4 ms·

It depends on the economy, Australian tradespeople make the same if not more than good coders right now. We're growing so fast the demand for those skills is hi

by hartror 16y ago

It depends on the economy, Australian tradespeople make the same if not more than good coders right now. We're growing so fast the demand for those skills is high and shows no signs of dropping off.

MarkSimpson 16y ago
Yeah. My brother just finished his apprenticeship in cabinet making and is already on more than me, a programmer. Unions don't have anything to do with it, either - I don't think he's even in one - it's just that the demand for tradesmen is so high over here. Hence the rise in cashed up bogans.
- Dramatize 16y ago
  More so with our natural disasters creating huge demand for tradies.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    Yep. Between the resurgence of the mining boom and the floods and cyclones in Queensland and the floods in Victoria, demand for tradies is going to be out of control. The Reserve Bank have decided not to account for the disasters in their inflation settings, but I reckon they will change their mind to prevent a wages breakout.
- grav1tas 16y ago
  Is it really the case that the demand is so high or that supply is kept artificially low by tradesmen apprenticeship programs? I thought that was the point of the trades...to reduce competition by decreasing the number of competitors. Though this might be a misconception entirely...
  - rdouble 16y ago
    From my vantage point it looks like the demand is high. There is a mining boom, there have been serious disasters the past 2 years (bushfires, floods), and for some reason new residences are still being built at a fast clip. I'm sitting here in Austraia, trying to summon up the will to fire up XCode and instead being dragged away to surf trips with my brother-in-law and all his tradie friends. They all have houses that I once dreamed about owning after I sold my startup to Google. That never happened, so I spent some time researching the trades here. Many of the trades have apprenticeship programs but are essentially unlicensed. For instance, for some reason you can make loads of money laying tile at the moment. There might be "tiling apprenticeships" but for the most part you can just show up and make $20/hr lifting boxes and cleaning up, and $50/hr putting the tiles down. Plumbers and electricians are in high demand, especially in the mines. In addition to demand, they have to be licensed, and thus they make more money. There is an apprenticeship period, various certs for residential, commercial, data, hospital, high-energy, marine, etc. The apprenticeship period may be pushing up the wages of sparkies a bit but there does seem to be a lot of work. I don't think these apprenticeships are artificially limited like the way med school seats in the USA are limited. Plus, you get paid $19-$20/hr as an electrical apprentice, which is $40K a year. One interesting thing I learned is that sparkies and plumbers can sign up for on-call insurance jobs and charge even more money. During this weekend's floods in Geelong my electrician friend's phone was constantly ringing. I think he got about 8 jobs that he passed over to his partner. All that said, I get a bit of a bubble feeling over here. Especially for residential building. Who are all these new subdivision houses supposed to be for? The tradesmen building them? I can't imagine a lot of office drones communting from the Bellarine Peninsula to Melbourne. Or even being able to afford the homes in the first place. In other parts of the country, once the mines are all tapped I wonder where the money is going to come from.
    - wisty 16y ago
      Australia owes way more money than the USA, per capita. That's where the money is coming from. It's just that our government didn't owe a lot at the start of the GFC, and they were able to keep the private sector afloat for a while.
brc 16y ago
Depends on the trade, of course. But tradesmen work on different projects, travel to different areas, work with a range of skills. I guess what I'm trying to say is that tradesmen != manufacturing plant worker. I have a relative with a manufacturing plant. Their strategy is to try and out-niche the chinese. Their chinese competitors can dump finishing product onto the market cheaper than they can buy the raw materials. Thats' before the value-add of labour is included, with all the attendant taxes and benefits of the labour is paid for as well. The only way they can compete is to develop close relationships and fast turnarounds with their clients and hope like hell that's enough for them to ignore the price discrepancy. It generally depends on the final item being manufactured - anything competing in a fierce marketplace is going to go overseas at some point. It's the unionised manufacturing sector worker that is getting smashed by low-cost foreign labour. And that is happening across all high-cost labour countries, Australia included.
- wisty 16y ago
  It's not just about low-cost foreign labor. Chinese staionary energy is dirt cheap (burning dirty subsidized coal doesn't cost a lot) which might be 20% of the cost. And the land might have been free, if the investor had good connections. Oh, and they might have cheap loans. The costs are raw materials, energy, capital, and labor. Labor isn't the only factor. But people accept the $1/hour = 20X cheaper myth, and buy stuff that's 1/10th the quality.
  - nickpinkston 16y ago
    Well, it's actually closer to 20x cheaper for 1/2 the quality - hence why so much is made there. Being I manufacturing, we see both the move back to the US due to rising wages, shipping and materials costs, but many things (toy painting) are very much still an outsourcing game.
  - brc 16y ago
    Well, most of the USA will be using coal powered energy as well, as most USA energy is coal powered. Same goes for Australia, which is even higher percentage coal power. As for free land - many large plants have been setup in the USA with essentially free land, and essentially free capital. Not all, mind you, and not all in China would be the same. But then business in China has high costs in other areas, such as bribery and corruption. In the end, it mostly comes down to labour costs (and availability) when you're doing a labour intensive manufacturing process. The other thing that is being lost is even the ability to compete based on knowledge. Running factories takes time, expertise and experience. New factories aren't opening, people aren't learning how to run them. It's the trend that worries me, over the raw numbers.
jacques_chester 16y ago
I spent most of highschool being told that if I didn't study sooper dooper hard, then I would not go to university. I would be doomed to be ... (horror film scream) ... a tradie!! Well gosh, I worked hard and got into a good uni. I became depressed (for reasons unrelated to my studies) and gave it away for a few years, but now that I have the degree and job I earn about as much as a 4th-year apprentice can down at the mines. Are you a plumber? You can charge hundreds per hour. Are you a diesel fitter, boilermaker, even a plain welder? Get thee to the Pilbara region, where wages north of $150k await thee. I wouldn't enjoy being a tradie and I like programming, but the whole argument that I needed to go to university or wind up an impoverished loser tradie turned out to be utter horseshit. edit: fixed a hilarious negation of my preferences in the final paragraph.
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  UK too. After 3 years at University and 10 years building a career in IT, I have friends who make more laying carpets and other flooring for office blocks. A kid I know went straight into retail banking at 16 (so 2 years earlier than I left school) and, 2 years later, I'm fairly sure is making more than I made with another 5 years of education on him and with no sign of that growth curve slowing.
- brc 16y ago
  Indeed - many of my friends, through coincedence and fate, turned out to be tradespeople. Without exception, every single one is what I would consider well positioned money wise given their education level. The reasons I prefer IT is that I like working inside, and I prefer not having to use obscenities to get my job done. But I cannot say that I am better off in the salary stakes (or the ability to build a business) than those I knew who went into building trades. Some I know are now running multi-million dollar turnover businesses they have bootstrapped themselves. Compared to those who studied a less applied degree (such as 'business' or 'arts') are way behind those who did an apprenticeship and worked hard.

by hartror 16y ago

It depends on the economy, Australian tradespeople make the same if not more than good coders right now. We're growing so fast the demand for those skills is high and shows no signs of dropping off.

MarkSimpson 16y ago

Yeah. My brother just finished his apprenticeship in cabinet making and is already on more than me, a programmer. Unions don't have anything to do with it, either - I don't think he's even in one - it's just that the demand for tradesmen is so high over here. Hence the rise in cashed up bogans.

Dramatize 16y ago
More so with our natural disasters creating huge demand for tradies.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Yep. Between the resurgence of the mining boom and the floods and cyclones in Queensland and the floods in Victoria, demand for tradies is going to be out of control. The Reserve Bank have decided not to account for the disasters in their inflation settings, but I reckon they will change their mind to prevent a wages breakout.
grav1tas 16y ago
Is it really the case that the demand is so high or that supply is kept artificially low by tradesmen apprenticeship programs? I thought that was the point of the trades...to reduce competition by decreasing the number of competitors. Though this might be a misconception entirely...
- rdouble 16y ago
  From my vantage point it looks like the demand is high. There is a mining boom, there have been serious disasters the past 2 years (bushfires, floods), and for some reason new residences are still being built at a fast clip. I'm sitting here in Austraia, trying to summon up the will to fire up XCode and instead being dragged away to surf trips with my brother-in-law and all his tradie friends. They all have houses that I once dreamed about owning after I sold my startup to Google. That never happened, so I spent some time researching the trades here. Many of the trades have apprenticeship programs but are essentially unlicensed. For instance, for some reason you can make loads of money laying tile at the moment. There might be "tiling apprenticeships" but for the most part you can just show up and make $20/hr lifting boxes and cleaning up, and $50/hr putting the tiles down. Plumbers and electricians are in high demand, especially in the mines. In addition to demand, they have to be licensed, and thus they make more money. There is an apprenticeship period, various certs for residential, commercial, data, hospital, high-energy, marine, etc. The apprenticeship period may be pushing up the wages of sparkies a bit but there does seem to be a lot of work. I don't think these apprenticeships are artificially limited like the way med school seats in the USA are limited. Plus, you get paid $19-$20/hr as an electrical apprentice, which is $40K a year. One interesting thing I learned is that sparkies and plumbers can sign up for on-call insurance jobs and charge even more money. During this weekend's floods in Geelong my electrician friend's phone was constantly ringing. I think he got about 8 jobs that he passed over to his partner. All that said, I get a bit of a bubble feeling over here. Especially for residential building. Who are all these new subdivision houses supposed to be for? The tradesmen building them? I can't imagine a lot of office drones communting from the Bellarine Peninsula to Melbourne. Or even being able to afford the homes in the first place. In other parts of the country, once the mines are all tapped I wonder where the money is going to come from.
  - wisty 16y ago
    Australia owes way more money than the USA, per capita. That's where the money is coming from. It's just that our government didn't owe a lot at the start of the GFC, and they were able to keep the private sector afloat for a while.

brc 16y ago

Depends on the trade, of course. But tradesmen work on different projects, travel to different areas, work with a range of skills. I guess what I'm trying to say is that tradesmen != manufacturing plant worker. I have a relative with a manufacturing plant. Their strategy is to try and out-niche the chinese. Their chinese competitors can dump finishing product onto the market cheaper than they can buy the raw materials. Thats' before the value-add of labour is included, with all the attendant taxes and benefits of the labour is paid for as well. The only way they can compete is to develop close relationships and fast turnarounds with their clients and hope like hell that's enough for them to ignore the price discrepancy. It generally depends on the final item being manufactured - anything competing in a fierce marketplace is going to go overseas at some point. It's the unionised manufacturing sector worker that is getting smashed by low-cost foreign labour. And that is happening across all high-cost labour countries, Australia included.

wisty 16y ago
It's not just about low-cost foreign labor. Chinese staionary energy is dirt cheap (burning dirty subsidized coal doesn't cost a lot) which might be 20% of the cost. And the land might have been free, if the investor had good connections. Oh, and they might have cheap loans. The costs are raw materials, energy, capital, and labor. Labor isn't the only factor. But people accept the $1/hour = 20X cheaper myth, and buy stuff that's 1/10th the quality.
- nickpinkston 16y ago
  Well, it's actually closer to 20x cheaper for 1/2 the quality - hence why so much is made there. Being I manufacturing, we see both the move back to the US due to rising wages, shipping and materials costs, but many things (toy painting) are very much still an outsourcing game.
- brc 16y ago
  Well, most of the USA will be using coal powered energy as well, as most USA energy is coal powered. Same goes for Australia, which is even higher percentage coal power. As for free land - many large plants have been setup in the USA with essentially free land, and essentially free capital. Not all, mind you, and not all in China would be the same. But then business in China has high costs in other areas, such as bribery and corruption. In the end, it mostly comes down to labour costs (and availability) when you're doing a labour intensive manufacturing process. The other thing that is being lost is even the ability to compete based on knowledge. Running factories takes time, expertise and experience. New factories aren't opening, people aren't learning how to run them. It's the trend that worries me, over the raw numbers.

jacques_chester 16y ago

I spent most of highschool being told that if I didn't study sooper dooper hard, then I would not go to university. I would be doomed to be ... (horror film scream) ... a tradie!! Well gosh, I worked hard and got into a good uni. I became depressed (for reasons unrelated to my studies) and gave it away for a few years, but now that I have the degree and job I earn about as much as a 4th-year apprentice can down at the mines. Are you a plumber? You can charge hundreds per hour. Are you a diesel fitter, boilermaker, even a plain welder? Get thee to the Pilbara region, where wages north of $150k await thee. I wouldn't enjoy being a tradie and I like programming, but the whole argument that I needed to go to university or wind up an impoverished loser tradie turned out to be utter horseshit. edit: fixed a hilarious negation of my preferences in the final paragraph.

eftpotrm 16y ago
UK too. After 3 years at University and 10 years building a career in IT, I have friends who make more laying carpets and other flooring for office blocks. A kid I know went straight into retail banking at 16 (so 2 years earlier than I left school) and, 2 years later, I'm fairly sure is making more than I made with another 5 years of education on him and with no sign of that growth curve slowing.
brc 16y ago
Indeed - many of my friends, through coincedence and fate, turned out to be tradespeople. Without exception, every single one is what I would consider well positioned money wise given their education level. The reasons I prefer IT is that I like working inside, and I prefer not having to use obscenities to get my job done. But I cannot say that I am better off in the salary stakes (or the ability to build a business) than those I knew who went into building trades. Some I know are now running multi-million dollar turnover businesses they have bootstrapped themselves. Compared to those who studied a less applied degree (such as 'business' or 'arts') are way behind those who did an apprenticeship and worked hard.