What you say may be true, but it's time we all faced up to a fact in these discussions in which "the trades" always comes up: not everybody can be a plumber. T

What you say may be true, but it's time we all faced up to a fact in these discussions in which "the trades" always comes up: not everybody can be a plumber. That is, there is a finite demand for every sort of tradesperson, be they plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. For example, it looks like we will probably need somewhere in the neighborhood of 82,000 plumbers in the US over the next 10 years. [0] That's fabulous if you get to be one of those 82,000 people who gets to become a plumber. You certainly can earn a good living that way: > [A]bout 55 occupations are identified as skilled trades, which accounted for over 19 million jobs in 2014. The average job growth rate outlook from 2014-2024 is eight percent, with an average median wage in 2016 of $46,146; the median annual wage for all workers in 2016 was $37,040. [1] But, that's really about where the good news ends. Let's look at what actual demand for skilled trades really is. We can approximate which are the highest growth trades by those which pay the most. Multiple Google searches have told me that electricians are among the top paying skilled trades, due to a large shortage of qualified employees. The job outlook over the next 10 years for electricians is projected to grow by about 8%, for a total of about 62,000 additional jobs added. [2] If we place that in context with the number given earlier for plumbers, it seems reasonable to estimate that each of the skilled trades could experience job growth of up to about 100,000 jobs over the next 10 years. Multiply that by 55 occupations, and, we see that 5.5M people get to live the secure, skilled trades life that we fetishize so much these days. (Really, it's almost like "learn a trade" has become the new "learn to code.") Anybody see the problem yet? The US is projected to have around 360M people in 2030, and we've found jobs for 5.5M of them in this extremely oversimplified analysis. So, sure, the whole "learn a trade" meme works, but it only works for the ~2% of people who are going to be able to get into those occupations in the next 10 years. Skilled trades are not going to save future generations from systemic problems like the decline of real wages and declining union membership anytime soon without something else to go along with it. My nephew can't even aspire to be Homer Simpson, and that's certainly not what I, or my brother, ever wanted for him. --- [0]: https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/plumber/job-market/ https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/plumber/job-market/ [1]: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/bridges/fall-2017/apprenticeships-skilled-trades-small-business-creation https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/bridges/fall-2017/ap... [2]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electricians.htm#tab-6 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electric...