There are plenty of people that want to be electricians - the schools only accept so many applicants. It's the same issue with the artificial doctor shortage - artificially limited supply to keep wages high.
America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
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Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#12Paywall, so I can't read this specific article but judging from the first couple of paragraphs, the headline is the bulk of the story. Anyway, hi, I'm bityard, please enjoy my rant. The real story is that _all_ trades are suffering to find enough workers. Well, let me rephrase that. They are suffering to find enough _quality_ workers. In talking with friends in the industry, their main challenges are 1) An ever-shrin…
Technically you could start an electrical company, licensed under a qualifying employee. Basically you need to find a low level employee that has the work experience to show and enough study skills to pass the test. Then they can be your means to a license. Aka, how random business men can sometimes own have construction companies without ever having worked in the field.
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#13Paywall, so I can't read this specific article but judging from the first couple of paragraphs, the headline is the bulk of the story. Anyway, hi, I'm bityard, please enjoy my rant. The real story is that _all_ trades are suffering to find enough workers. Well, let me rephrase that. They are suffering to find enough _quality_ workers. In talking with friends in the industry, their main challenges are 1) An ever-shrin…
Everything in this post matches up 100% with my experiences too. Artificial time gates on multiple levels before you can do anything even if you're actually competent.
Like that for a lot of licensed work, not just trades or union jobs. Getting a license to cut hair and do other salon work requires more of an official time commitment than dropping everything and getting into programming.
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#14Paywall, so I can't read this specific article but judging from the first couple of paragraphs, the headline is the bulk of the story. Anyway, hi, I'm bityard, please enjoy my rant. The real story is that _all_ trades are suffering to find enough workers. Well, let me rephrase that. They are suffering to find enough _quality_ workers. In talking with friends in the industry, their main challenges are 1) An ever-shrin…
Technically could you do the electrician school, skip the apprenticeship and just work on your house? How important is it to learning the typical things you'd see on a standard house?
You need between 4,000 - 10,000 (depending on the state you are licensing in) hours of on the job experience as an apprentice working under a licensed journeyman to get your journeyman license
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#15There are plenty of people that want to be electricians - the schools only accept so many applicants. It's the same issue with the artificial doctor shortage - artificially limited supply to keep wages high.
But are the schools artificially limiting their intake, or have their own resource shortages? If the former, what do they gain from doing so such that any individual school can't decide to it's better off accepting as many students as it can?
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#16Pay people more, if it is important people will pay for it. If you want more people to be electricians create some incentive. Why are so many people ok with the supply and demand as a concept until it's about labor?
I have honestly been researching switching to this field because of the things this article talks about, and my desire to work with my hands more, but it doesn't make sense financially.
Why would I go to a trade school and sign up to take a pay cut, making $18/hr for four years before I get on average 60k a year after that? With almost no retirement options for when the trades eventually destroy my body, not a lot of extra money to save for retirement, so what's the point?
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#17Paywall, so I can't read this specific article but judging from the first couple of paragraphs, the headline is the bulk of the story. Anyway, hi, I'm bityard, please enjoy my rant. The real story is that _all_ trades are suffering to find enough workers. Well, let me rephrase that. They are suffering to find enough _quality_ workers. In talking with friends in the industry, their main challenges are 1) An ever-shrin…
FWIW, the average electrician salary in Australia seems a good deal higher than in the US (by at least 50%!), and there's reportedly a similar shortage here. Supposedly it's largely due to a lack of students choosing such an apprenticeship. But why that is I'm not sure anyone fully understands.
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically could you do the electrician school, skip the apprenticeship and just work on your house? How important is it to learning the typical things you'd see on a standard house?
You need between 4,000 - 10,000 (depending on the state you are licensing in) hours of on the job experience as an apprentice working under a licensed journeyman to get your journeyman license
So, in the range of two to five years ?
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#19There are plenty of people that want to be electricians - the schools only accept so many applicants. It's the same issue with the artificial doctor shortage - artificially limited supply to keep wages high.
But are the schools artificially limiting their intake, or have their own resource shortages? If the former, what do they gain from doing so such that any individual school can't decide to it's better off accepting as many students as it can?
In the case of medical schools, it is controlled by the AMA. For electrician schools, it is the unions. Both seek to keep wages high and the only way to do that is to gatekeep the credential process. Remember those that teach at these schools are doctors and electricians that benefited from the controlled system. It is the reason programmers will never have a union and accrediting agency because corporations want wages to decline, not increase.
Re: America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
But are the schools artificially limiting their intake, or have their own resource shortages? If the former, what do they gain from doing so such that any individual school can't decide to it's better off accepting as many students as it can?
In the case of medical schools, it is controlled by the AMA. For electrician schools, it is the unions. Both seek to keep wages high and the only way to do that is to gatekeep the credential process. Remember those that teach at these schools are doctors and electricians that benefited from the controlled system. It is the reason programmers will never have a union and accrediting agency because corporations want wag…
For electrician schools, it's funding and personnel (read: funding).
An electrician is doing hands on stuff in a lot of labs. That limits the student to teacher ratio that can be sustained. So, you'd need a lot more teachers who are already certified as electricians to come teach. Are you paying them enough to get them to come teach as opposed to work or manage? (LOL--teachers always get paid absolute dogshit).
After your first year of training, the expectation is that the apprentice is getting paid. So, you need to have some companies willing to cough up to pay more for the increased number of apprentices. Who is incentivized to do that?
Want more electricians? Bump the pay to $100K/year for a journeyman. You'll have lots of people wanting to be electricians.