Well for all the broohaha from the "YOU DONT NEED COLLEGE" folks the reality is still that trades are very underpaid unless you run your own business and your body will break down doing physical labor for 8+ hours a day.
The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
21–30 of 915 posts
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with this. Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever benefit society.
What do independent plumbers have to do for healthcare for them and their families? Is there a better option than COBRA? I honestly don't know.
COBRA is for temporarily keeping employer provided healthcare after leaving a company and is basically a non-option except as a short term bridge to a new employer provided plan. I believe independent workers generally go to the health care exchanges and buy a private health care plan. Rates vary wildly by state, coverage details, and your age but I've recently looked in Washington state for midrange (silver) plans and they are around ~$400 a month (with no dependents).
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#23It's almost as if people are less willing to work jobs that actively harm their long-term physical health (back-breaking jobs) or those harmful for their mental health (generally ones face to face with customers, customer support or high stress jobs), for a relatively small wage to said job's demands and lasting effects.
Staring at a computer screen all day, interacting with people exclusively on video chat is good for mental and physical health? Plumbers and carpenters can earn a high wage, with no college debt, and often get a union job. Some of my best friends from high school went into the trades, and owned a nice home before most of our high school class was graduating from college.
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#24Tradespeople will be the new software engineers in the late 2020s through 2030s. Enough that I'm considering leaving my cushy FAANG engineering manager job to become an electrician.
On top of the huge supply shortage, consider that the majority of the U.S. housing stock was built during the Baby Boom suburbanization from 1950-1970, and that the average lifespan of a house's internal systems (plumbing, electrical) is about 65 years. There's a massive maintenance bill coming due right around 2025. Right as the housing stock is largely owned by boomers on fixed incomes who won't have time, money, or health to fix it. Millennials will start inheriting houses en masse around 2035, which solves the housing crisis, but they're going to be houses in various states of disrepair.
There's probably also a lot of room for innovation in home construction and repair - possibly an area where robotics could make a big difference. Unfortunately this is a known "hard problem", where past attempts at mechanization haven't really helped much.
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with this. Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever benefit society.
What do independent plumbers have to do for healthcare for them and their families? Is there a better option than COBRA? I honestly don't know.
I mean Obamacare exchanges exist but (as the insurance industry wants) it mostly sucks in terms of costs/coverage. COBRA is still better because you get tied to your former employer's risk pool even though you pay employer share of healthcare costs.
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with this. Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever benefit society.
What do independent plumbers have to do for healthcare for them and their families? Is there a better option than COBRA? I honestly don't know.
I had to dip into this for a few years. In the U.S., an ACA ("Obamacare") plan is $500-$2000 a month, depending on the state, with extra assistance for low incomes. There are bronze, silver, and gold plans with higher tiers decreasing copays and annual out-of-pocket maximums but significantly bumping the monthly dues. Private insurance also exists but almost universally has inferior terms (payout caps, gaps in coverage, weasel wording, etc.).
In my experience, for a typical ACA bronze plan, the annual maximum out-of-pocket payout is roughly $20,000, and the monthly dues are about $700, meaning worst case you're looking at ~$30,000 out pocket for a year. Add about 50% if you have children. Sadly, none of this is tax-deductible as far as I can tell.
Another issue with ACA marketplaces that I found was they churn a lot; every year when you have to renew coverage you can have an entirely different set of providers and plans. The constant enrollment and transfer paperwork becomes non-trivial, even without trying to qualify for an income-based discount.
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#27It's almost as if people are less willing to work jobs that actively harm their long-term physical health (back-breaking jobs) or those harmful for their mental health (generally ones face to face with customers, customer support or high stress jobs), for a relatively small wage to said job's demands and lasting effects.
Where are you finding small wage plumbers or carpenters? All the trades here (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, carpentry (perhaps more on the finish side vs framing though) are extremely expensive, with hourly rates between $80-$150/hour. (source - did a lot of renovations on my house, and my BIL is an electrician).
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Independent plumbers/local plumbing businesses can easily earn $1,000/day with 2-3 service calls. Not sure how universal healthcare, PTO, immigration, and more pay have to do with this. Edit: Thank you for all the downvotes for me calling out the weird correlation between tech benefits/politics and plumber skill-shortage + high-reward wages. Your wokeism will forever benefit society.
What do independent plumbers have to do for healthcare for them and their families? Is there a better option than COBRA? I honestly don't know.
You can find a bronze plan on the healthcare market place for < $300/month. I'm self employed, paying around that for an HSA eligible plan, and haven't seen a doctor in 5+ year. Mostly keep it for the HSA account/investing, or I'd forgo it. If your spouse has a FT/W2 job, they'd likely get solid health insurance to cover the family.
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#29Same labor shortage as everywhere that the government likes to pretend doesn't exist. 10 million working-age men can't or won't work. Of the ones willing to work, almost none want to spend their time learning skills for back-breaking, barely-middle class skills jobs which they'll be forced to retire from at 55 because their knees give out. Same answer for the shortage as everywhere that the economists don't want to h…
So instead of "barely middle-class" jobs, they choose no job?
That will turn out well for them.
Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do independent plumbers have to do for healthcare for them and their families? Is there a better option than COBRA? I honestly don't know.
COBRA is for temporarily keeping employer provided healthcare after leaving a company and is basically a non-option except as a short term bridge to a new employer provided plan. I believe independent workers generally go to the health care exchanges and buy a private health care plan. Rates vary wildly by state, coverage details, and your age but I've recently looked in Washington state for midrange (silver) plans a…
I know people who surfed the COBRA wave - ie, joined full-time for a company for a month every year or two to keep COBRA going and then going back to contract work in the interim.