Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 915 posts

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

#381

Post by nerdponx »

WalterBright wrote: post #241
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…

Every time I employ a tradesman to fix something around here, I get an astonishingly high bill.

This is the cost of not having a social safety net and public services, where everybody pays a little bit and everybody benefits. It's not just the people who are self-employed that benefit. Their customers also benefit from lower prices, because self-employed people don't have such high expenses. Of course, it all gets paid for eventually anyway, but consistently over time, and ideally proportional to wealth and/or income, rather than randomly punishing people who happen to need repair work done.

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

#382

Post by cwkoss »

prottog wrote: post #346
cwkoss wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio of power between labor and capital has swung hard toward capital over the past 30 years. I think the number of people who become "wealthy" due to salary income alone is probably small and shrinking. You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years.

> You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years. Actually, if 50 years ago you used to be able to pay for a house in 18 months, today you should be able to pay for a house in ~30 months: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco... . You're thinking of a t…

Yeah, my napkin math is probably superlative. The biggest factor is certainly housing - 1950s homes that cost $20k would easily cost 50x that today with similar lot size, layout and location. I think perspectives on what housing is 'comparable' are pretty squishy.

Inflation only accounts for 12x since 1950.

I think "median' might be adding some error to your analysis: I suspect skilled trades were probably earning more relative to median in 1950 than today's skilled trades earn relative to today's median. But wasn't able to find good historical numbers with a quick search.

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

#383

Post by jethro_tell »

oceanplexian wrote: post #54
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 year…

There was no one with dreams of being a rockstar or actor before influencers. There have always been a good chunk of kids that want to do as little as possible and then they tend to figure something out or wash out. This isn't new or news.

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

#384

Post by dinkumthinkum »

joecot wrote: post #96
Avshalom wrote: post #36

A lot of these threads devolve into "have you tried paying more" but I'd also like to highlight "have you actually tried telling Gen Z that". I'm 35, from basically as early as I can remember until sophmore year of college I was told constantly by every adult (and I mean every adult not just the ones that had degrees) in my life to go to college, get a degree, any degree. So yeah I went to college. It was aggressivel…

I'm a millennial. First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. So everyone went and got a college degree, and since so many people had it it wasn't a status symbol anymore, so that wasn't enough to get a good middle class job. And then a bunch of people were told they shouldn't have gotten those degrees and they were worthless. Then we were told to go into STEM. So lots of peop…

Who told you any degree would do? People have lambasted underwater basket waving and things like that forever.

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

#385

Post by ffwacom »

falcolas wrote: post #118
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 isn't a bad career But there is a finite end to the career - when your body gives out. That's the biggest problem with the trades, you're selling your health and body. And eventually the body parts will wear out, on a schedule decided as much by genetics as how you live.

My dad was an electrician his whole life, retired at 65 still going out to job sites.

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

#386

Post by cmh89 »

WalterBright wrote: post #295
jjulius wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Yoga poses are purposeful, they're supposed to be beneficial. Contorting your body all sorts of odd ways while performing a trade is an entirely separate thing from a yoga pose.

Have you ever tried yoga? You might change your mind if you had. It's not a joke.

If doing Yoga is causing damage to your body, it's because you are doing Yoga incorrectly.

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

#387

Post by bluedino »

hotpotamus wrote: post #331
bluedino wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read some Reddit posts where people ask linemen how much they make. People reply with over $200k.

Have you considered that they may not be telling the truth?

I know a lot of linemen and they do pretty well. $70k would be zero overtime.

Do you think they don't earn 30-40 per hour and have the ability to make tons of overtime?

The power company pays office workers time and a half to do "line watch" where they just park by a downed power line with a light on their roof until a crew shows up to fix it.

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

#388

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Avshalom wrote: post #94
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess being a poor kid who went to college in the 90s and chose his major before he had the internet had its perks. I never considered studying the things that actually interested me because I knew they were going to end up in dead end careers, and I didn't want to be broke my entire life. It's the same reason I didn't go to the top schools that accepted me. Hell, I didn't even go to the top schools that offered me…

I think you (and sibling mfer) are commenting on "any degree" instead of my point that "maybe people don't go into the trades because they spend ~18 emotionally formative years of their lives being told to go to college" vs the idea "maybe people don't go into the trades due to wages offered" (which, mind you, I don't mean to discount).

The wages are going to have to necessarily increase, though. Look at how home prices are increasing. Homeowner insurance rates increase respectively, and deductibles increase as well. Intelligent tradesmen are going to keep track of this and price their services accordingly, especially when it comes to maintenance contracts.

I also think there's a stigma associated with the trades which doesn't necessarily permeate mixed middle class neighborhoods. I grew up in a situation where the majority of adults in my hometown did not have college degrees. Thus, college degrees became things to aspire to instead of things we MUST have. Plenty of my classmates then, and plenty of kids graduating now, are not going to college. For some, they've been told by their folks that they can stay at home and save up their money for the 4 years after getting out of trade school to put a down payment towards a house. Granted, the culture I'm from doesn't negatively view 20-something men hanging out on a porch with beers after dark. Cheaper than the bars, after all.

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

#389

Post by rednerrus »

beyond_based wrote: post #190
rednerrus wrote: post #181

It is disheartening to see a recurring theme of individuals expressing frustration over their inability to afford a home or advance in society, yet also expressing reluctance to engage in activities that could potentially bring financial stability. Our predecessors sacrificed their physical well-being in order to construct and maintain the infrastructure and amenities that we now benefit from. In order to maintain a…

I’m going to be deadass with you brother. We don’t have a functioning society, we have an immigration labor camp.

I'm interested in what types of media you consume that's helped to shape your worldview. The idea that living in an industrialized nation in 2023 isn't living in a functional society, seems very foreign to me. Which nation and which time period would you choose to live in over an industrialized nation in 2023?
Post reply on HN