5 ms·

Tradespeople will definitely not be making 300k+ off a few years of experience five years from now.

nostrademons 4y ago
Extend that out to 10 years from now and I'll take that bet. Price goes up dramatically in the face of supply shortages, because when there's a shortage you pick your customers instead of them picking you, and some customers have a lot more money than others. Same reason software engineers make $300K/year after a few years experience (when I started my career 15 years ago $100K was considered a very good mid-career salary, and still is in some locales), and good childcare in the Bay Area now runs about $3000/month, and homes are $3M.
- kilroy123 4y ago
  I think there will be money in making a trades _business_. Not you doing the work, but you hiring and managing others who do the work.
oceanplexian 4y ago
I think this is actually one of those predictions that might not turn out the way you think. Economies are all about supply and demand, not how long or complicated the job title is. The government is increasingly ignoring the problem, the higher-education-industrial-complex is grabbing workers that would otherwise go into the trades, mass-importation of unskilled labor is slowing down as it becomes more of a political minefield (In the EU and the US). The confluence of all those factors will squeeze a limited labor pool, and prices will continue to increase. I think it's not unlikely that in 5-10 years we enter a crisis where critical infrastructure starts failing and the government has to start up a "Learn to Weld" program instead of "Learn to Code" program because things have gone so far out of balance.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Economies are about supply and demand. But wages are not directly tied to the demand for the trades. Wages are controlled by the bosses. Even if the price of wiring up a new home goes up, I would not expect the bulk of that increase to be reflected in the wages of the electricians (at least in the US).
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    Trades are one of those areas (along with software engineering) where it is relatively easy to be your own boss. The market in general is pretty competitive on both the buyer (lots of individual homeowners needing work done) and seller (lots of small independent contractors selling their labor) sides; that should make overall prices & wages reflect industry-wide (or at least local) supply & demand pretty well. ConstructionPhysics has a pretty good series about why the construction industry never really realized economies of scale the way most other industries do. Even when you have large homebuilders like D.R. Horton, their primary competitive advantage is usually reduced cost of capital, which goes away if capital becomes expensive for everyone. https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-economies-of https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-there-so-...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Ekaros 4y ago
And if they were, who could afford to pay them that? Other tradespeople? Ultra-rich?
- nostrademons 4y ago
  That part is relatively easy to answer. When there are only enough tradespeople to maintain 10% of homes, the top 10% of income earners will get their services, and the top 10% will spend a majority of their wealth on home maintenance. It's already happening in areas with a lot of rich people and few tradespeople - it costs me $1000 to run a camera down my sewer line, $4K to roto-root it, about $20-30K to fix a collapsed pipe. The top-10% has been doing fine in terms of income, but now that it's so un-economical to go into a field other than tech or finance, they're going to have to spend a lot of that on essential services.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Most of the trades companies around me won't even pick up the phone for a job less than $10K. And even then, they're booked out months in advance. These companies are making a fortune. Not sure how much of it trickles down to tradespeople wages, but from reading other threads on this article, it doesn't look like those guys don't get paid a lot, as a percentage of what's billed to the customer.
radiator 4y ago
Tangential, but inflation is so high, we could all be earning millions by the end of the decade.

Extend that out to 10 years from now and I'll take that bet. Price goes up dramatically in the face of supply shortages, because when there's a shortage you pick your customers instead of them picking you, and some customers have a lot more money than others. Same reason software engineers make $300K/year after a few years experience (when I started my career 15 years ago $100K was considered a very good mid-career salary, and still is in some locales), and good childcare in the Bay Area now runs about $3000/month, and homes are $3M.

kilroy123 4y ago
I think there will be money in making a trades _business_. Not you doing the work, but you hiring and managing others who do the work.

oceanplexian 4y ago

I think this is actually one of those predictions that might not turn out the way you think. Economies are all about supply and demand, not how long or complicated the job title is. The government is increasingly ignoring the problem, the higher-education-industrial-complex is grabbing workers that would otherwise go into the trades, mass-importation of unskilled labor is slowing down as it becomes more of a political minefield (In the EU and the US). The confluence of all those factors will squeeze a limited labor pool, and prices will continue to increase. I think it's not unlikely that in 5-10 years we enter a crisis where critical infrastructure starts failing and the government has to start up a "Learn to Weld" program instead of "Learn to Code" program because things have gone so far out of balance.

UncleMeat 4y ago
Economies are about supply and demand. But wages are not directly tied to the demand for the trades. Wages are controlled by the bosses. Even if the price of wiring up a new home goes up, I would not expect the bulk of that increase to be reflected in the wages of the electricians (at least in the US).
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Trades are one of those areas (along with software engineering) where it is relatively easy to be your own boss. The market in general is pretty competitive on both the buyer (lots of individual homeowners needing work done) and seller (lots of small independent contractors selling their labor) sides; that should make overall prices & wages reflect industry-wide (or at least local) supply & demand pretty well. ConstructionPhysics has a pretty good series about why the construction industry never really realized economies of scale the way most other industries do. Even when you have large homebuilders like D.R. Horton, their primary competitive advantage is usually reduced cost of capital, which goes away if capital becomes expensive for everyone. https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-economies-of https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/why-are-there-so-...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Ekaros 4y ago

And if they were, who could afford to pay them that? Other tradespeople? Ultra-rich?

nostrademons 4y ago
That part is relatively easy to answer. When there are only enough tradespeople to maintain 10% of homes, the top 10% of income earners will get their services, and the top 10% will spend a majority of their wealth on home maintenance. It's already happening in areas with a lot of rich people and few tradespeople - it costs me $1000 to run a camera down my sewer line, $4K to roto-root it, about $20-30K to fix a collapsed pipe. The top-10% has been doing fine in terms of income, but now that it's so un-economical to go into a field other than tech or finance, they're going to have to spend a lot of that on essential services.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Most of the trades companies around me won't even pick up the phone for a job less than $10K. And even then, they're booked out months in advance. These companies are making a fortune. Not sure how much of it trickles down to tradespeople wages, but from reading other threads on this article, it doesn't look like those guys don't get paid a lot, as a percentage of what's billed to the customer.

radiator 4y ago

Tangential, but inflation is so high, we could all be earning millions by the end of the decade.