7 ms·

It's not exactly that simple. I know an employer in the cabinetry field. It's not genius work in the shop but you can't be asleep. He pays guys $60k+ and some

It's not exactly that simple. I know an employer in the cabinetry field. It's not genius work in the shop but you can't be asleep. He pays guys $60k+ and some approach $100k for dependable people that known the field. He has trouble finding people. The town is full of hundreds of healthy males working for Walmart, oil change shops, non commission retail, and all those sorts. There is some kind of issue that makes it so someone will work stocking a grocery store for $40k a year instead of screwing a cabinet together for $60k, with opportunities to make it up to $100k in the shop and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built.

Spooky23 3y ago
Usually the issue there is nobody knows it exists. Or they are intimidated by not having skills, and having worked for WalMart, no expectation of any meaningful training.
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  Also, they don't own a suitable truck, nor own the suitable tools. The job might pay twice as much as WalMart, but if it costs you $40k-80k to enter that line of business, the wage differential is insufficient to pay both the capital expenditure plus depreciation of the required equipment. With auto mechanics, the folks selling tools (such as the Snap-On Tools truck operator) will handle the financing.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
Screwing a cabinet together is actual work, you need to complete things at some expected pace at some expected quality (it's a low bar, but there's a bar). At Walmart most of the time you can just fuck around and not do much work, if you get fired at Walmart you just go fuck around at an oil change shop until they fire you. I know men that have done this their whole lives.
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  Idk if you've been to a Walmart or an oil change place.. but they get people to work pretty hard and efficiently for low wages. That's basically their secret sauce. My Walmart appears to be staffed by zombies, yet for the most part the store functions pretty well day in a day out, 365 days a year.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    Yes but they also get people who will just do the bare minimum and make everyone around them pick up the slack until someone takes the effort to fire them. There's essentially an entire category of people who do this.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ahoka 3y ago
      They get paid the bare minumum and do the bare minimum in exchange. I don’t see a problem here. What do you do BTW? I would bet that not assembling cabinets.
      - Qwertious 3y ago
        The problem is that they put the whole store behind, then Walmart blames everyone for the store being behind and pressures them accordingly. Which is Walmart's fault, of course, but Walmart might as well be a force of nature as far as its workers are concerned; they can't change Walmart.
      - micromacrofoot 3y ago
        They're actually dead weight that the entire organization carries around, I honestly think in some cases they'd be better off being paid to not come to work. What I do isn't really relevant unless you're trying to make some personal slight.
- cogman10 3y ago
linuxftw 3y ago
I have some family members in the cabinet business. Nobody is paying $60k/yr unless they're getting a lot of OT. They're commuting 2+ hours each way, don't get paid for the drive time, drive their own trucks, have their own tools. Most cabinet shops (almost all) don't provide any kind of benefits or PTO. So, $25/hr, plus horrible commutes, plus tons of time and expense. There's a reason that guy can't find anybody, he's not telling you the whole story. edit: 'of' to 'or'
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  I've posted here before about my dad in the cabinet field. He got a raise to $20 an hour in 1991. He worked a lot of overtime too, so by the end of the year I'm sure that was over $50k. In 1991.
  - avery17 3y ago
    50k in 1991 went much further than 60k in 2023.
    - talldatethrow 3y ago
      That is exactly my point. Hence, I do not believe people are making that little today.
      - eesmith 3y ago
        Would you believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Here are the "Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2022" for "51-7011 Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes517011.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes517011.htm Percentile wage estimates for Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters: Percentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% (Median) Hourly Wage $ 14.00 $ 16.61 $ 18.66 $ 22.91 $ 28.16 Annual Wage (2) $ 29,120 $ 34,550 $ 38,810 $ 47,660 $ 58,570 (2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. The "Top paying industries for Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" are: Employment Annual mean wage Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing 240 $ 60,520 Federal Executive Branch 190 $ 60,460 In the "Industries with the highest concentration of employment in Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" the best paying is: Motor Vehicle Body 3,040 $ 49,990 and Trailer Manufacturing The most common (at 20% of the industry) is: Furniture and Related 68,860 $ 41,620 Product Manufacturing While there is the caveat, "Estimates do not include self-employed workers", the example at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 was for employees. EDIT: in 2001 the mean annual wage for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters was $25,120 with median of $10.74/hour and mean of $11.40. https://archive.org/details/welcometoamerica00demi/page/984/mode/2up?q=%2251-7011+Cabinetmakers+and+Bench+Carpenters%22 https://archive.org/details/welcometoamerica00demi/page/984/... . (It is the oldest record I could find, published in "Welcome to America : the complete guide for immigrants : the English-Russian version".) What did your father do in the cabinet field to get $20 an hour in 1991?
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> There is some kind of issue that makes it so someone will work stocking a grocery store for $40k a year instead of screwing a cabinet together for $60k, with opportunities to make it up to $100k in the shop and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built. Yes, it is called an insufficient pay to quality of life at work ratio, which also incorporates volatility of income. All the cases I hear require overtime, weekends, overnights, evenings, and unstable, seasonal employment. And probably not offer health insurance subsidies or 401k if less than 50 employees.
- nine_k 3y ago
  But with pay like that, the shop would be out of business, because the consumers won't shoulder the resulting high price of the cabinets. Either the business finds a way to be much more efficient (e.g. producing cabinets much faster and selling wider) while paying the workers more, or it has to scrape by while employing some less fortunate folks. (Or shut down, or course.)
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > But with pay like that, the shop would be out of business Maybe, maybe not. I will let the market sort that out.
  - the_gipsy 3y ago
    If their "business model" is screwing over workers, then maybe it's not a good one, no.
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      Isn't that the business model of most employers in the US?
- refurb 3y ago
  Are you suggesting $18/hr at Walmart is “better quality of life than $30/hr making cabinets”?
dharmab 3y ago
It might ease of connecting workers to jobs. Walmart, wuick lube places, retailers all spend a lot of effort to make it known they're hiring and how to apply.
giantrobot 3y ago
> He pays guys $60k+ and some approach $100k for dependable people that known the field. He has trouble finding people. I've seen trade jobs that get described like this. However the reality is different. The jobs are effectively seasonal and no one makes $60k because they don't end up working a full 52 weeks of the year. They get paid per job and once they finish the job there's no work and thus no pay until the next job. A lot of times employees are expected to own and supply their own tools. They often also require a commute out to a job site. Working trades like this ends up averaging out to a bit better than minimum wage but without predictable schedules and/or long commutes. When someone makes six figures it's because the job was a new subdivision or something.
itiro 3y ago
Prior experience cannot be the for setting wages. No matter how rustled an employers jimmie’s over big numbers, when enough are out of because it does not make financial sense to take a job, people will revolt. If small businesses cannot hang due to their model (and sensibilities) being based on 1990s math, the solution is tax the mega rich and rebalance the market in the aggregate.
carlosjobim 3y ago
If you fail at hiring you have failed at the most important aspect of running a business. He is doing something or several things wrong, and there is no excuse. He can't blame anybody but himself for his troubles finding people. Just like you can't blame your competitors if you don't get customers. Hiring and training is a crucial part of running a business. Is he training young men to work for him, or is that "somebody else's job"?
sanderjd 3y ago
Sounds like an advertising problem. How would anyone know about those cabinet making jobs, as opposed to very visible jobs at places like Walmart? I've certainly never seen an ad for a $60k a year entry level cabinet-making job!
pengaru 3y ago
A Walmart job is an exceedingly reliable paycheck for a clean job in a climate-controlled environment where the majority of the occupational risk is exposure to the public. I can't fault anyone for choosing that option if they can live with the income level, it's relatively sane.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  where the majority of the occupational risk is exposure to the public ... at Wal-Mart. Personally, I'd rather work with all of the chemicals on the "Things I Won't Work With" list, but that's just me.
  - pengaru 3y ago
    I'll take Wal-Mart over Amazon any day.
  - MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
    The public are fine, come on.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    > Personally, I'd rather work with all of the chemicals... My best friend was a chemist. He told stories of some of the accidents he saw (or heard, or saw the property damage, or triaged victims of, or ...) during the relatively few years when he worked in a lab like that. Quite a few of the chemists in that lab left chemistry, and did not return. My friend left the lab, and moved into computational chemistry.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  And maybe after they work there for a while, they can switch jobs to Target where the customers are better.
behringer 3y ago
I'll tell you exactly what that is is cuz I'm that guy. Couldn't get anyone to take a chance and train me. I'm rather quite handy and safety conscious but couldn't get a job doing production work without experience period. If you want stock boys you can pay em cheap but you gotta train em. Instead I moved and found work in tech which matched my education.
varispeed 3y ago
> and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built. This is so bizarre. If someone knows how to build a cabinet, why would you promote them so they no longer build cabinets? If someone loves building cabinets, the only way to make more money is to stop building them... It's one of the problem why companies cannot find skilled workers...
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  A friend of mine explained it as "We rise to the level of our own incompetence". Start a job at level 1, do a good job, get a promotion/find a new job to rise to level 2. Repeat until suddenly, you were really good at doing X job, but just got promoted/moved to doing Y job and now you are struggling because it's not very related to what you did in the previous position that you were good at. It makes sense at a certain level, and can explain why we get so many people in positions they don't seem suited for.
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  Because there is a limit to how valuable you are as an expert builder building. But being an expert builder usually means you are intelligent and thoughtful and logical. So if you combine your cabinet experience with those traits, you are a great candidate for project manager, where you can be paid more and provide more for your family. It's not like they are forced into it. No shortage of people that turn down the chance to get into management.
  - varispeed 3y ago
    > Because there is a limit to how valuable you are as an expert builder building. That's rarely a thing. Most jobs pay is not correlated to the value it creates. Simple example is software development. Team of 10 can create product that generates millions every day, but their pay will not be correlated in any way with that revenue. Maybe a manager will get a bonus, but most of the money flows to the owners.
BenjiWiebe 3y ago
I'd rather work at Walmart then screw together cabinets, personally. That is part of my calculation of where to work, not purely money.

Spooky23 3y ago

Usually the issue there is nobody knows it exists. Or they are intimidated by not having skills, and having worked for WalMart, no expectation of any meaningful training.

Tangurena2 3y ago
Also, they don't own a suitable truck, nor own the suitable tools. The job might pay twice as much as WalMart, but if it costs you $40k-80k to enter that line of business, the wage differential is insufficient to pay both the capital expenditure plus depreciation of the required equipment. With auto mechanics, the folks selling tools (such as the Snap-On Tools truck operator) will handle the financing.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

Screwing a cabinet together is actual work, you need to complete things at some expected pace at some expected quality (it's a low bar, but there's a bar). At Walmart most of the time you can just fuck around and not do much work, if you get fired at Walmart you just go fuck around at an oil change shop until they fire you. I know men that have done this their whole lives.

talldatethrow 3y ago
Idk if you've been to a Walmart or an oil change place.. but they get people to work pretty hard and efficiently for low wages. That's basically their secret sauce. My Walmart appears to be staffed by zombies, yet for the most part the store functions pretty well day in a day out, 365 days a year.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  Yes but they also get people who will just do the bare minimum and make everyone around them pick up the slack until someone takes the effort to fire them. There's essentially an entire category of people who do this.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ahoka 3y ago
    They get paid the bare minumum and do the bare minimum in exchange. I don’t see a problem here. What do you do BTW? I would bet that not assembling cabinets.
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      The problem is that they put the whole store behind, then Walmart blames everyone for the store being behind and pressures them accordingly. Which is Walmart's fault, of course, but Walmart might as well be a force of nature as far as its workers are concerned; they can't change Walmart.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      They're actually dead weight that the entire organization carries around, I honestly think in some cases they'd be better off being paid to not come to work. What I do isn't really relevant unless you're trying to make some personal slight.
cogman10 3y ago

linuxftw 3y ago

I have some family members in the cabinet business. Nobody is paying $60k/yr unless they're getting a lot of OT. They're commuting 2+ hours each way, don't get paid for the drive time, drive their own trucks, have their own tools. Most cabinet shops (almost all) don't provide any kind of benefits or PTO. So, $25/hr, plus horrible commutes, plus tons of time and expense. There's a reason that guy can't find anybody, he's not telling you the whole story. edit: 'of' to 'or'

talldatethrow 3y ago
I've posted here before about my dad in the cabinet field. He got a raise to $20 an hour in 1991. He worked a lot of overtime too, so by the end of the year I'm sure that was over $50k. In 1991.
- avery17 3y ago
  50k in 1991 went much further than 60k in 2023.
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    That is exactly my point. Hence, I do not believe people are making that little today.
    - eesmith 3y ago
      Would you believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Here are the "Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2022" for "51-7011 Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes517011.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes517011.htm Percentile wage estimates for Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters: Percentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% (Median) Hourly Wage $ 14.00 $ 16.61 $ 18.66 $ 22.91 $ 28.16 Annual Wage (2) $ 29,120 $ 34,550 $ 38,810 $ 47,660 $ 58,570 (2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. The "Top paying industries for Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" are: Employment Annual mean wage Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing 240 $ 60,520 Federal Executive Branch 190 $ 60,460 In the "Industries with the highest concentration of employment in Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" the best paying is: Motor Vehicle Body 3,040 $ 49,990 and Trailer Manufacturing The most common (at 20% of the industry) is: Furniture and Related 68,860 $ 41,620 Product Manufacturing While there is the caveat, "Estimates do not include self-employed workers", the example at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 was for employees. EDIT: in 2001 the mean annual wage for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters was $25,120 with median of $10.74/hour and mean of $11.40. https://archive.org/details/welcometoamerica00demi/page/984/mode/2up?q=%2251-7011+Cabinetmakers+and+Bench+Carpenters%22 https://archive.org/details/welcometoamerica00demi/page/984/... . (It is the oldest record I could find, published in "Welcome to America : the complete guide for immigrants : the English-Russian version".) What did your father do in the cabinet field to get $20 an hour in 1991?

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> There is some kind of issue that makes it so someone will work stocking a grocery store for $40k a year instead of screwing a cabinet together for $60k, with opportunities to make it up to $100k in the shop and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built. Yes, it is called an insufficient pay to quality of life at work ratio, which also incorporates volatility of income. All the cases I hear require overtime, weekends, overnights, evenings, and unstable, seasonal employment. And probably not offer health insurance subsidies or 401k if less than 50 employees.

nine_k 3y ago
But with pay like that, the shop would be out of business, because the consumers won't shoulder the resulting high price of the cabinets. Either the business finds a way to be much more efficient (e.g. producing cabinets much faster and selling wider) while paying the workers more, or it has to scrape by while employing some less fortunate folks. (Or shut down, or course.)
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > But with pay like that, the shop would be out of business Maybe, maybe not. I will let the market sort that out.
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  If their "business model" is screwing over workers, then maybe it's not a good one, no.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Isn't that the business model of most employers in the US?
refurb 3y ago
Are you suggesting $18/hr at Walmart is “better quality of life than $30/hr making cabinets”?

dharmab 3y ago

It might ease of connecting workers to jobs. Walmart, wuick lube places, retailers all spend a lot of effort to make it known they're hiring and how to apply.

giantrobot 3y ago

> He pays guys $60k+ and some approach $100k for dependable people that known the field. He has trouble finding people. I've seen trade jobs that get described like this. However the reality is different. The jobs are effectively seasonal and no one makes $60k because they don't end up working a full 52 weeks of the year. They get paid per job and once they finish the job there's no work and thus no pay until the next job. A lot of times employees are expected to own and supply their own tools. They often also require a commute out to a job site. Working trades like this ends up averaging out to a bit better than minimum wage but without predictable schedules and/or long commutes. When someone makes six figures it's because the job was a new subdivision or something.

itiro 3y ago

Prior experience cannot be the for setting wages. No matter how rustled an employers jimmie’s over big numbers, when enough are out of because it does not make financial sense to take a job, people will revolt. If small businesses cannot hang due to their model (and sensibilities) being based on 1990s math, the solution is tax the mega rich and rebalance the market in the aggregate.

carlosjobim 3y ago

If you fail at hiring you have failed at the most important aspect of running a business. He is doing something or several things wrong, and there is no excuse. He can't blame anybody but himself for his troubles finding people. Just like you can't blame your competitors if you don't get customers. Hiring and training is a crucial part of running a business. Is he training young men to work for him, or is that "somebody else's job"?

sanderjd 3y ago

Sounds like an advertising problem. How would anyone know about those cabinet making jobs, as opposed to very visible jobs at places like Walmart? I've certainly never seen an ad for a $60k a year entry level cabinet-making job!

pengaru 3y ago

A Walmart job is an exceedingly reliable paycheck for a clean job in a climate-controlled environment where the majority of the occupational risk is exposure to the public. I can't fault anyone for choosing that option if they can live with the income level, it's relatively sane.

CamperBob2 3y ago
where the majority of the occupational risk is exposure to the public ... at Wal-Mart. Personally, I'd rather work with all of the chemicals on the "Things I Won't Work With" list, but that's just me.
- pengaru 3y ago
  I'll take Wal-Mart over Amazon any day.
- MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
  The public are fine, come on.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > Personally, I'd rather work with all of the chemicals... My best friend was a chemist. He told stories of some of the accidents he saw (or heard, or saw the property damage, or triaged victims of, or ...) during the relatively few years when he worked in a lab like that. Quite a few of the chemists in that lab left chemistry, and did not return. My friend left the lab, and moved into computational chemistry.
midoridensha 3y ago
And maybe after they work there for a while, they can switch jobs to Target where the customers are better.

behringer 3y ago

I'll tell you exactly what that is is cuz I'm that guy. Couldn't get anyone to take a chance and train me. I'm rather quite handy and safety conscious but couldn't get a job doing production work without experience period. If you want stock boys you can pay em cheap but you gotta train em. Instead I moved and found work in tech which matched my education.

varispeed 3y ago

> and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built. This is so bizarre. If someone knows how to build a cabinet, why would you promote them so they no longer build cabinets? If someone loves building cabinets, the only way to make more money is to stop building them... It's one of the problem why companies cannot find skilled workers...

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
A friend of mine explained it as "We rise to the level of our own incompetence". Start a job at level 1, do a good job, get a promotion/find a new job to rise to level 2. Repeat until suddenly, you were really good at doing X job, but just got promoted/moved to doing Y job and now you are struggling because it's not very related to what you did in the previous position that you were good at. It makes sense at a certain level, and can explain why we get so many people in positions they don't seem suited for.
talldatethrow 3y ago
Because there is a limit to how valuable you are as an expert builder building. But being an expert builder usually means you are intelligent and thoughtful and logical. So if you combine your cabinet experience with those traits, you are a great candidate for project manager, where you can be paid more and provide more for your family. It's not like they are forced into it. No shortage of people that turn down the chance to get into management.
- varispeed 3y ago
  > Because there is a limit to how valuable you are as an expert builder building. That's rarely a thing. Most jobs pay is not correlated to the value it creates. Simple example is software development. Team of 10 can create product that generates millions every day, but their pay will not be correlated in any way with that revenue. Maybe a manager will get a bonus, but most of the money flows to the owners.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago

I'd rather work at Walmart then screw together cabinets, personally. That is part of my calculation of where to work, not purely money.