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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

#61

Post by mrcrumb1 »

malandrew wrote: post #8
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…

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…

I grew up in a family of laborers and this feels very far from my experience. Can you do this through your 50s? Yes, if you avoid a major injury (your risk of this is high in these jobs). Even if you do avoid injury, your ability to do the jobs starts to rapidly decline because doing a job like this day in and day out does take a toll on your body, even if a single day of work isn't back breaking.

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

#62

Post by runesofdoom »

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?

Stop treating them as sources if profit for investors?

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

#63

Post by throwaway5947 »

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.

You could just do what happens everywhere else, price fixing. (I mean everywhere else as in the real world, not the soft interior of an “economics” textbook).

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

#64

Post by moe091 »

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.

I mean, have you seen how much pay has gone up in low-skilled jobs? There are signs at all the local businesses in my area offering $15+ an hour for cashiers and fry cooks and whatnot. The same kind of jobs I worked 7-8 years ago for $8 an hour. They are taking advantage of supply and demand to force jobs to pay them a closer-to-fair wage, instead of selling their time for less than it's worth and perpetuating the problem indefinitely.

To be fair, I do agree that on an individual level there are tons of people screwing themselves over and messing up their lives, being a burdon on their parents or whoever ends up supporting them financially, etc. I don't think most of these people are refusing to work out of activism or anything. But from a sociological perspective it's a natural response to a problem(a problem that goes much deeper than low wages imo, but I won't get into that) that acts as a corrective measure to one of the main symptoms of that problem.

In other words: there will always be a bell curve of in terms of competence and work ethic, and from a relative perspective the curve will maintain it's shape throughout time periods/generations among large enough populations. The people on the low end of that curve deserve the same amount of criticism(how much, if any, they deserve, is up for debate) regardless of whether the curve itself shifts towards one side or the other - as movements of the curve in it's entirety can be attributed to social/environment factors. I do think we've seen the curve move towards it's lower end recently, and I have plenty of headcannon about why that may have happened, but I can't see any reason to blame all individuals within an entire generation, and I can't see the point in condemning the low end of the curve for a certain generation over that same portion of the curve from other generations.

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

#65

Post by gsatic »

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…

It's not going to get more attractive. This is where some imaginative immigration policies can help.

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

#66

Post by Ancalagon »

eddsh1994 wrote: post #55
Ancalagon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is starting a roofing company a viable career path for _every_ young roofer that wants to make roofing their career?

If not I think that still hits the "knees give out by 55" issue.

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

#67

Post by eddsh1994 »

Dig1t wrote: post #59
eddsh1994 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am English but moved to the Bay Area a few years back and became friends with a union electrician from Alabama so this conversation comes up a little - it sounded like unions are supported in the south even if they look a little different. However I’m not American and am not certain about that at all :)

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

#68

Post by altairprime »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #19

It'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.

> for a relatively small wage

This was found specifically to be the case for American men in a Boston Fed study last month: as the wage paid for trade-skill jobs shrinks over time relative to the wages paid to school-degree jobs, men increasingly refuse to work trade-skill jobs.

> The evidence from this study shows that the widening earnings gap between highly and less skilled workers over the last four decades is closely connected with the decreasing labor supply of prime-age men

> The decline in relative earnings is associated with a 0.49 percentage point increase in the exit rate, accounting for 44 percent of the total growth in the exit rate among non-college men over the 1980–2019 period.

https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-w...

Caveats. There are almost certainly further coincident reasons for the decrease in “blue collar” trade-skills workforce, both for men and for all genders; this particularly study should not be considered an exclusive factor, merely a relevant one. Please consider the constraints documented at that link before overextrapolating; for example, “non-Hispanic” which rules out biological causes, and so on.

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

#69

Post by eddsh1994 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #66
eddsh1994 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is starting a roofing company a viable career path for _every_ young roofer that wants to make roofing their career? If not I think that still hits the "knees give out by 55" issue.

No, but supervising/managing is pretty viable. Also these aren’t FTSE100 companies, these are small groups of like 3/4 people who spin off and have a few commercial clients.

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

#70

Post by mrcrumb1 »

eddsh1994 wrote: post #55
Ancalagon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Relying on entrepreneurship for your livelihood and retirement as you age sounds like it'll only work for a select few
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