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> it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that much mone
by semi-extrinsic 7y ago
> it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that much money?
If you read it, they say the 90th percentile welder gets paid $60k a year. That is, the average 15+ year experience welder gets paid way less than 50% of the original $150k claim.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoYour response is exactly why I think the article is horrible - why not lets look at the source data and then discuss that: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-and-brazers.htm#tab-5 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers... What this says is that the 90th percentile for this entire group of "Welders, Cutters, Solderers and Brazers" was $63,740. But the small table there also says that there is a big difference in the average between "specialty trade contractors" and "manufacturing", which isn't that surprising. It also says nothing about the age range (I don't know where you got your 15+ year experience data from), so when looking at percentiles, it wouldn't be surprising that the field has a ton of junior folks that brings down the average. It would be very interesting to see what the distribution looks like for master welders with at least 10 years experience, but the article has none of that data. Furthermore, if you dig into the 150k claim, you'll see that that is almost always for welders in high demand areas, like oil and gas during the fracking boom. That doesn't make it apocryphal, just constrained to a specific industry.
- Avshalom 7y agoA specific industry for a short period of time.