth, sending a message to her workers that they too can get rich working construction. Wearing a diamond cross necklace, a Gucci belt, and a white shirt emblazoned with the company logo, she visited a rural Pennsylvania store recently in a white Mercedes. “I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own boats,” she says. So essentially, the best way to achieve the American Dream is to inherit a successful business from your parents. Capitalism is sort of like a pyramid scheme - The owner(s) at the top reaping all the benefits, while everyone else is plumbing away in hope of the "American Dream".
- mgummelt 9y ago
  Most of the Forbes 400 are self-made: https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-are-more-self-made-billionaires-in-the-forbes-400-than-ever-before https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-...
  - extra88 9y ago
    Yes, but their definition of self-made to include people who "got a head start from wealthy parents and moneyed background," like Rupert Murdoch. I think most people would consider the next level on their scale, "came from a middle- or upper-middle-class background" (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg) to be a more appropriate cut-off. Not for nothing, but the Forbes 400 list that year included Elizabeth Holmes because of her 50% stake in Theranos, valued at $9 billion; last year it was valued at $800 million. This is not the only example of wealth being more made-up than self-made.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  “I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own boats,” she says. God that sounds terrible anyway. Do that many people want to retire - literally have nothing greater than themselves that requires their input on a daily basis - and go sit on a boat? What a waste.
bsder 9y ago
These kinds of clickbait headlines actually are a disservice to trade jobs. Trade jobs are good jobs. However, my experience shows that the trades in the US are actually not that unfilled, actually. Trade salaries aren't going up--the classic sign of unmet demand.
zucchini_head 9y ago
I have a little story about this kind of thing, where doing something rather simple and low-skill can make an absolute fortune. One night I was talking to an older friend of a friend, 50+, around a year ago now. We were talking about what we did for a living and what we got paid. We started off with what he did: He's a bricklayer, nothing more, and told me that they get paid per brick they lay. It's something like £4 per brick. What shocked me was an experienced bricklayer like him usually lays enough bricks to make around £400/day. "That's almost £150,000/year!" I said, trying to not sound too envious or anything (spoiler: I failed). And this doesn't include the one-off jobs they get every weekend from rich foreigners who have extravagant houses built in the UK all the time. All in all it can amount to some very large amounts of zeros in your bank. In a few years he became a millionaire from bricklaying. I have since then talked to a few others who are in that trade and it all (anecdotally) corroborates, approximately (the older you are the more you get picked for "specialist" properties that involve very rich Chinese and Arabians apparently, which can make you ~£1,000 in one weekend). I asked, as any sane person would, something along the lines of "why isn't everyone and his dog laying bricks?". And the reply was very intriguing. He said essentially that younger people these days (my age) don't want to lay bricks every day now, or don't have the stamina. They want to go on their phones and become world-famous and important and work on new gizmos and apps every day and be looked at by everyone and be payed attention to, etc, etc. Since then I've not really been able to get my head around it all. It seems like although we talk about automation stealing jobs and everybody will have to be a "techie" to make any sort of decent living, there is definitely a small "elite" minority doing these very old-fashioned jobs that no-one wants or can do anymore. I fear sometimes that we (the younger generation) are slowly going mad with technology, and forgetting about the practical skills. What our own two hands were made to do so to speak. We never got on to what I do in the end funnily enough. Anyway, more relevantly, this lumberyard article is just a (slightly Americanised) theme of the above. It's these jobs that were done for a pittance in the past (sometimes even by slaves and prisoners), and now are these trades that sometimes are paying exorbitant salaries, just simply because nobody wants to do it, because no-one can be bothered anymore. Apologies if this was long and off-topic, but I hope it's left some kind of thought somewhere.
- inovica 9y ago
Animats 9y ago
Construction jobs come and go with housing starts. Construction work is high-paying but intermittent. Other problems: if you work at the only factory in town, the factory has total power over you. You can't quit and get another job. If the factory closes, the town dies. Or goes into zombie mode - no jobs, young people leave, population ages, buildings are abandoned. Too many US towns and small cities are like that. Relocating to a one-factory town is risky. You can be trapped there, especially if you buy a house. 84 Lumber HQ is in a town with 700 people. Companies in bigger cities tend to have less trouble recruiting. The labor pool is bigger. They can raise wages if they need more workers, which tends to push wages up in urban areas.

29 points by fern12 9y ago

> The company pays manager trainees about $40,000 a year, and that’s just the beginning. Those in charge of top-grossing stores can earn $200,000, and in a few cases more than $1 million, including bonuses.

richardwhiuk 9y ago
That's definitely misleading. Lots of professions can earn $1M in a few cases.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  Heck, you only earn $200k running a "top-grossing store"? How rarified is that air? Even just limiting it to "managers" is grossly skewed, given they likely represent a fraction of the company's total headcount. The real question is, what is the median salary for an employee in each title/level in the organization.
alttab 9y ago
So, don't go to college and become a regional manager of a lumber company. I feel like the only reason they can even joke with a headline like this is technically the entry level positions don't require college degrees. My second guess is the current regional managers making over $1m a year have some type of extended formal education. I could be wrong here, but probably not. A casual search for "84 lumber manager" on LinkedIn produced 6 relevant listings on the front page - 5 of which had university degrees.
- Merad 9y ago
  According to Wikipedia, 84 Lumber has about 250 store. I would hazard a guess that there is one manager and perhaps three assistant managers per store - about 1000 "well paying" jobs. I'd also bet that only a very small portion of their store managers, maybe 10-15%, make $200k+.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

fuzzybeard 9y ago

> “You can go to college and learn the theology of the Roman Empire,” says Kleis, who just completed a three-day training program at 84 Lumber’s rural Pennsylvania headquarters. “You learn all this ridiculous nonsense, and when you get out, what are you applying that to? I know how to frame a house.” This is so incredibly vapid and such a poor argument to make in favor of what is otherwise a valid case being made by the author. I can't believe Bloomberg used that quote.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
d-sc 9y ago
As someone who has been surrounded by blue collar workers growing up. (Live on Farm and parents ran construction company). I would tend to agree with the quote. I am sophomore in college and it would appear that friends in high school who skipped out on college and are working now are economically and socially farther ahead in life than most of my classmates in college.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  I am sophomore in college and it would appear that friends in high school who skipped out on college and are working now are economically and socially farther ahead in life than most of my classmates in college. You're a sophomore. That makes you, what... 21? It's a bit early to be coming to conclusions about relative success. At that age, they could be managing a gas station and would appear to be "economically further ahead." The tortoise and the hare spring to mind. Wait ten years and then see how you're all doing.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  Give it a few years. There are exceptions, but for the most part those friends who never made it to college are going to be in dead-end or precarious jobs for much of their working lives. Some of your college buddies will too, but not nearly as many.
StevePerkins 9y ago

micaksica 9y ago

While this is a clickbait article, it's probably worth many high schoolers recognizing that compensation is simply unevenly distributed. There's an increasing realization that going to college does not give you a fast track to FTE status in many industries anymore, and there needs to be a better understanding of the fact that the job market is, well, a market, and salaries will adjust based upon the supply of that market. I think a lot of current CS hopefuls coming in as freshmen are going to see a shocking market adjustment when there are tens of thousands of juniors competing for the same jobs, just as we saw with law degrees after the last recession. There are way more JDs than there are good attorney jobs, and even fewer partner positions that really bring in the money. Market dynamics affect one's well being less when you are not shooting simply for compensation, but also job satisfaction. Of course, in our society, highly indebted students are forced to be all about the money and not about the satisfaction. This doesn't lead to successful careers. It leads to burnout, disillusionment, and ennui.

trendia 9y ago
I'm not sure the comparison between CS and law is totally appropriate. Law protects existing wealth, while CS can create new wealth. That implies that there is not some "fixed" number of CS jobs for which everyone is competing; some CS grads will start companies that will employ 5 or 10 other CS grads.
52-6F-62 9y ago
>> Market dynamics affect one's well being less when you are not shooting simply for compensation, but also job satisfaction. Of course, in our society, highly indebted students are forced to be all about the money and not about the satisfaction. This doesn't lead to successful careers. It leads to burnout, disillusionment, and ennui. ------ Can confirm. Had to leave university at the onset of the last recession (starting 2007-2008). From then until very recently I was able to make reasonable coping money, but not doing anything I really enjoyed. Sold televisions on commission, worked my way up in a warehouse (film/tv) equipment maintenance and repair to management, drove forklift, freelanced (much harder to make enough money there to cover student loans). I'm, after nearly ten years, just getting into a pace where I'm making a little more money, and in a field I can leverage to greater effect in the future. It's still not overly satisfying, but I live better than I have. Ennui and disillusionment are familiar modes... my most common feeling is that of boredom and worry that I'm wasting the best years of my life. I really don't want that to happen to a new round of minds. It fosters the worst thoughts and feelings in people, especially in those who are or become emotionally vulnerable in any way. And let me say, getting by on $10 groceries a week will help to render one vulnerable real quickly. edit: Well aware of my first world problems. This is very much in the context of North America.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dang 9y ago

We have replaced the article's title with a representative phrase from its body in the hope of saving this thread from the dreaded title fever.

fern12 9y ago
Thanks, this is my first case of title fever. Hoping to develop some immunity.
- dang 9y ago
  Heh. It's actually fun to find just the right phrase embedded in the text, that can be swapped in as an HN title—it's like mushroom hunting. There almost always is something suitable, but this time it was a perfect specimen, down to punctuation. Of course we only need to do this when the original title is baity or misleading (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but we've learned that when it is necessary, it's far better to take language from the article itself than to make up one's own. If you find the right phrase, ideally you don't even to change a word. The only thing I did after pasting the above was s/a/A/.

southphillyman 9y ago

Betting on any kind of physical retail profession seems pretty risky to me now days.

RealityNow 9y ago

> 84 Lumber’s owner, Maggie Hardy Magerko, has something in common with the president. Both inherited businesses from their fathers that have made them fabulously rich. Magerko owns almost all of closely held 84 Lumber, whose stores cater primarily to residential builders and contractors. She is worth $2.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. > Magerko, 51, is not afraid to flaunt her wealth, sending a message to her workers that they too can get rich working construction. Wearing a diamond cross necklace, a Gucci belt, and a white shirt emblazoned with the company logo, she visited a rural Pennsylvania store recently in a white Mercedes. “I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own boats,” she says. So essentially, the best way to achieve the American Dream is to inherit a successful business from your parents. Capitalism is sort of like a pyramid scheme - The owner(s) at the top reaping all the benefits, while everyone else is plumbing away in hope of the "American Dream".

mgummelt 9y ago
Most of the Forbes 400 are self-made: https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-are-more-self-made-billionaires-in-the-forbes-400-than-ever-before https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-...
- extra88 9y ago
  Yes, but their definition of self-made to include people who "got a head start from wealthy parents and moneyed background," like Rupert Murdoch. I think most people would consider the next level on their scale, "came from a middle- or upper-middle-class background" (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg) to be a more appropriate cut-off. Not for nothing, but the Forbes 400 list that year included Elizabeth Holmes because of her 50% stake in Theranos, valued at $9 billion; last year it was valued at $800 million. This is not the only example of wealth being more made-up than self-made.
AndrewKemendo 9y ago
“I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own boats,” she says. God that sounds terrible anyway. Do that many people want to retire - literally have nothing greater than themselves that requires their input on a daily basis - and go sit on a boat? What a waste.

bsder 9y ago

These kinds of clickbait headlines actually are a disservice to trade jobs. Trade jobs are good jobs. However, my experience shows that the trades in the US are actually not that unfilled, actually. Trade salaries aren't going up--the classic sign of unmet demand.

zucchini_head 9y ago

I have a little story about this kind of thing, where doing something rather simple and low-skill can make an absolute fortune. One night I was talking to an older friend of a friend, 50+, around a year ago now. We were talking about what we did for a living and what we got paid. We started off with what he did: He's a bricklayer, nothing more, and told me that they get paid per brick they lay. It's something like £4 per brick. What shocked me was an experienced bricklayer like him usually lays enough bricks to make around £400/day. "That's almost £150,000/year!" I said, trying to not sound too envious or anything (spoiler: I failed). And this doesn't include the one-off jobs they get every weekend from rich foreigners who have extravagant houses built in the UK all the time. All in all it can amount to some very large amounts of zeros in your bank. In a few years he became a millionaire from bricklaying. I have since then talked to a few others who are in that trade and it all (anecdotally) corroborates, approximately (the older you are the more you get picked for "specialist" properties that involve very rich Chinese and Arabians apparently, which can make you ~£1,000 in one weekend). I asked, as any sane person would, something along the lines of "why isn't everyone and his dog laying bricks?". And the reply was very intriguing. He said essentially that younger people these days (my age) don't want to lay bricks every day now, or don't have the stamina. They want to go on their phones and become world-famous and important and work on new gizmos and apps every day and be looked at by everyone and be payed attention to, etc, etc. Since then I've not really been able to get my head around it all. It seems like although we talk about automation stealing jobs and everybody will have to be a "techie" to make any sort of decent living, there is definitely a small "elite" minority doing these very old-fashioned jobs that no-one wants or can do anymore. I fear sometimes that we (the younger generation) are slowly going mad with technology, and forgetting about the practical skills. What our own two hands were made to do so to speak. We never got on to what I do in the end funnily enough. Anyway, more relevantly, this lumberyard article is just a (slightly Americanised) theme of the above. It's these jobs that were done for a pittance in the past (sometimes even by slaves and prisoners), and now are these trades that sometimes are paying exorbitant salaries, just simply because nobody wants to do it, because no-one can be bothered anymore. Apologies if this was long and off-topic, but I hope it's left some kind of thought somewhere.

inovica 9y ago

Animats 9y ago

Construction jobs come and go with housing starts. Construction work is high-paying but intermittent. Other problems: if you work at the only factory in town, the factory has total power over you. You can't quit and get another job. If the factory closes, the town dies. Or goes into zombie mode - no jobs, young people leave, population ages, buildings are abandoned. Too many US towns and small cities are like that. Relocating to a one-factory town is risky. You can be trapped there, especially if you buy a house. 84 Lumber HQ is in a town with 700 people. Companies in bigger cities tend to have less trouble recruiting. The labor pool is bigger. They can raise wages if they need more workers, which tends to push wages up in urban areas.