4 ms·

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 ge

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?
      - brutusborn 3y ago
        Out of interest, how did you format those tables? They look really nice.
        eesmith 3y ago
        Thanks! Judicious use of the space bar and back-space keys. :)
      - talldatethrow 3y ago
        No I do not believe the BoL. He had just moved to the US in 1988. He had no real wood working experience beyond building a small sailboat when he was a teenager. In 1989 my mom and I moved here with him. In 1991, he got a raise to $20 and we went to Price Club (Costco) and bought a ton of groceries, and took a photo with them on the kitchen table with all 3 of us using a self timer. It's a major memory of mine. He was one of the 'foreman' in the shop handling the custom fixture/reception desk line. So if Sun Microsystems at the time wanted new cabinets for their new building, the rest of the shop would build the boxes, but my dad's department would build the reception desk. Basically, you could give my dad some drawings from an architect and my dad could figure out how to make it, while also getting it into the building. He was still cutting and assembling then too as 'engineering' and cutlisting is a short part of that overall work.
        eesmith 3y ago
        > No I do not believe the BoL. That is because you are talking about a different sort of position. talldatethrow described the position as "screwing a cabinet together for $60k", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 . That is a cabinet maker. From the BoL, a cabinetmaker is someone who job is to "Cut, shape, and assemble wooden articles or set up and operate a variety of woodworking machines, such as power saws, jointers, and mortisers to surface, cut, or shape lumber or to fabricate parts for wood products." Your father did more than that. He was a foreman, he did design, and he worked on custom office furniture including installation. Of course he gets paid more than a non-supervisory cabinetmaker working in a factory. As a first approximation, "First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers" at https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes471011.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes471011.htm says the mean wage is $77,650 - nearly twice as much as the mean wage for a cabinetmaker at $42,120.
    - r_hoods_ghost 3y ago
      According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics the mean hourly wage for cabinet makers and bench carpenters as of May 2022 was $20.25 per hour. Even in San Francisco the mean hourly wage was only $26.37. Lesson for today - your instincts abiut whay real world, non-dev jobs pay are totally out of whack with reality
- linuxftw 3y ago
  And if your dad was an entry level or journeyman cabinet maker today, he'd be making $25/hr no benefits.
  - acdha 3y ago
    It’s really hard to undo people’s impression of what things are “supposed” to cost after decades of outsourcing manufacturing to low-wage countries. People who aren’t looking for artisan work really aren’t interested in paying inflation-adjusted prices from 30+ years ago, which is an interesting pairing to the not uncommon complaints that things don’t last as long.
    - linuxftw 3y ago
      Well, the labor force has finally decided they're not going to do hard work for starvation wages. The guys running the companies have increased prices, but haven't sent that money down to the labor force. I have a friend that's a plumber, he easily makes his company $450k/yr in billable services, he's making less than $30/hr.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Yeah, between active wage theft and the growing profit-taking I’m not surprised that the union movement is stronger than it’s been in my lifetime. I don’t know your friend but I know a bunch of people like him.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Sounds like an excellent opportunity for your friend to start his own plumbing company with some other disgruntled plumbers, and offer lower rates too to happy homeowners.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        The most important part is that these were not starvation wages in the 80s! People used to pay american employees enough to survive, thrive, and even support local businesses that didn't have to crush their margins to 2% to compete with walmart. The reason everything sucks is because americans have only cared about "sticker price" in comparison shopping for decades, and I posit that's mostly because the american income has spent the past several decades being cut in half simply because employers didn't pay people.

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?
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      Out of interest, how did you format those tables? They look really nice.
      - eesmith 3y ago
        Thanks! Judicious use of the space bar and back-space keys. :)
    - talldatethrow 3y ago
      No I do not believe the BoL. He had just moved to the US in 1988. He had no real wood working experience beyond building a small sailboat when he was a teenager. In 1989 my mom and I moved here with him. In 1991, he got a raise to $20 and we went to Price Club (Costco) and bought a ton of groceries, and took a photo with them on the kitchen table with all 3 of us using a self timer. It's a major memory of mine. He was one of the 'foreman' in the shop handling the custom fixture/reception desk line. So if Sun Microsystems at the time wanted new cabinets for their new building, the rest of the shop would build the boxes, but my dad's department would build the reception desk. Basically, you could give my dad some drawings from an architect and my dad could figure out how to make it, while also getting it into the building. He was still cutting and assembling then too as 'engineering' and cutlisting is a short part of that overall work.
      - eesmith 3y ago
        > No I do not believe the BoL. That is because you are talking about a different sort of position. talldatethrow described the position as "screwing a cabinet together for $60k", at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397458 . That is a cabinet maker. From the BoL, a cabinetmaker is someone who job is to "Cut, shape, and assemble wooden articles or set up and operate a variety of woodworking machines, such as power saws, jointers, and mortisers to surface, cut, or shape lumber or to fabricate parts for wood products." Your father did more than that. He was a foreman, he did design, and he worked on custom office furniture including installation. Of course he gets paid more than a non-supervisory cabinetmaker working in a factory. As a first approximation, "First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers" at https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes471011.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes471011.htm says the mean wage is $77,650 - nearly twice as much as the mean wage for a cabinetmaker at $42,120.
  - r_hoods_ghost 3y ago
    According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics the mean hourly wage for cabinet makers and bench carpenters as of May 2022 was $20.25 per hour. Even in San Francisco the mean hourly wage was only $26.37. Lesson for today - your instincts abiut whay real world, non-dev jobs pay are totally out of whack with reality
linuxftw 3y ago
And if your dad was an entry level or journeyman cabinet maker today, he'd be making $25/hr no benefits.
- acdha 3y ago
  It’s really hard to undo people’s impression of what things are “supposed” to cost after decades of outsourcing manufacturing to low-wage countries. People who aren’t looking for artisan work really aren’t interested in paying inflation-adjusted prices from 30+ years ago, which is an interesting pairing to the not uncommon complaints that things don’t last as long.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    Well, the labor force has finally decided they're not going to do hard work for starvation wages. The guys running the companies have increased prices, but haven't sent that money down to the labor force. I have a friend that's a plumber, he easily makes his company $450k/yr in billable services, he's making less than $30/hr.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Yeah, between active wage theft and the growing profit-taking I’m not surprised that the union movement is stronger than it’s been in my lifetime. I don’t know your friend but I know a bunch of people like him.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Sounds like an excellent opportunity for your friend to start his own plumbing company with some other disgruntled plumbers, and offer lower rates too to happy homeowners.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      The most important part is that these were not starvation wages in the 80s! People used to pay american employees enough to survive, thrive, and even support local businesses that didn't have to crush their margins to 2% to compete with walmart. The reason everything sucks is because americans have only cared about "sticker price" in comparison shopping for decades, and I posit that's mostly because the american income has spent the past several decades being cut in half simply because employers didn't pay people.