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The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

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Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#51

Post by Ancalagon »

SideQuark wrote: post #29
Ancalagon wrote: post #4

Same 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.

You’d be surprised. Sometimes quality of life is better spent not working when you can lean on family and friends Or your own small retirement fund.

Not saying someone’s life choices are right or wrong one way or the other in this case. I’m very grateful for my position but would be lying if I didn’t say I day dreamt occasionally about quitting work and living like a backpacker.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#52

Post by onion2k »

bruceb wrote: post #6
Ancalagon wrote: post #4

Same 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…

Pay more yet also increase the supply of labor which drives down wages. Seems not the answer.

Sometimes Econ101 supply and demand theory isn't nuanced enough. Wages can go up at the same time as the supply increases if the amount of money in the system also increases. How do you think software engineer wages rocketed up over the past 20 years?

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#53

Post by Adraghast »

bubblematrix wrote: post #10
Ancalagon wrote: post #4

Same 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…

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.

The median annual wage for electricians was $60,040 in May 2021. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $37,020, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $99,800.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#54

Post by oceanplexian »

Ancalagon wrote: post #4

Same 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…

Fitting pipes together is not "back breaking". We're not talking about framing or roofing, in the contracting world plumbing is a light duty skilled trade that anyone with half a brain can earn a 6-figure income on. If you take care of yourself and wear protective equipment, you won't have a problem with your knees in middle age. There's no "forced retirement", someone working as an independent contractor for 25 years is likely more wealthy than the average software engineer in most LCOL or MCOL parts of the country.

The problem isn't "lack of immigrants". The problem is that when surveyed, 25% of Gen-Z said they plan to pursue a career as "influencers". My opinion is that younger generations have been brought up in a world where they don't need to take personal responsibility or ever get their hands dirty.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#55

Post by eddsh1994 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #35
malandrew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve done both kinds of work on my own home. Calling it back breaking is pure hyperbole. Is it physical, certainly. But it’s something you can easily do until you’re 50 without issue and between 40 to 50, you can start taking apprentices that do the taxes that benefit from youth. Of the plumbers and carpenters I’ve hired, they are all in no worse shape than other adults their age. I sit at a computer all day and it’s…

Doing one-off projects on your own home is not equivalent to being a full time roofer or tile-layer, or even plumber or auto tech where you are constantly working on your back, hands, and knees. I have my own home too and the times I’ve done my own plumbing work were hard. And that’s one of the physically-speaking easier jobs, never mind Roofing, I wouldn’t last a week.

My uncles a roofer and did it into his 40s but eventually started his own company when he wanted to stop carrying slate around on roofs in the miserable British winters. I think that's the usual progression - you're not literally laying tiles till you're 67.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#56

Post by ericbarrett »

Eumenes wrote: post #28
teawrecks wrote: post #14

Earlier 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.

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.

This varies wildly by state. Where I live the cheapest bronze plan in 2022 was $700/mo with no dependents.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#57

Post by tpmx »

garciansmith wrote: post #42
seydor wrote: post #18

A lot of this is due to the ancient nature of construction. Allow experimentation with new materials. Allow robots, prefabs etc. I m sure genz would love to program your 3d home printer or assemble your ikea home. They are not lazy, but forward thinking. Who wants to become a plumber when that job may be automated in 10 years

Plumbing strikes me as one of the very last manual jobs that will be automated, if ever. Every plumbing issue, even the most basic, is different due to the fittings and hardware being used. For example, I've been putting off hiring a plumber to replace the old drum trap behind my bathtub with a p-trap. I can't even fathom how a robot would go about doing such a thing when a plumber needs to sit there and think about…

Because our current houses and fittings are largely ancient, non-standard and ad-hoc.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#58

Post by nostrademons »

UncleMeat wrote: post #43
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Tradespeople 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…

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

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.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#59

Post by Dig1t »

eddsh1994 wrote: post #48
UncleMeat wrote: post #33

"We need more tradespeople" seems to be an evergreen news article. My brother in law is an electrician. He is paid alright, enough to live on. But there are HUGE downsides. He does not receive health insurance. He does not get paid vacation. In order to match decent white-collar pay, he needs to work overtime. His company pushes hard to get jobs finished fast, causing people to cut safety corners. Many of his coworke…

This is why Unions exist, no? Personally I sometimes wonder if I'd have enjoyed plumbing water more than plumbing code as I'd be meeting more people face to face, physically active, and it can get surprisingly complex (Berkeley, I think, offers a postgrad cert in plumbing buildings like sky scrapers which I saw advertised the other day)

Yes! I grew up in California and my dad was a tradesperson. The union is the only reason my siblings and I had health insurance growing up. He never got any vacation time though, insurance was the main benefit of the union I think.

Unfortunately, other states in the US have much weaker unions or none at all, especially in the south.

Re: The skilled trades haven't caught as a career choice with Gen Z

#60

Post by r00fus »

dieselgate wrote: post #13
gedy wrote: post #3

Everything would be fine in these industries if rent and homes were cheaper. Instead people think they have to make top dollar just to survive and avoid lots of otherwise fulfilling jobs.

Yeah it's weird right, how can we make homes and rent cheaper without more supply of homes?

If you have speculators (foreign/corporate) buying all the new supply then does that really help in the long run? We have more vacant homes than we have homeless, for example.

What would help is restricting foreign speculation and appropriately taxing corporate ownership of homes. A good example is what's going on in Canada [1] & Vancouver [2].

It's not like other countries haven't made meaningful attempts to address their population from buying homes. It's just that the US doesn't want to do it because the elite who own & constitute the political spectrum think it's bad for their bottom line and don't care if it's destabilizing the rest of society.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/01/business/canada-bans-home-pur...

[2] https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-t...

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