26 ms·

High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up for University

• tabeth 9y ago
  Unfortunately, in a classist society no one wants to do what they perceive to be "grunt work". The good news is that there's a natural equilibrium that will be met as the waves of graduates see their ROI decrease, save for those who attend a handful of elite universities.
  • wufufufu 9y ago
    I was just thinking about this. Even as an engineer (which I consider to be a trade job where it helps if you go to college), my social status won't ever approach that of a seasoned doctor, professor, and maybe lawyer. Even if I get up to L7, it's just not the same as perceived by society.
    • lotsofpulp 9y ago
      If engineers started making the same amount of money as doctors, then it would.
      • cimmanom 9y ago
        Engineers do make as much money as GPs. Just not as much as prominent specialists and surgeons (unless the engineers themselves are experts in a high end specialty). Plus engineers don't have to take on hundreds of thousands in education debt or sacrifice the first 10 years out of college to unpaid or low-paid training.
        • lotsofpulp 9y ago
          The distribution of an engineers income is quite wide, whereas almost all doctors are $200k+, with (if I extrapolate from my network) many in the $400k+ range. The only people I know making that much who don't have their own businesses are lawyers/finance/programmers in the big cities. Also, doctors have historically made a lot of money, while computer engineers have only recently started making that kind of money.
          • Fomite 9y ago
            Engineers don't have med school debt, which is a huge factor in MD pay (the number of doctors I know who think about financial decisions in terms of loan payments is staggering). Also, one of the other cited professions, professors, are paid considerably less than that.
          • notyourday 9y ago
            Very few doctors make that kind of money until they are in their late forties. Also, do remember that the doctors that do make that kind of money, have student loan payments on $250k-$500k loans
            • lotsofpulp 9y ago
              Maybe I'm biased towards doctors in bigger/richer cities, but when I'm looking for investors, my first stop is doctors. Even the loans of a few hundred thousand are no problem for them to slay, especially since many get married to other similar high earners. I don't know the most reliable sites for stating pay for doctors, but in my experience these numbers are accurate: https://careertrend.com/starting-salary-doctors-right-out-residency-35655.html https://careertrend.com/starting-salary-doctors-right-out-re... http://time.com/4408807/surgeon-salary-how-much-doctors-make/ http://time.com/4408807/surgeon-salary-how-much-doctors-make...
              • notyourday 9y ago
                I would not put much stock into those numbers - for example, they are not even remotely close to who makes the highest - those are going to be neurosurgeons who start at over $250k and within a few years make close to a million - those numbers however should not be used for anything meaningful as there are so few of them.
                • deleted 9y ago
                  [deleted]
            • davidsawyer 9y ago
      • wufufufu 9y ago
        That's not true. Doctors have more process to go through to become legitimate (college, med school are both strictly required), where as you can become a SWE without those. You can be a successful SWE with only a high school diploma. The occupation of a doctor is a position of power. You always have people working under you -- nurses, students, medical staff. The fundamental interaction between patient and doctor has a power imbalance. The patient comes to the doctor for help and listens to the doctor's authority in the subject. It's also a more social position than SWE. You talk to people as part of your job. I can get by never talking to anyone as a SWE. It's easier to accumulate a balanced social group as a doctor.
        • lotsofpulp 9y ago
          It's the exclusivity (mostly, in my opinion) that bestows the status. A retail store or hotel manager or any type of manager are similar positions of power, but obviously based on their lack of pay, it's not exclusive. There is a bit of the life saving aspect of it, but people in my experience hold successful business owners, prominent lawyers, hedge fund managers and traders in similar regard. People that make more money useful and know other people who also make more money are or can be useful to you, hence the status. I'm sure some engineers working at Google/Facebook/Apple/etc have similar statuses.
          • wufufufu 9y ago
            Comparing these occupations has been entertaining. A truly successful business owner is the best IMO -- it's the only one that isn't capped in the amount of money you can earn, but society is jaded by people who have "Entrepreneur" as their occupation on LinkedIn and just occasionally do photography or whatever. I would say "EM at Google" is better than a GP, but orthopedic surgeon is better than "EM at Google".
        • triviatise 9y ago
          not entirely true. Socializing medicine has reduced their power significantly. Even in the mid 90s my father was friends with many doctors who wished they could switch into computer science. My GP just quit medicine because she was basically a grunt for the health system, the last straw was when they started to adjust her hours like a retail employee. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Tech doesnt have nearly the regulation, the slow pace of innovation, and lack of mobility that medicine has. Professors are the worst and are not well paid at all, unless they are able to do consulting on the side. I personally have owned my own company for around 18 years. I dont care about status, but I want to generate enough $$ to not have to worry about money. The money I make is about the same as my friends that are at top tier jobs in the bay area. Though my income fluctuates between 300-600k and theirs tends to be more steady. My wife doesnt work and so many of my friends with two more modest tech incomes make about the same as I do.
      • saint_fiasco 9y ago
        I think doctors work harder, though. Do they earn more per hour or just per year?
        • lotsofpulp 9y ago
          Across the whole profession, they definitely earn more per hour. I'm sure some superstar engineers or AI people blow them out of the water with equity and whatnot, but you can't find a more consistently high paying field. My dental surgeon was recently paid $650 to remove a wisdom tooth, which took him and 1 nurse a total of 5 minutes. Even if you assume 75% of that is overhead, that is still $170 per hour and he immediately went on to see other patients.
          • saint_fiasco 9y ago
            What about all the training they need? Maybe they make more per hour, and more per year, but also work fewer years because they have to study, or work for cheap, for a long time before they reach their top earning potential. I googled for life time earnings by profession and found this document by the US census bureau that makes it seem like they earn similarly (and engineers make a bit more), but they mix nurses and technicians together with doctors and surgeons. https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr11-04.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr11-04.pdf
      • jnwatson 9y ago
        They do and can. According to Payscale, US GPs make an average of $170,955. Lots of engineers make that.
        • asdsa5325 9y ago
          But engineers that make 170+ are above average, not average.
    • notyourday 9y ago
      Are you making > 250k/year? If so you have just outscored most of lawyers and doctors. You are still below professors if you measure success by the number of coeds that want to sleep with you regardless of how you look like but you can always find solace in being able to afford to spend $200 on dinner.
      • wufufufu 9y ago
        You can make 250k/year until your vesting period ends lol
  • no_wizard 9y ago
    In my experience, and please remember, this is in my experience: I have straddled both sides of this fence through my life. My parents where "laborers" (my dad build boats & my mother was a cook at a nursing home). I also was lucky enough that my father was also somewhat intellectual and read a lot (not something I have found, again in my experience to be as common among the groups of people I was exposed to that you would typically associate with trades & manufacturing/construction laborers) so between that and being in the Army (which I also observed as one of the best upward mobility machines in terms of class, pay, benefits and achievement, ironically) he knew lots of people who were Engineers, Architects, Business owners etc. as well From all that experience, as well as my own personal experience having friends from multiple types of backgrounds, I have observed the follow again, my own experience and opinions: This is what I found to be true: - People who do trade jobs are respected by most (if not all) my quote unquote 'intellectual' or 'upper class' friends (those smart enough to value their labor, myself included) Even my friends or the friends of my parents growing up who where multimillionaires (including one family who had 2 state governors in it). I know this isn't universal, just a general observation. - They have always tended to favor policies (politically speaking) & outlooks that would actually benefit this group of folks the most - There isn't any classicism bias in as so far as I could tell among anyone I know who would be defined as well educated, wealthy, upper class etc. However, I see this stigma come up a lot, and I have to wonder, is it those looking down or those looking above who perpetuate it? I say that because: - Being around a lot of families that had roots in working trades, I found they often would have resent against those who they considered 'upper class', without much or any evidence as to why this opinion has formed. I always found this fascinating, because its typically their target market (with exceptions of course). - Most trades people I knew typically didn't seem to value education as much (i know its a stereotype, but it did play out in my experience) - Many, many MANY (with the exception of the ever dwindling Unionized tradesmen) favored economic/political policies and had outlooks that would be long term damaging to them (One of the biggest protesters where I grew up of universal health care? Ironically, those who aren't poor enough for govt assistance but aren't well off enough to pay full flight for their medical care (even after insurance). E.g. Those who would benefit the most!) - And often, these are the folks who look down on their own jobs the most. Now, all of these have caveats, exceptions, edge cases, what have you. I knew those who worked trades that did value education, had lots of logical & grounded philosophical beliefs, etc etc etc and I grew up around people who had carpentry businesses who were multimillionaires before they were 40. So its not hard and fast how this plays out. I know i'm rambling a bit here, but I feel like this stigma may not be caused by those looking down, but perhaps, those looking up.
  • asdsa5325 9y ago
    It's not classism, people don't want to do grunt work because it's tiring...
• Xeoncross 9y ago
  I've found that the biggest contributor to make more money (beside right time/right place) is being exposed to more things that alert me to new industries and opportunities. College can do this. So can changing jobs. So can travel.
• MrFantastic 9y ago
  High paying trade jobs that have the highest risk of injury and death. Automated construction will start in the next 10 years.
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    Carpenters, plumbers, electricians? None of those jobs seem particularly dangerous, and you can't get an assembly line robot to make a house call.
    • lotsofpulp 9y ago
      Just having to drive places all day increases your risks a lot. Plus constantly bending over into tight places, dealing with rusty sharp metals, electricity, power tools. Doing that over a 50 year career, I'm sure the individual risks add up.
      • Apocryphon 9y ago
        I'm not saying it's not hard physical work, with potential health problems, but I don't think that's "dangerous."
        • lotsofpulp 9y ago
          Dangerous in the context of which career would you choose, a plumber at $50k where work is intermittent and you can get hurt and be out on your ass, or study for accounting or programming or any other office position where you have pretty much zero risk, but you'll probably making even more money and at a stable employer.
          • djrogers 9y ago
            Sitting at a desk in an office all day is a recipe for a heart attack. Every job has it's dangers and tradeoffs.
• gnarcoregrizz 9y ago
  50k/year is high paying? also, construction seems more prone to boom/bust cycles. the outlook looks good though considering the pent-up demand. you can make a lot of money in the trades (really, a lot) if you open your own business though, but that's a whole different skillset. edit* 50k in seattle
  • jklein11 9y ago
    Its probably pretty close to the average starting salary of college grads without having to be out of the workforce for 4 years and paying tuition.
    • dlp211 9y ago
      Probably, might even be better, but what is the likely salary progression. College grads still earn nearly $1MM more over their lifetimes.
      • wagecuck 9y ago
        Does this statistic still hold true for millennials though? Seems to be inflated by boomers and gen x, who got their degrees when they still meant something.
      • RightMillennial 9y ago
        Do you happen to know if that is the mean or median, or how it skews? I've heard this statistic before and I'm curious about the details.
        • dlp211 9y ago
          I've seen charts on the BLS site that show percentile vs. percentile and at the median salaries, it was about $1MM. It goes down, but there is still a substantial gap for the 10th and 25th percentile, and the gap grows for higher percentiles. I can't find it right now, but here is a comparison of weekly median salaries in 2014: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means-more-pay-in-2014.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/more-education-still-means...
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  I have always thought that one of the best non-college requiring jobs in plumbing. It won't be outsourced. When people have a plumbing emergency, they usually prioritize getting it fixed as fast as possible over cost. In addition, it takes only a few tries of "do it yourself plumbing" to convince a person that they would rather pay someone than deal with leaks. It is a shame that we push an expensive college degree on people who will end up getting paid less and having less job security.
  • ManFromUranus 9y ago
    I think it's actually elevator mechanic, but I agree with everything you said
• antisthenes 9y ago
  A few key points that these articles usually miss. 1. $50,000 is not enough money to become a homeowner by yourself and not nearly enough for upward mobility. Missing 4 years of college and the ability to mingle within your peers is a significant part of the rising cost of college. There are articles that show womens preferences towards men with similar education levels. 2. When you account for the health hazards and potential issues down the road with your joints and other components of your body, the pay isn't that high. Cost of medical coverage continues to rise and I'm not sure that going into the trades or into business for yourself in general is a valid path for the majority of high school graduates. 3. There are high paying skilled trades, but they have caveats of their own. For example, underwater welding, is not only extremely dangerous, but also, very likely, seasonal and not anchored to any one location, requiring someone to be constantly mobile. 4. What matters isn't how much the job pays compared to a state or national average. It's whether it pays more than the median for the radius where the tradesperson will be operating.
  • watwut 9y ago
    Women with bachelor are more likely to marry to people without BA (35%) then males with bachelor (22%). At least according to data I have seen last. Fun fact: engineers are least likely to marry people without degree, female criminal justice majors most (60%). So his chances to marry are not that bad, assuming the dude wants to marry settle down and have kids. Marriage does not require home ownership either.
  • flubert 9y ago
    >1. $50,000 is not enough money to become a homeowner by yourself 1900 sq. ft., $44,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/709-East-St-Spencer-SD-57374/2110985274_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/709-East-St-Spencer-SD-57... 2342 sq. ft., $46,500 -- https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/KS/77201215_zpid/23_rid/10000-50000_price/40-201_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.747012,-91.285401,34.034452,-105.347901_rect/5_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/KS/77201215_zpid/23_ri... 1800 sq. ft., $39,900 -- https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/WV/2089907837_zpid/61_rid/10000-50000_price/40-201_mp/globalrelevanceex_sort/41.071069,-76.668091,36.738884,-83.699341_rect/6_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/WV/2089907837_zpid/61_...
• protonimitate 9y ago
  Trade skills are a great field to get into, with caveats. First, construction in general is a pretty up and down industry. Construction booms don't last forever, and in general you need to 'follow the work'. This is great if you are young, single, and willing to chase the high paying jobs. Not so great if you have a strong desire to stay in one spot. Second, trade jobs are usually pretty tough on the body. After a couple decades of work your body begins to break down, assuming there are no workplace injuries to put you out of commission sooner. Third, workplace conditions are on average undesirable. Outdoors in the heat/cold, or indoors in tight spaces or high places. It's tough sell over companies that glorify bean bag chairs, nap pods, and free beer on hand. Fourth, there's a social stigma around trade skill jobs. Blue collar jobs have gained a reputation of being jobs held by slackers or the less fortunate. Unfortunately, wearing workboots carries a stigma that wearing a shirt and tie/'startup' attire doesn't. Fifth, and this one may seem like a silly reason to most, the drug testing (for marijuana specifically) is a huge barrier of entry. From a safety perspective, it makes sense. But for better or worse, marijuana use is becoming more socially accepted while work places (and in particular trade jobs) are lagging behind the times. Removing a marijuana screen from standard workplace testing would help revitalize the employee pool. Sixth, and this is arguably the biggest one, four year degrees are seen as a status symbol and are being sold to use as such. They are Big Education, and are pulling on all the right strings to keep the tuition/student debt machine running. Advocating for trade jobs is in direct competition. They have enough players in their pockets (donors, alumnus, politicians) to keep the money flowing in the right direction. Selling someone on trade school/work is hard when it is seen as the less optimal path towards 'life success'. All of these observations are based off my fathers experience as union based pipe fitter/welder for >30 years.
  • polskibus 9y ago
    You missed the advertised by media doom of those jobs by automation and artificial intelligence.
    • EADGBE 9y ago
      Of all the jobs to automate, I see the building trades being replaced last.
• no_wizard 9y ago
  The only downside to these kinds of jobs is while they’re in demand now there is zero guarantees they will be 10 years from now I think trade jobs have the highest long term stability risk IMHO but this is based on anecdotal evidence Sever folks I know when from the mid 2000s (post crash) learned trades from plumbing to carpenters to skilled machining. Only the skilled machinist has not been laid off at least once nor had to move for where they live to get work (or travel more than 20 minutes) My engineer graduate friends? Never even faced possible unemployment
  • ryandrake 9y ago
    You just need to live through a bad crash. Engineers aren’t immune. I’ve been unemployed twice, both tech downturns. It’s not fun.
    • no_wizard 9y ago
      I lived through 99 and 07. In 99 when the crash was burning the tech industry to the ground I remember lots of people I knew for jobs in financial companies working on tech. Ironically when that all went up in smoke in 07 they all went back to working for tech sector companies again. The growth lives somewhere. You do have to make an effort to stay marketable though and that can be tough
      • bdcravens 9y ago
        It's a matter of skillset. In 2001 many who only knew a smaller language struggled; those who knew what "boring" companies needed were fine. Similarly in the next crash I think we'll see those who specialize in the hippest JS frameworks have problems; the .net and Java folks will be fine.
  • mmumma 9y ago
    >Sever folks Did you mean several?
    • no_wizard 9y ago
• gbacon 9y ago
  Everyone in college isn’t cut out for medical school or law school. This is neither controversial nor a judgment against us laymen. Not everyone in high school is cut out for college either. People working the skilled trades make a comfortable living. An awful disservice perpetrated by the education establishment is sneering at vocational training as a fallback option for losers. The skilled trades are entirely honorable. Thinking of it in economic terms, labor is not a homogeneous factor. We are not interchangeable cogs in some machine. Shunting anyone into vocational training — or into a college-bound track, for that matter! — because of ignorant ideas about anyone’s “place” in society is evil and wrong.
  • lotsofpulp 9y ago
    If the "skilled" trades offered enough pay, then they would automatically become honorable. The lack of pay commensurate to the risk of injury, variable work schedules, not being home every night, etc causes the status.
    • adventured 9y ago
      Plumbers earn a median salary of about $54,500 in the US. That's comparable to the median household income in Sweden. It's ~150% higher than the median individual income in the UK. Skilled trades often pay moderately well in the US.
      • chongli 9y ago
        You can't compare US wages to Sweden and the UK. Those countries have robust health care and high quality public education. In the US you're going to pay a lot for those things (or go without and really suffer).
        • lutorm 9y ago
          That depends on whether you're quoting pre-tax or net wages. Those robust health care and public education systems come out of people's taxes, after all.
• Apocryphon 9y ago
  "In all, some 30 million jobs in the United States that pay an average of $55,000 per year don't require bachelor's degrees, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce." One wonders how much they are paid in high CoL places like the Bay Area.
  • z4chj 9y ago
    I don't have any data to support this, but I would imagine that those high CoL areas are what causes that number to be up around $55,000. The numbers in the article from the individuals in the story were for the Seattle area. Although its no bay area, it isn't the midwest either. In most parts of the country that aren't the coasts or a major city, the average is probably significantly lower
• vpmpaul 9y ago
  Who considers 55-60k "high paying" especially when the job contains potential life threatening risks and other health issues. I wouldn't do much of that dangerous and exhausting work for double that pay range and I would still make less money than I do sitting at a desk now. I can put in <35 hrs a week, run errands during the day, work from home in my underwear, meet friends for long lunches. I do think there are downsides to the office life though. The politics and games of course. There are also the issues of needing to make sure you take time for your physical fitness. Its easy to forget or slack off on that one. I think the reality here is that those jobs are still majorly underpaid for the work involved when there are alternatives around every corner.
  • rdiddly 9y ago
    Young high-school grads for whom that's a lot of money and for whom the health risks are not quite as bad.
    • watwut 9y ago
      High-school grads are not immune to injuries and don't have savings to pay for healthcare if they get injured. They might be less risk averse on average, but that does not make health risk not relevant. Also, adults in their life who are older are likely to caution about occupation that is health risk even absent injuries - and although all wont listen, some will.
      • rdiddly 9y ago
        Did I say somehow that they were immune to injuries? I said the risks are not as bad. For example, they are, overall, statistically less likely to suffer any on-the-job injury attributable to inflexibility of muscles and tendons, obesity, loss of bone density/strength, Alzheimer's, arthritis, or dizziness from diabetes-related blood-sugar problems. Those are all risks that go up with age. They are also less likely to suffer any injury caused, or made worse, or made more likely, by some past injury they've already had, because they're likely to have had fewer of those. Also, even given the same exact injury, they will likely heal faster & better than someone even 10 years older. Black & white thinking doesn't really serve here. There's not some age before which 100% of people have none of the problems and after which 100% of people have all the problems. It's a continuum.
• Eylandos 9y ago
  Even with the wage these jobs garner, the perception is still there. When you tell people you do blue collar work, automatically you think of people drenched in sweat doing back breaking work, with grease on their shirt, dusty steel toed boots and a sense of exhaustion. They come off as low brow crass individual who wants to get paid and head on home when in actuality that is the furthest from the truth. People judge other people in numerous ways but the moment you deviate from the norm, you examined like a microscope and then placed in a category. It is just the way we are wired.
  • lotsofpulp 9y ago
    If a plumber was earning $400k/year reliably with 40 hour work weeks, then they would not come across as "low brow". What people are really judging is how exclusive and useful to them you are. More people can qualify to be a plumber (hence their lower wages), than they can to be a doctor/lawyer/other similarly high wage careers. The latter also have more valuable people in their networks that are also valuable.
  • djrogers 9y ago
    Maybe that's just the way you're wired? I don't think any of the things you list when I meet someone who's a blue collar worker, nor do most of my friends...
    • danaliv 9y ago
      Ditto. We should all be careful to make "I" statements here.
• bilbo0s 9y ago
  In all fairness here, people have seen the ravages that the boom/bust nature of these kinds of trade jobs wrought on peoples' lives. Many parents out where I live here in fly-over country advise kids, "Hey... get a degree, and then get a job in construction if that's something you want to do. Because... you know... look at me and your uncle." And out here, "...look at me and your uncle...", or "...look at your older sister or brother...", is usually a fairly compelling argument. As is having a degree when all of the construction jobs go belly up.
  • jdietrich 9y ago
    By the same token, student debt is a serious burden to bear if college is just a backup plan. "Get a degree" too often means "get a bachelor's in any old subject from a private college" rather than "get an associate degree with a clear career path from a local accredited community college or technical school". Young people aren't given a clear picture of their options. A bachelor's degree is often treated like a golden ticket to the middle class, rather than a very expensive and often questionably useful qualification.
    • bilbo0s 9y ago
      Well out here people understand that associate's or bachelor's in liberal arts areas are useless degrees. Most kids want a job oriented bachelor's. something like Nursing, Education, and especially Science or Engineering. I think a lot of people would be surprised how popular Nursing degrees are in my neck of the woods. I don't know if they are popular nationwide, but Nursing out here is seen by many, (young ladies especially), as a ticket out of the ghetto or the trailer park.
  • jnwatson 9y ago
    Tech dries up too. I know several software developers than joined the Armed Services in 2000 due to lack of work.
• huangc10 9y ago
  On a somewhat related note, I was walking past a construction site yesterday and noticed how big the workers were! The team was placing a beam into the ground (most likely the building foundation) and the dudes holding the beam in place must have ranged from 6'3 to 6'5 and ~250 lbs! I do somewhat envy/admire what they do because it's more of a physical skill and keeps the body strong and in motion unlike sitting in front of a computer 9-5. Trade jobs are underrated and hopefully won't be replaced completely in the future.
  • et-al 9y ago
    That's probably self-selecting, but ask any guy in the trades how their bodies are when they're 40 and they'll tell you about their aches. Computer jockeys, meanwhile, may suffer from some RSI from typing, or injuries from falling off their Boosted Board or rockclimbing.
    • lutorm 9y ago
      That's not true, though. People who have had sedentary jobs their whole life are likely to also have neck and back problems, be overweight, etc.
      • et-al 9y ago
        Sure, but the risk of getting injured is higher on a construction site. The majority of OSHA regulations out there are meant to protect people in the trades. Let's not romanticise things: white collar workers have it easy when it comes to toils on the body. If you get injured, you can probably take a few days off, work from home, heal properly. In the trades, you pop some Ibuprofen and suck it up. Sit out injured too long and you're out of a job, unless you happen to win some workman's comp lottery. In addition, lots of risks with sedentary behavior are preventable: eat well, take frequent breaks, go for a walk after dinner, etc.
• haberman 9y ago
  In an interesting coincidence, The Stranger (local leftie paper in Seattle) just published this guest op-ed about how iron-workers don't earn enough to live in Seattle: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/04/20/26067604/guest-editorial-we-cant-afford-to-live-in-the-city-we-build https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/04/20/26067604/guest-e... This article is drumming up support for the idea of taxing Amazon and other big businesses to build affordable housing.
  • jinushaun 9y ago
    Your point? Tech workers don't make enough to live in SF.
    • jadedhacker 9y ago
      Both good arguments for decommodifying housing. :) Your pay shouldn't be the determining factor of where you can live. In fact, if you get paid more, you can afford better transportation, so you should arguably live further away than a store clerk or a janitor. However, that kind of policy would also hurt society by discouraging mixing of people with different jobs, so really housing should not be based on pay at all. First come first serve seems more appropriate unless there's a demonstrated hardship.
      • astrange 9y ago
        American housing policy is literally based on not letting people mix at all, since the middle class ideal has always been a nuclear family house in a suburb where you can't hear your neighbor and don't need to meet them. Even more so since the 70s, since people don't let their kids go outside. Going full socialism would need some more, well, socializing.
    • haberman 9y ago
      I'm not entirely sure what my point is. I just think it's an interesting comparison that one article calls iron working a "high-paying job" while another says iron-workers don't make enough to live in certain cities and pressures government intervention to correct it. I guess "high-paying" is a matter of degree, and cities are really expensive.
• Avshalom 9y ago
  Just as an additional point: a lot of these jobs ask for years of experience or your own tools. If you know a guy it's not hard to get around that but if you don't know a guy they can seem completely out of reach. And as wierd vicious cycle, when you're short on bodies have less tolerance for people learning the ropes. So the number of will-train job ads probably isn't going to increase anytime soon.
  • jnwatson 9y ago
    Sounds a lot like the software industry.
    • Avshalom 9y ago
      I don't know that it's actually like software but yes it is absolutely like the software job ads . Fewer: 5 years of experience in 6 month old technology but very much the "entry level"="3+ years of experience" horse shit. The need a job to get a job thing is actually pretty universal. "Have you been unemployed for more than 30 days in the last 6 months: explain" is actually a stock question on applications.
• djhworld 9y ago
  I remember a lecturer at University asking the class if they went into CS because of the money. A few excited students raised their hands. He then proceeded to describe the difference in income of what a plumber makes in comparison to your average CS grad over 10 years. Needless to say, it was quite an eye opening experience (this is in the UK by the way, not sure how well plumbers do in the US)
  • currymj 9y ago
    i'm not sure about plumbers, but i think CS graduates do much worse in the UK, even adjusting for cost of living and currency and so on. of course it's hard to compare statistics, but 40k pounds a year would be somewhere around normal for a dev with a couple years' experience? whereas $70-80k would be low for a similar developer in the US, and you're making $100k+ if you go to work for a big tech company straight out of college. i've heard people speculate, without much justification, that this is a CP Snow "two cultures" thing, where a sort of British aristocratic spirit means that engineering and other fields requiring applied scientific knowledge are lower status than other professional fields like law or finance. (if this applies to medicine as well, it would explain the lower status of doctors in the UK.)
    • draw_down 9y ago
      Yeah, it’s always seemed crazy to me how much less the job pays in UK and Europe.
    • laurencerowe 9y ago
      Salaries for programmers in the UK are definitely lower than Silicon Valley, but it was still well paid. The career structure was different with far fewer big tech company jobs. Experienced developers who weren't looking to become managers would move into independent consulting / contracting. 10 years ago £500-600/day was fairly standard for consulting gigs (>£100K/year vs £60K/year as a senior engineer employee.) In London there was plenty of contracting work and could easily count on working full time on six month contracts. Outside of London the pay was a little less and the opportunities further between but with the lower cost of living it ended up about a wash. Working in Silicon Vally now, the big advantage is the availability of super-senior engineering roles that only really exist in organizations with 1000s of software engineers. By my estimation, software engineers in the UK are on about the same social rung as solicitors or accountants. I think doctors still enjoy a high social status in the UK, just without the high salaries (or huge student loans!) of the US.
• ProfessorLayton 9y ago
  As someone that grew up poor with blue collar parents, and who's extended family is mostly in the trades business, I figure I'd chime in some of their perspectives: - I would have disappointed them if I did not earn a 4-year degree. I'm one of the first, and very few people in my family with a degree. - As others have stated, trades are very hard on the body, and things get dicy once it is going downhill. The pay is alright, but it cost a lot of knees, shoulders, and backs. - The only way for my dad to continue in the trades business at his age was to start his own company and hire people himself. Not everyone is able to do this, and I continue to help a lot to build his online presence and non-labor side of the business. Hiring good people is insanely hard like the article states, and is actually capping growth. - I'm currently way more successful working in tech than I could have ever been in the trades business, and to my family, this was the expected result. Their stance is that they worked way too hard to allow me to get an education for me to end up in the same place they did. I'd like to add that I'm not discouraging anyone from skilled trades, nor do I think they're inferior to white collar jobs. I'm just pointing out different perspectives, and that it is much more nuanced than what is in this article.
  • hackerews 9y ago
    Do people do anything to prevent, or delay, the knees, shoulder, or back issues?
    • coheeman 9y ago
      Yes, but prolonged wear and tear will eventually rear some issues. There's not much you can do if you need to be on a ladder for 6 hours a day, for example.
    • raverbashing 9y ago
      I'd guess some would be preventable with proper "maintenance" (having good posture, stretches, taking care of your limits, good nutrition, etc) But even sports figures have issues and retire early, so I don't think that is so clear cut and that doing things the right way solves everything
    • itslennysfault 9y ago
• jorblumesea 9y ago
  Why is it always about money? 1) Trade jobs are notoriously hard on the body, and often result in much longer hours compared to office workers. Also, hours are not flex. You cannot work from home, you can't pick your kids up from school early. 2) Trade jobs can be very boom bust, far more than people realize. When it's good, it's very good, but there's no guaranteed income stream. When the economy is down, trades are hit very hard. There's no internationalized income stream as there are with global corporations. 3) Many trade jobs don't have many of the cushy benefits that corporate employees do, such as 401k with match, generous vacation time, paternity leave, etc. Maybe this will change as demand increases. 4) Some trade jobs don't result in easily transferable skills. For example, a manager of a team can use those skills to manage most teams and shift industries. A mason isn't able to become an electrician without significant work. 5) Status. Corporate office worker has a certain status in society. Is this fair or equitable? Probably not. But it does exist.
• toblender 9y ago
  Until we can change the perception that trade jobs are 'lower class' or unclean, we will continue to have vacancies. I once remarked to a nephew who was thinking about what to do after high school that he should consider a trade. His parents overheard, and though they agreed it was good pay they didn't want their son doing that kind of work. Upon reflection, I wouldn't want my son to do that kind of work as well, as it's usually hard work and not looked upon favorably.
  • lotsofpulp 9y ago
    Fix the pay, and you fix the image. Surely there exists some number at which point parents do want their children to do that kind of work.
• jl2718 9y ago
  College is pay-for-prestige. You also get friends of similar wealth and intelligence. This whole thing is a modern version of the Calvinist ideology of predestination, that some people are born better than others, and they deserve more without doing anything for it. Admissions committees are our clergy. People are naturally distrustful of themselves, and will always seek guidance of commonly-accepted higher authorities.
  • aantix 9y ago
    Maybe it once was, but the curtain has be lifted at least for some majors. There's no prestige in underemployment/no-employment after graduation. Everyone knows someone for whom you attended their graduation party and then six months later they're still working retail.. "around 44% of college graduates ages 22 to 27 work in jobs that do not require a college degree. " https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/07/13/new-york-fed-highlights-underemployment-among-college-graduates/#56d5bd9b40d8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2017/07/13/new-y...
• lurchpop 9y ago
  Why are they characterizing $50k as "high paying?" That's median income for Washington state, and generally medians tend to skew low in terms of the lifestyle they afford.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • jonbarker 9y ago
    In America, it's not the pay that gets you, it's the rising cost of living and the medical bankruptcy.
  • a_imho 9y ago
    Imagine the title Unattractive trade jobs sit empty Not very clickbaity
• moorhosj 9y ago
  More evidence that the labor market doesn’t fit the traditional supply/demand economic theory. The ongoing trucker shortage is another example.
• nwmcsween 9y ago
  As a professional welder and mechanic (redseal), the title makes it sound as if a trade is simply a 4 year apprenticeship and off you go to a high paying job. It's no where near that, you have to be skilled at what you do if you want to make the high end (~$75/h) just like any job.
• gaze 9y ago
  People take higher skilled jobs partially because people are more likely to treat you like an adult! Do you wanna be nickeled and dimed for spending too much time in the bathroom? Shit like that. It’s often times just a really rough life. As a programmer you can tell people that are bugging you that they’re being distracting and to fuck off. You can come in late and leave late and as long as you show up to meetings and are nice to people and are generally pleasant and get all your work done, it’s fine. It’s not this way in a lot of industries.
• ilamont 9y ago
  An observation: trades aren't that welcoming toward women, which severely restricts the talent pool. Quoting a 2015 Chicago Tribune article: Women represent just 4 percent of the workforce in natural resources, construction and maintenance, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Their underrepresentation in such high-paying industries is one key reason that women earn, on average, 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, the agency said. What would have to happen for this lopsided gender imbalance to change? http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-0417-biz-20150420-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-women-in-trades-04...
  • jeffreyrogers 9y ago
    I think a big part of it is women just aren't interested in these jobs as much. Not that there isn't harassment, but if you asked most women and men, "do you want to be a welder?", I'm sure far more men than women would say yes.
    • HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
      I'll speak for my wife here. A big part of it is that many women are interested, but don't like the way they're treated on the job site. Mine worked for a lawn care company. She hates offices and would rather be outdoors. However, although she liked the actual work, she got sick of being around idiots who thought that since she was a woman she was automatically incapable of getting anything done. The company owner liked her work ethic and even asked her to come back after she quit, but the atmosphere was simply too toxic to be worth it.
    • ilamont 9y ago
      Similar things have been said about female coders, founders, and technologists, including in the comments of HN. Yet it's also been demonstrated that women get paid less, have a tougher time advancing, and often experience harassment that males never have to deal with. https://www.fastcompany.com/40525199/just-2-of-vc-dollars-went-to-female-founders-in-2017 https://www.fastcompany.com/40525199/just-2-of-vc-dollars-we... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/tesla-sexual-harassment-discrimination-engineer-fired https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/tesla-sex... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621765
• gaius 9y ago
  It is the same in the UK thanks to Tony Bliar. The working class stabbed in the back by the so-called Labour Party. And they are no better now, still pushing university as the only way.
• aj7 9y ago
  This only works if the young tradesman starts his/her own business within 5 years. Otherwise, it’s a loser.
• influnza 9y ago
  Then let's hope that those college kids build robots to do hard and life threatening work for them!
• mabbo 9y ago
  The thing about trades is you don't need to be smart- just hard working. Three years out of high school, with 4 more to go before I finished my University education, I was back home for a weekend. I met up with a buddy of mine from high school to grab a beer at the local pub in town and we ran into another guy from our year- Let's call him 'Jim'. My friend had been sort of friends with Jim in grade 8 or something so he wound up sitting down with us for a bit. The most astounding part to me was that Jim wasn't in prison. I mean, Jim had been the kind of guy even in high school where he probably should have been arrested a dozen times for the trouble he got up to. Seeing him a free man was like "wow, he made it" on its own. He wasn't a dumb brute, but he wasn't the type for University either. We got talking about what we'd been up to. Me: education and debt; my friend: similar story. But Jim had gone out west to Alberta and gotten himself a welder's license. Training for 8 months right after high school, paid for by the oil companies. Making $80k/year[0], more if he put in the extra time. Had almost saved up enough to buy that welding rig for his truck and then he could go independent and probably bring in $120k or more- again, depending on how hard he wanted to work. We were 22-ish, and in terms of lifetime income, Jim was probably close to $200k ahead of us with zero debts. I suspect that in the last decade, I may have caught up. Maybe. I've had a good career so far. But not if Jim's been working hard that whole time. If he has, and if he's saved and invested wisely, then he's still long ahead of me. (Or if he's in prison- then I might catch up!). [0]All monetary amounts in Canadian dollars, but you know around 2007 we were above the USD in value.
  • burger_moon 9y ago
    >The thing about trades is you don't need to be smart- just hard working Man some of the comments in this thread really are disgusting.
    • exolymph 9y ago
      What, do you think that's incorrect? If you think that the average construction worker is as smart in terms of raw IQ as the average computer programmer... well, I highly doubt that you're correct.
    • mabbo 9y ago
• observer12 9y ago
  One thing people tend to skip over, a lot of jobs that are considered to require degrees don't. Programming... nope, IT... nope, Infosec... nope. Arguably there are a lot more that don't require a degree or could be replaced by a shorter and cheaper trade school version if it existed. Germany for example does something I like a lot. There is a mix between trade schools and universities. You can become a doctor in Germany by going to a trade school, they are paid during the programs. But Germany also has the whole free university thing and doesn't have a hang-up on trade skills being lower class. I figure this is because careers such as Doctors can be obtained through trade schools. I personally make 6 figures, and live in a major city that doesn't have inflated cost of living like most of California and NYC. My income alone is more than double the average household in my city. I don't have anything more than a high school degree and I work in tech, in fact a degree hasn't ever been a barrier for me employment-wise except at an engineering firm, at the firm I couldn't have engineer in my job title but I still got paid the same or more then those with engineer in theirs.
• harryh 9y ago
  The wage premium in the US for a college degree over a HS diploma is about 70%. As long as this remains true (and it's hard to see it changing), this trend will continue.
  • analog31 9y ago
    Training in a skilled trade is a step above a HS diploma. The HS diploma stats doubtlessly include a lot of unskilled jobs.
    • observer12 9y ago
      It also includes people who gained their degrees later in life despite having successful careers. The majority of people I have worked with in my career in tech don't have degrees or didn't when they started.
  • observer12 9y ago
    In the early 20th century having a high school degree was an accomplishment on par with having a bachelors degree now. And that lasted quite a while mainly due to factory work. I had a teacher in high school talk about when he started teaching in the 70s he had students who made more than him working part time in factories. Of course the golden age of factory work has dried up but trade skills aren't in a position to dry up like that. Even with all the hype around machine learning and automation the skilled craftsman trades won't be automated away anytime soon, in fact software developers themselves are likely to be automated largely away before the trades. Along with other fields of IT. Some might argue technology will replace some trades like plumbing that uses self healing polymers but someone still has to place the plumbing, someone still has to replace it when the damage is greater than the self healing capacity. The people replacing it won't be the engineers designing the polymers it will be the plumbers. If we ever increase space exploration and colonization guess what will be needed? Trade skills...
• dkoubsky 9y ago
  I'm about to graduate high school and train become an electrician. I chose this route over college because I know I would be miserable at a normal desk job and going into the trades will allow me to work with my hands, which I enjoy doing, as well as allow me to start my own business fairly easily. Aside from the opportunity cost of putting off college and/or job experience, I don't see how I could lose much if I decide to pursue another path in the future. I'm open to advice or ideas, so let me know what you guys think.
• SwellJoe 9y ago
  I dunno. Every tradesman I know in their 40s or 50s has health problems related to their work. And, since most of that work is contract work, they often do not have good coverage for disability, retirement, etc. The process of getting compensated for work-related injuries is often complicated and involves lawyers, because companies obviously don't want to pay those kinds of claims because they can be very expensive. So...yes, you can make decent money, and beginning sooner than you would if you get a degree. It's economically a viable thing, especially if you enjoy the work (I occasionally think I would like to be outside more for my work, and there are a lot of trade skills I enjoy learning and doing for fun...I plan to build my own house with my own two hands someday not too far in the future). But, if you do, you should start investing in being able to leave the field by the time you're in your 50s (or even earlier), because you're probably going to find yourself in a situation where working is painful or not possible. Or, join a union. That can help, and the most successful guys I know who've done that kind of work for decades are union members, and they know they're protected in the event of a variety of mishaps.
• jonbarker 9y ago
  I've often wondered, why are these considered mutually exclusive career paths? Someone with an undergraduate degree in some quantitative field with exposure to a 'blue collar' line of work is suddenly in a very interesting position IMO.
• YuriNiyazov 9y ago
  Sure, why get a job that pays 54K if you can later get a job that pays 150k + equity?
• lowbloodsugar 9y ago
  Remember when $55k was a good middleclass wage and would buy you a house in seattle where these guys are working?
  • astrange 9y ago
    Well, remember $55k is a good wage for all consumer needs in the US except costs of urban housing, healthcare and education services. It's not about inflation, it's about rent-seeking and "cost disease". http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...
• nameisu 9y ago
  as soon as more people start taking them the pay will slump. better to avoid imo
• sunstone 9y ago
  This is situation is often presented as a mutually exclusive choice which is shortsighted. Many people might want to do both and plan for that from the beginning. So person A might want to take an electrician's ticket first so they then have a decent paying sideline while at university. Person B might want to study at University first for their own interests like art history for example, and then plan to take a trade's ticket later because the work environment of a trade is often better paid and much superior to the back biting office environment of many 'management' positions.
• BillSaysThis 9y ago
  This Old House had a portion of every episode in the last season devoted to this issue by including apprentices in their team as well as publicizing programs for (young) people who might be inspired by that. I thought they did this well.
• Robotbeat 9y ago
  "High paying trade jobs sit empty." Then give them a higher wage, institute better benefits, and/or facilitate more employee training. Oh, and if we're expecting kids to do trade jobs and not attend a 4 year college, then our schools sure as heck better do a good job teaching geometry and algebra as they won't have remedial college courses to fall back on and trades often make use of such skills (especially as mechatronics is increasingly integrated into trades such as carpentry, machining, etc... soon everything).
• beiller 9y ago
  I think the cause effect relationship here is not quite what the headline implies. The fact that the trades are high paying, is obviously just correlated with high school grads lining up for university. For example not taking the trades job and going to school instead, lowers the trades' supply of workers, raising their wage. edit for speculation Young people see trades as something that will be automated away and there is little future in them. Thanks AI headlines!
• myegorov 9y ago
  Going to college might not be financially rewarding for many, but neither are trades. I worked in the construction trades for about two years before switching to engineering, and later software. In retrospect, switching careers paid off several fold. As a white male, without having served in the military, I could not get into the carpenters union, not without losing a couple years waiting in line. So my only option were small time contractors, remodels and the like. Poor pay, no benefits, underemployment, long daily commute. The worst part for me was the very slow learning rate. There was no training. I had to steal the knowledge, in the fake it till you make it fashion. I wouldn't get to do new tasks otherwise. I found engineering (civil) and software development very much in the spirit of craftsmanship. I still think of myself as a tradesman, just without all the crap surrounding manual trades in the US.
• sureaboutthis 9y ago
  Just to throw it out there, I own a restaurant, and about 25% of my staff are college degreed people who can't find a job in their field.
• austincheney 9y ago
  I suspect I will get some flack for this, but programming is a trade skill. Currently, software development is completely unregulated, requires no formal education or credentials, and is solely assessed on experienced. That said software development has far more in common with iron working, mechanics, music performance, and construction than it does something like law, medicine, or real estate. I know people like to talk up their profession with their high priced education and the trappings of the fancy corporate environments. Honestly, most software developers are little more than skilled button pushers. Very few of the people paid to write software are computer scientists, actually use or benefit from any form of graduate education, or are inventing new concepts in software.
  • emidln 9y ago
    The only difference between law and programming is a regulation forcing you to join a trade association which imposes a formal test for admittance prior to practicing law. Technical knowledge of dejure laws (formally passed), regulations (explicitly stated, but under the license of a law where they are given effect), defacto laws (rulings or case law), and their interplay is extremely similar to knowledge of RFCs, APIs, tooling systems, and their interplay.
    • mieseratte 9y ago
      One could make superficial comparisons between just about any career, from law and medicine to tradesman. Every job requires domain specific knowledge, how things interact, etc. The application of that knowledge is how and why things are different. I actually asked a friend of mine, programmer-turned-lawyer, how similar the two were based off your premise. To him, there are completely unrelated skill sets that differentiate the two. I'm sure some subset of lawyers overlaps with what some subset of software engineers do, generically speaking, but a practicing lawyer winning cases and a software engineer actually writing code are very different beasts.
• Snackchez 9y ago
  Solution to filling up those jobs: pay a lot more than 50k.
• intopieces 9y ago
  These attitudes come in cycles. If the trades are a resurgence, the children of those who entered it will be pressed to go to college, whatever that looks like in 30 years. If we have any interest in breaking this cycle, we must actively decouple employment and job title from identity. Given the pace of automation, this decoupling cannot come too soon.
• intopieces 9y ago
  A common theme in these articles is “nobody told me.” “Nobody told me this was an option.” “Nobody told me these jobs paid so well.” A hard lesson to learn, and one I wish my school had given me, is that nobody tells you anything in America. Our social safety net is a good job market.