Young people don’t want construction jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Young people don’t want construction jobs

#101

Post by e40 » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

Bluecobra wrote: post #82

e40 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And part of telling them not to do those jobs was the college for everyone idea. It was a good ideal, but the problem is, going to college and getting that English 4-year degree doesn't really help you get a job that pays enough to pay off those student loans and save for retirement. What they said on Prairie Home Companion was correct, everyone does thing their child is exceptional and should go to college instead o…

Maybe the federal government should get out of the loan business and make it legal to declare bankruptcy to escape student loan debt. Colleges have every incentive to enroll as many students as possible and charge whatever they want because the loans are guaranteed by wage garnishment. This draws parallels to the easy credit that was extended in the last housing collapse to people that shouldn't had mortgages for hou…

YES! (says someone who didn't borrow a penny for college because it was $900/yr)

Re: Young people don’t want construction jobs

#102

Post by nickthemagicman » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

patrickaljord wrote: post #42

nickthemagicman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On point. You want people just give then good salaryies, benefits, and career growth.

I know a few people in construction, they started working for someone by fixing doors, do painting etc. until they learned enough to find their own clients. It's easier than you think to find a friend who needs something to get fixed and get more clients from there by doing local advertising or even door to door knocking to check if people need some fixes. These people I know now hire their own workers (and still wor…

It bothers me immensely when people say `if you don't like it just open your own business`.

There's only so much demand to go around for a service and a huge amount of demand is taken up by already established businesses in that space.

So now these businesses need people to do the work but are unwilling to pay the people a fair portion of the profit.

It's fair to make a profit but when you have mostly captured a regional market and you're not willing to pay wages to spread the opportunity to people who could also fill the demand that you captured then that's not right.

A successful business is largely a part of having good connections, luck, or some sort of exceptional product/service beyond something a provider with a million dollars can offer.

Like 80% or more (I dont know the exact numbers)in ofmall business fail due to these reasons.

Re: Young people don’t want construction jobs

#103

Post by learc83 » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:47 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #76

learc83 wrote: post #22

What's the endgame for construction workers? Everyone can't move into management. Many people's bodies can't handle that kind of manual labor for 40 years, and even if they could construction jobs tend to be insecure. If you want people to make those trade offs you have to pay more. This kind of rhetoric from companies drives me nuts. They push to remove regulations, but when the free market says they have to pay mor…

I think this depends a lot on what type of construction you're talking about and also what trade. Residential SFHs is different to low-rise buildings, which I assume is different again to building high-rise buildings. It also depends on what skill you have. General labourers are likely going to be lifting heavy things a lot but I don't think that's universally true. Bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, tilers, etc al…

> also what trade

I wasn't talking about skilled trades. Every electrician or plumber I've ever met, even the ones who only do new work, wouldn't call themselves a "construction worker", or say they worked in construction. I was assuming the article was talking about what the BLS calls "construction laborers", but maybe it was talking about all possible trades involved in construction? I only read the article summary.

>I actually think that for a lot of these kinds of jobs that you could be doing them well into your 50s just fine.

That's likely true for some trades and some people, but from some googling it does look there the risk to your body from working construction is pretty significant. I was able to find a German study of 14k construction workers that said for construction industry as a whole, workers were 1.5x more likely than other blue collar workers to receive a disability pension for musculoskeletal problems, and 1.8 times more likely for accidental injuries. They were over 2x more likely to be disabled from musculoskeletal problems as the general working population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1741071/