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People doing low voltage cat6 wiring make bank. Friend of mine got quoted 10k to run wires in his single family house, and that was w/o any walls up. Plumbers

People doing low voltage cat6 wiring make bank. Friend of mine got quoted 10k to run wires in his single family house, and that was w/o any walls up. Plumbers doing fancy installs, not plunging toilets, over $100/hr. Huge demand, not nearly enough workers. Some of the trades pay very, very, well. Heck live in nannies working 8 hour shifts don't have to pay for housing and they pull in 60k-80k. I know a woman running her own cat nail cutting service who is making good money and looking to hire help.

bcrosby95 5y ago
Home improvement is a crazy market. A lot of people seem to quote based upon what they think you can afford, which is easy to figure out since they usually do it while standing in your house.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  One of our contractors actually said, "Yeah, I looked your house up on Redfin."
- davemp 5y ago
  Home improvement is pretty cancerous right now. I get quotes with ~$5k in labor for work that would take me a week to do in the worst case. That’s literally double my rate without considering that working for yourself is tax free. It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself. I can only imagine all of the inefficiency comes from teams of salesmen/project managers/owners who suck all of value out. But still how do they get away with such bad deals? Are people so pigeonholed that they can’t imagine doing the work themselves? Is getting bonded/licensed/whatever other paperwork is required to compete with these sleazy companies that difficult? I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind learning how to install drain systems for $125/hr minus overhead.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    It's not possible to hire Americans to do this kind of work without getting screwed. If you don't want to get screwed, you have to start doing this work yourself. (Or maybe someone in your family could do it? Do you have a 19yo nephew?) Not everyone is capable of some of the manual or cognitive tasks involved, but not everyone you could hire would be, and most of the work is of the simple-yet-laborious variety. In the 3-county rural area where I've spent most of my time recently, we have 3 Lowes, 2 Home Depots, a Menard's, multiple Orschelns and Tractor Supplies, and probably fifty smaller hardware stores and lumber yards. This is many thousands of commercial square feet basically devoted to home improvement, for an area with fewer than 140,000 residents. If it were possible to hire this sort of work without significant expense, the home supply market would be very different. I'm not criticizing any carpenters or plumbers here. Their work is naturally seasonal and cyclical, and our society DGAF about people with that sort of work. If an electrician would wire your new bedroom for less than $3,000, he wouldn't be able to afford $1,000/month for medical insurance for his family, at least not every month of the year.
    - davemp 5y ago
      > It's not possible to hire Americans to do this kind of work without getting screwed. It’s worse than that. Even when you try to hire Americans, it’ll turn out that only the salesman/owner are legally working. The actual work is almost exclusively done by immigrants being paid exploitative wages. It’s frustrating that there is actually money in the industry but such a small amount reaches the laborers.
  - jdiez17 5y ago
    > It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself. I don’t think it’s particularly baffling. A large class of jobs, including the trades and so-called “low skilled” professions, are in very high demand - which indicates that what they do is valuable to a lot of people - and while you could theoretically do their job yourself, many people simply don’t want to “get their hands dirty.” In my opinion that’s a good thing by the way. People who do jobs that are important for us and few people want to do should be paid accordingly.
a1pulley 5y ago
> People doing low voltage cat6 wiring make bank. Friend of mine got quoted 10k to run wires in his single family house, and that was w/o any walls up. Someone on Nextdoor was confused about how to "add those jack things" to the ethernet cables in her prewired house. I spent a few minutes linking her to YT videos and an article so she could do it herself. No response, but a few weeks later someone else PM'd me: "Wanna make a couple bucks?" Ignoring the tone-deafness of that question: yes, low voltage wiring quotes are ridiculous, but it's also one of the easiest DIY projects you can do if have an attic or crawlspace. I installed four access points through my attic and a UAP-AC-M-PRO-US for backyard coverage.
lr4444lr 5y ago
How many jobs in those niches though can a local market actually sustain? IT doesn't just pay high - it's a huge unmet need in the labor force.

bcrosby95 5y ago

Home improvement is a crazy market. A lot of people seem to quote based upon what they think you can afford, which is easy to figure out since they usually do it while standing in your house.

nostrademons 5y ago
One of our contractors actually said, "Yeah, I looked your house up on Redfin."
davemp 5y ago
Home improvement is pretty cancerous right now. I get quotes with ~$5k in labor for work that would take me a week to do in the worst case. That’s literally double my rate without considering that working for yourself is tax free. It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself. I can only imagine all of the inefficiency comes from teams of salesmen/project managers/owners who suck all of value out. But still how do they get away with such bad deals? Are people so pigeonholed that they can’t imagine doing the work themselves? Is getting bonded/licensed/whatever other paperwork is required to compete with these sleazy companies that difficult? I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind learning how to install drain systems for $125/hr minus overhead.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  It's not possible to hire Americans to do this kind of work without getting screwed. If you don't want to get screwed, you have to start doing this work yourself. (Or maybe someone in your family could do it? Do you have a 19yo nephew?) Not everyone is capable of some of the manual or cognitive tasks involved, but not everyone you could hire would be, and most of the work is of the simple-yet-laborious variety. In the 3-county rural area where I've spent most of my time recently, we have 3 Lowes, 2 Home Depots, a Menard's, multiple Orschelns and Tractor Supplies, and probably fifty smaller hardware stores and lumber yards. This is many thousands of commercial square feet basically devoted to home improvement, for an area with fewer than 140,000 residents. If it were possible to hire this sort of work without significant expense, the home supply market would be very different. I'm not criticizing any carpenters or plumbers here. Their work is naturally seasonal and cyclical, and our society DGAF about people with that sort of work. If an electrician would wire your new bedroom for less than $3,000, he wouldn't be able to afford $1,000/month for medical insurance for his family, at least not every month of the year.
  - davemp 5y ago
    > It's not possible to hire Americans to do this kind of work without getting screwed. It’s worse than that. Even when you try to hire Americans, it’ll turn out that only the salesman/owner are legally working. The actual work is almost exclusively done by immigrants being paid exploitative wages. It’s frustrating that there is actually money in the industry but such a small amount reaches the laborers.
- jdiez17 5y ago
  > It baffles me that our markets are so inefficient that it’s 125% more effective for me to take time off my ‘highly skilled’ engineering job to do ‘low skilled’ renovation/repair work myself. I don’t think it’s particularly baffling. A large class of jobs, including the trades and so-called “low skilled” professions, are in very high demand - which indicates that what they do is valuable to a lot of people - and while you could theoretically do their job yourself, many people simply don’t want to “get their hands dirty.” In my opinion that’s a good thing by the way. People who do jobs that are important for us and few people want to do should be paid accordingly.

a1pulley 5y ago

> People doing low voltage cat6 wiring make bank. Friend of mine got quoted 10k to run wires in his single family house, and that was w/o any walls up. Someone on Nextdoor was confused about how to "add those jack things" to the ethernet cables in her prewired house. I spent a few minutes linking her to YT videos and an article so she could do it herself. No response, but a few weeks later someone else PM'd me: "Wanna make a couple bucks?" Ignoring the tone-deafness of that question: yes, low voltage wiring quotes are ridiculous, but it's also one of the easiest DIY projects you can do if have an attic or crawlspace. I installed four access points through my attic and a UAP-AC-M-PRO-US for backyard coverage.

lr4444lr 5y ago

How many jobs in those niches though can a local market actually sustain? IT doesn't just pay high - it's a huge unmet need in the labor force.