9 ms·

Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path. I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do a

Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path. I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor. If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing. It's nearly impossible to even get people to come out for normal household jobs anymore - they're all way too busy with more lucrative clients.

patrick451 5y ago
My dad owns a business (one man shop) adjacent to the construction industry. He makes as much as I do, and I work for FANG with a PhD. My dad trained a family friend to do the same thing in under a year. He now makes substantially more than I do. Nine extra years of school is a pretty substantial opportunity cost, debt or not.
RC_ITR 5y ago
It's kind of a political meme that welding is the key to everyone getting a middle class lifestyle, because good welders get paid a good amount. The joke ofc being that there is a 'shortage' of welders because it's actually very hard to become a good welder. If, somehow, we got a bunch of people to become really good welders, it would just go to being a low paid profession.
- subsubzero 5y ago
  its very hard to be become a good welder and it usually takes about a decade to master that craft, so 10 years gone. Very similar to medical school except you are making money during that decade instead of paying it to schools and residency.
  - a9h74j 5y ago
    And you can fail to get a residency even after $300K to get through medical school.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  The best people in any field make the most money in general, and it takes a lot of experience and work along with intelligence and natural ability to be among that group.
- tejtm 5y ago
  sounds just like programming ... I know! let's invent object oriented welding to lower the barriers to being able to make a weld that holds.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    If you're welding without regard for the objects or their orientation you're probably going to have a bad time.
    - lazyasciiart 5y ago
      It probably won't be proper functional welding either.
endisneigh 5y ago
How old are you and how old are they? If we’re talking anecdotes I guarantee I know people that make more than all the people you’ve mentioned combined and went to college. It doesn’t mean anything. Let’s talk medians here.
- silisili 5y ago
  We're all within 7 or so years of age, except the boat repair who is considerably older. This isn't a contest IMO, we all do more than OK. But it's definitely not fair to say that college pays more than trades. Both have huge swaths of pay ranges, from effectively zero, to millions. But if you're optimizing for making as much money as possible, I'd argue you're doing it wrong anyways.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    The details matter - 7 years is medical school and some residencies for example. To not take into account the age is silly. And the entire point of the original post is arguing about earnings, so…
- thebradbain 5y ago
  Median income and age don't paint the whole picture, though, either -- you need to take into account things like student loan debt, or benefits, or even taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere). Learning a trade and going to college for a white collar job are two different routes entirely, in my opinion. Even assuming that the skillsets were interchangeable, a lot of trades people would never trade their job for an office job and vice versa.
  - leetcrew 5y ago
    > taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere). some good points, but I wanted to call this out specifically. when we're discussing at a high level what career paths should be encouraged, possibly via policy, I don't think we should price in the ability to evade taxes.
Miraste 5y ago
This is why the GP linked a source with the national average for college graduates and non-grads. Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Average isn't useful though. Your expected pay after med school is very different from a music degree. Sure a few in music make millions per year, but most struggle to make anything, and a significant number who do get a good income are not in anything related to music. There are many different trades, with different income expectations. And of course if you are willing to own the business (not easy) is a factor, some business are more conductive to owning your own business. We need to be honest with kids: it matters what degree or job you presue. While I can't predict the future perfectly I can look at trends and say some engineering jobs are better than others. Med school looks really good too. Music on the other hand should be a second major or a minor if you study it at all. Likewise in the trades some are better than others, though I'm not sure what to get into.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    Med isnt immune to automation or remote work as well (telemedicine)...its surprising a bit. I would be really surprised if there isnt tons of automation 10-20 years from now. Nurses are pretty well protected though.
- bumby 5y ago
  >Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders. I wonder how much of this isn't also driven by the reduction in private union membership. I've worked white collar jobs in organizations with strong unions and I'm willing to bet the blue collar workers were probably almost surely, on average, more than the average white collar workers elsewhere. And when I worked in areas with weak union membership, the converse was true. The difficulty in the former was that it was hard to get into the union, but once you did, you were probably making many multiples of the average household income for the locale.
welshwelsh 5y ago
I'm sure there are some pipefitters who make a lot of money, but we should go by averages, not outliers. The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year. We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of work, and doing physical labor can be hard on the body. One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.
- prirun 5y ago
  > One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same. One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before. There are no remote plumbers. I firmly believe that if you show up on time, are pleasant, and are competent at your work, running your own business is a slam dunk and you can charge whatever you want (within reason). Because my experience is that it's nearly impossible anymore to get all of those things.
  - spullara 5y ago
    If we can get AR/VR into the mainstream I bet there will be remote plumbers that essentially pilot you to diagnose and fix things.
    - thorsten11 5y ago
      I guess all the tools in his pickup is not needed then?
      - spullara 5y ago
        They will be but that will be delivered to your home for rental.
skadamat 5y ago
Obligatory Shop Class as SoulCraft drop - https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...
cosmodisk 5y ago
This is what some people call a never getting old story of a builder who arrives to fix up your house in a Ferrari. It's a myth. Sole traders are sole traders. Some will pull in more,some will do less. Fantastic incomes aren't happening that often. If they start employing people- that's a business, exactly the same as if some dev would get a bunch of others under his ltd corp.
tapatio 5y ago
"It's nearly impossible to even get people to come out for normal household jobs anymore" Yup, residential clients are bottom feeders - avoid them at all costs - nothing but a hassle. The good money, and work, is with commercial clients.
- prawn 5y ago
  What then should a residential client do? (Assuming they haven't yet found "their electrician" that they have rapport with.) Get a recommendation, overpay if necessary, pay promptly, then hope they'll take your call and not overquote next time? Two of my tradies (painter and gyprocker) I actually found by having them do work at my office building, and then contacted them for work at home.
  - tapatio 5y ago
    That's a tough question. A recommendation from a friend is probably the best bet. And when they do come and do the work, offer them drinks and snacks, make them comfortable. They will remember that since 90% of customers don't do that. You can also give a tip. I do all of those things and its worked out well.
  - brewtide 5y ago
    As a self-employed painter (and a good list of other trades prior to), I'd say that references work both ways -- You, as the client, want the tradesman to have good references, but in my little neck of the woods, everyone knows everyone -- And we also use references to 'feel out' if we even want to work for someone. Who do I want to work for? Someone who appreciates the end result, but is reasonable about timelines and a 'structured but not fully firm' timetable. In the trades, we are usually doing a fine dance between other tradesmen doing their thing, then it is our turn to do our thing. So many phases in the process of a new build or remodel effort requiring all these different trades to line up correctly, usually between at least a few projects going on at the same time. When the plumber is 3 weeks behind, it bumps the insulators, which bumps the drywallers, which bump the painters, which (can) bump some finishing details, etc. So, I'd say honestly, the understanding of things being delayed (within reason) is my primary "will work for them again" metric. Obviously we all work to get paid, but being paid isn't the reason I do what I do. Taking pride in work done is how I'm able to 'stare at walls' all day, and be fine with it. That being said, throughout the thread I see people stating that no one wants to deal with the residential work. I primarily focus on residential work. It's probably easier to bill to the moon and skip some corners in the commercial world (ie. 'make more money') but as mentioned above, I've zero interest in that - It's a combination of being compensating fairly and pride in the work. Find someone that does good work, for a fair price, and be civil -- It will be remembered. I'd dare say that most trades people that I know/knew have no problems with the 'stress of work', but the interactions with over-demanding clients are what cause them never to be willing to take a call again. OR bill out the nose, hoping they don't even get the job, as it's just not worth it. (irony is, most of these stories end up with them getting the job, anyway).
zhdc1 5y ago
> If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing. It's almost always been this way. I remember a reading a quote from a prolific 19th century author (whose name I can no longer find online, thanks to broken phrase searching in Google) complaining about enterprising carpenters earning more than his government salary. The issue is that it's not an apples to apples comparison. Small business owners who provide blue collar services can make significantly more than salaried white collar workers. However, runnig a small business requires a completely different set of skills, and the percentage of blue collar workers who can do their trade and run a successful small business is far lower than the percentage of people doing blue collar work.

patrick451 5y ago

My dad owns a business (one man shop) adjacent to the construction industry. He makes as much as I do, and I work for FANG with a PhD. My dad trained a family friend to do the same thing in under a year. He now makes substantially more than I do. Nine extra years of school is a pretty substantial opportunity cost, debt or not.

RC_ITR 5y ago

It's kind of a political meme that welding is the key to everyone getting a middle class lifestyle, because good welders get paid a good amount. The joke ofc being that there is a 'shortage' of welders because it's actually very hard to become a good welder. If, somehow, we got a bunch of people to become really good welders, it would just go to being a low paid profession.

subsubzero 5y ago
its very hard to be become a good welder and it usually takes about a decade to master that craft, so 10 years gone. Very similar to medical school except you are making money during that decade instead of paying it to schools and residency.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  And you can fail to get a residency even after $300K to get through medical school.
throwawayboise 5y ago
The best people in any field make the most money in general, and it takes a lot of experience and work along with intelligence and natural ability to be among that group.
tejtm 5y ago
sounds just like programming ... I know! let's invent object oriented welding to lower the barriers to being able to make a weld that holds.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  If you're welding without regard for the objects or their orientation you're probably going to have a bad time.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    It probably won't be proper functional welding either.

endisneigh 5y ago

How old are you and how old are they? If we’re talking anecdotes I guarantee I know people that make more than all the people you’ve mentioned combined and went to college. It doesn’t mean anything. Let’s talk medians here.

silisili 5y ago
We're all within 7 or so years of age, except the boat repair who is considerably older. This isn't a contest IMO, we all do more than OK. But it's definitely not fair to say that college pays more than trades. Both have huge swaths of pay ranges, from effectively zero, to millions. But if you're optimizing for making as much money as possible, I'd argue you're doing it wrong anyways.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  The details matter - 7 years is medical school and some residencies for example. To not take into account the age is silly. And the entire point of the original post is arguing about earnings, so…
thebradbain 5y ago
Median income and age don't paint the whole picture, though, either -- you need to take into account things like student loan debt, or benefits, or even taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere). Learning a trade and going to college for a white collar job are two different routes entirely, in my opinion. Even assuming that the skillsets were interchangeable, a lot of trades people would never trade their job for an office job and vice versa.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  > taxes (because it is not uncommon for trades, even for those personally pulling in 6+ figures, to be paid a good chunk of their compensation in cash that's not necessarily recorded anywhere). some good points, but I wanted to call this out specifically. when we're discussing at a high level what career paths should be encouraged, possibly via policy, I don't think we should price in the ability to evade taxes.

Miraste 5y ago

This is why the GP linked a source with the national average for college graduates and non-grads. Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders.

bluGill 5y ago
Average isn't useful though. Your expected pay after med school is very different from a music degree. Sure a few in music make millions per year, but most struggle to make anything, and a significant number who do get a good income are not in anything related to music. There are many different trades, with different income expectations. And of course if you are willing to own the business (not easy) is a factor, some business are more conductive to owning your own business. We need to be honest with kids: it matters what degree or job you presue. While I can't predict the future perfectly I can look at trends and say some engineering jobs are better than others. Med school looks really good too. Music on the other hand should be a second major or a minor if you study it at all. Likewise in the trades some are better than others, though I'm not sure what to get into.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Med isnt immune to automation or remote work as well (telemedicine)...its surprising a bit. I would be really surprised if there isnt tons of automation 10-20 years from now. Nurses are pretty well protected though.
bumby 5y ago
>Certainly there are tradespeople who make a ton of money, but usually they make less than degree holders. I wonder how much of this isn't also driven by the reduction in private union membership. I've worked white collar jobs in organizations with strong unions and I'm willing to bet the blue collar workers were probably almost surely, on average, more than the average white collar workers elsewhere. And when I worked in areas with weak union membership, the converse was true. The difficulty in the former was that it was hard to get into the union, but once you did, you were probably making many multiples of the average household income for the locale.

welshwelsh 5y ago

I'm sure there are some pipefitters who make a lot of money, but we should go by averages, not outliers. The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year. We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of work, and doing physical labor can be hard on the body. One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.

prirun 5y ago
> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same. One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before. There are no remote plumbers. I firmly believe that if you show up on time, are pleasant, and are competent at your work, running your own business is a slam dunk and you can charge whatever you want (within reason). Because my experience is that it's nearly impossible anymore to get all of those things.
- spullara 5y ago
  If we can get AR/VR into the mainstream I bet there will be remote plumbers that essentially pilot you to diagnose and fix things.
  - thorsten11 5y ago
    I guess all the tools in his pickup is not needed then?
    - spullara 5y ago
      They will be but that will be delivered to your home for rental.

skadamat 5y ago

Obligatory Shop Class as SoulCraft drop - https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so...

cosmodisk 5y ago

This is what some people call a never getting old story of a builder who arrives to fix up your house in a Ferrari. It's a myth. Sole traders are sole traders. Some will pull in more,some will do less. Fantastic incomes aren't happening that often. If they start employing people- that's a business, exactly the same as if some dev would get a bunch of others under his ltd corp.

tapatio 5y ago

"It's nearly impossible to even get people to come out for normal household jobs anymore" Yup, residential clients are bottom feeders - avoid them at all costs - nothing but a hassle. The good money, and work, is with commercial clients.

prawn 5y ago
What then should a residential client do? (Assuming they haven't yet found "their electrician" that they have rapport with.) Get a recommendation, overpay if necessary, pay promptly, then hope they'll take your call and not overquote next time? Two of my tradies (painter and gyprocker) I actually found by having them do work at my office building, and then contacted them for work at home.
- tapatio 5y ago
  That's a tough question. A recommendation from a friend is probably the best bet. And when they do come and do the work, offer them drinks and snacks, make them comfortable. They will remember that since 90% of customers don't do that. You can also give a tip. I do all of those things and its worked out well.
- brewtide 5y ago
  As a self-employed painter (and a good list of other trades prior to), I'd say that references work both ways -- You, as the client, want the tradesman to have good references, but in my little neck of the woods, everyone knows everyone -- And we also use references to 'feel out' if we even want to work for someone. Who do I want to work for? Someone who appreciates the end result, but is reasonable about timelines and a 'structured but not fully firm' timetable. In the trades, we are usually doing a fine dance between other tradesmen doing their thing, then it is our turn to do our thing. So many phases in the process of a new build or remodel effort requiring all these different trades to line up correctly, usually between at least a few projects going on at the same time. When the plumber is 3 weeks behind, it bumps the insulators, which bumps the drywallers, which bump the painters, which (can) bump some finishing details, etc. So, I'd say honestly, the understanding of things being delayed (within reason) is my primary "will work for them again" metric. Obviously we all work to get paid, but being paid isn't the reason I do what I do. Taking pride in work done is how I'm able to 'stare at walls' all day, and be fine with it. That being said, throughout the thread I see people stating that no one wants to deal with the residential work. I primarily focus on residential work. It's probably easier to bill to the moon and skip some corners in the commercial world (ie. 'make more money') but as mentioned above, I've zero interest in that - It's a combination of being compensating fairly and pride in the work. Find someone that does good work, for a fair price, and be civil -- It will be remembered. I'd dare say that most trades people that I know/knew have no problems with the 'stress of work', but the interactions with over-demanding clients are what cause them never to be willing to take a call again. OR bill out the nose, hoping they don't even get the job, as it's just not worth it. (irony is, most of these stories end up with them getting the job, anyway).

zhdc1 5y ago

> If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing. It's almost always been this way. I remember a reading a quote from a prolific 19th century author (whose name I can no longer find online, thanks to broken phrase searching in Google) complaining about enterprising carpenters earning more than his government salary. The issue is that it's not an apples to apples comparison. Small business owners who provide blue collar services can make significantly more than salaried white collar workers. However, runnig a small business requires a completely different set of skills, and the percentage of blue collar workers who can do their trade and run a successful small business is far lower than the percentage of people doing blue collar work.