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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

#431

Post by Brybry »

mfer wrote: post #95
ogre_battle wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it might be a bad area or a bad employer. Outside of big cities, there may not be enough demand, esp. consistent demand, to justify good pay and bennies. My uncle is a welder, has a lot of specializations including some underwater stuff. No shortage of offers... for 6 weeks of work in nowhere-ville, often requiring you to supply your own transport and housing. 3 months in FL, 6 months in NC, 8 weeks in GA. And they…

> Outside of big cities, there may not be enough demand, esp. consistent demand, to justify good pay and bennies. I guess that depends how far outside cities. In the suburbs there is demand. There is a shortage of trades and many trades folks are older in age. When they retire there isn't the back fill behind them. And all of this is happening as the population is growing.

US population growth is mostly flat, all the growth is from immigration.[1][2]

And those people are filling trade skill jobs. [3]

> More than one-third of construction laborers (686,000 workers), at least 30 percent of carpenters (382,000 workers), and 45 percent of painters and paperhangers (264,000 workers) are immigrants.

And without them the population long term would decrease (which is obvious from the low fertility rate). [4]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/us/immigration-census-pop...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

[3] https://research.newamericaneconomy.org/report/covid19-immig...

[4] https://www.cato.org/blog/census-finds-us-population-will-de...

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

#432

Post by rootusrootus »

reidjs wrote: post #213
dionidium wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. Something strange is happening here that I can't quite understand. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that are way older than me and I first started college in 1999. Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of "go to college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is alien to me. Of course I knew that some maj…

I think they realized they weren't going to make as much money, but I don't think they realized they would be poor. Poor people generally have less privacy, less dignity, and a harder life. So, maybe they are frustrated there weren't enough safeguards to prevent them from making a decision that lead to them becoming poor.

Is this another way of saying we need to raise the age of majority to something like 25? At some point we have to accept that people are capable of making decisions for themselves and living with the consequences. We don't have to collectively accept blame when they make ill-advised choices. An adult can do research before choosing to go to college, choosing a degree path, choosing to finance it with debt.

I have already had versions of this conversation with my own daughter, who is now 12. We've talked about college, when it makes sense, when it may not, and how to make that decision based on life goals. She's plenty smart enough to understand that she doesn't need a career goal at her age, and that even when she becomes an adult it might change, but what she won't be doing is blindly wandering into college with a random hope of success at the other side.

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

#433

Post by dragonwriter »

Raidion wrote: post #420
pleb_nz wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generations isnt even real. People change year on year little by little not once in 20 years. It's a gradual shift not some shift that happens new years eve one year.

It's a gradual shift that's no so gradual when looking at the block of population. Gen X are those that didn't have any digital connectivity while growing up. Millennials grew up connected through text/chat/email/very early social media, but without being constantly connected to the internet. Gen Z has grown up being connected and with information and entertainment available the time. Generations share a "core" of ex…

> Gen X are those that didn't have any digital connectivity while growing up.

My (parents’) CompuServe and (due to living in the Central Valley but most of the BBS’s I had info on being in the Bay) phone bills fron the 1980s tell a very different story.

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

#434

Post by chx »

Avshalom wrote: post #279
gspencley wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the idea of a career is dead for a lot of the 40 and under set. The idea that you'll have the same job for decades is just nonsense We're probably just nit-picking over definitions but a career, in my opinion, is not "having the same job for decades." A career is a decision to specialize in a particular craft, trade or profession. The opposite of a career is someone who takes odd jobs. Hospitality one day,…

>> We're probably just nit-picking over definitions but a career No, that's fair. Like "carpenter" and "programmer" are both very broad professions of course. I think there's something about the way various industries get hit by down turns more or less visibly (like when construction goes down it feels like it's everybody, and so every framer, every concrete layer) that creates an (often false to be sure) sense of na…

> the lack of elevator technicians, crane operators, industrial HVAC, PLC programmers, train conductors, air traffic controllers

Blame Reagan. Seriously. I am not joking. Blame Reagan. These need to be union jobs. These used to be union jobs.

For a more nuanced history read https://wwnorton.com/books/Invisible-Hands/

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

#435

Post by Tade0 »

prottog wrote: post #352
rco8786 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly nobody can reasonably conclude that "working long hours to live a basic life in an extremely low cost of living area" is "wealthy". We can all agree that we have different definitions of wealthy. But I think we can also all agree that your description of that life, which is maybe "well-lived", is not one of wealth in the context of this discussion. It is certainly not an "ass-busting outcome".

OK, I grant that the life I described is perhaps not aspirational for anybody born and raised in a first-world country in the last 30 years or so. (I know many from other backgrounds whose idea of unimaginable wealth is exactly that.) But if it's not an ass-busting outcome, would you say it's a middling outcome? Or the most minimal outcome that anyone should have, regardless of how hard they work? What makes you say…

I can tell you: $50-60k is roughly how much I and other software engineers over here in Eastern EU make, enjoying both low costs of living and low taxes(a privilege granted to those the government wants to keep from moving to the west), and that is still not considered wealthy in this region.

Granted, for the equivalent of $100k you could maybe erect a 1100sq ft house at best, but that's because prices exploded due to the pandemic and Russian invasion.

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

#436

Post by wombat_trouble »

falcolas wrote: post #219
rednerrus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reality of all jobs where you work for someone else. You're selling your time, and your body to someone else.

Sure, but the wear-and-tear on your brain from an office job will always be significantly lower (and thus remain a viable job for much longer) than a job in the figurative or literal trenches.

Anecdotally, I know a good number of people "in the trades" and in tech, and the incidence of serious health issues around the age of 40-50 appears much higher in the tech group.

I think it's different for "unskilled" labor, such as working in a warehouse, but it's not like being a plumber or an electrician is that hard on your body.

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

#437

Post by rootusrootus »

threetonesun wrote: post #299
dionidium wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First we were told that we needed the college degree for a job. Any degree would do. Something strange is happening here that I can't quite understand. Jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that are way older than me and I first started college in 1999. Yes, I heard a persistent low rumbling of "go to college," but the idea that "any degree would do" is alien to me. Of course I knew that some maj…

As someone who went to school for English in 2000, I can say that while those jokes existed the context here is misunderstood, they were told by business majors about the liberal arts, or anything academic. Heck in 2000 a CS degree wasn't positioned as that much more valuable than an English degree, and if you looked at the preceding decade you'd see that was statistically true. The change for the current generation…

> in 2000 a CS degree wasn't positioned as that much more valuable than an English degree

Ha! By whom? We had a pretty good idea that it was a solid choice in the early 90s and before. We teased my older brother for going for a bachelor's in business while I went into CS, because we were pretty sure the CS degree would be worth a lot more. He's doing just fine, but mostly because he backfilled the equivalent of a CS education into his work experience.

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

#438

Post by acchow »

meetingthrower wrote: post #360

Man, I'm in PE buying these companies and if you want to get rich in America be competent in skilled trades. If you have a little bit of management skill it is very doable. I've been offering 40 year old high school grads $30M in cash for their companies (and they would get that much again as we are doing rollups and they maintain significant equity.) What is amazing is that these guys just do this again and again. Y…

These companies being acquired - what do they do?

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

#439

Post by sdiacom »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #403
keybored wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're selling your health and body as a tradesman. If you can make the transition to running a trades business, then you're selling your brainpower more than your body. Selling your brainpower meaning managing the people who will sell their health and body as tradesmen. A minor racket.

> managing the people who will sell their health and body as tradesmen. A minor racket. A racket? He just became a 'wealth creator'! How dare you compare a visionary entrepreneur to a pimp!

I am once again unable to tell whether this is genuine or sarcastic capitalist bootlicking. This website has destroyed my brain.

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

#440

Post by jacobr1 »

ummonk wrote: post #409
UncleMeat wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a bad area. There aren't better employers in the area. He knows he is being abused. He used to live and work as an electrician in another country where he was treated considerably better. He spends his days wiring new homes that sell for 1.5M+ and gets treated like crap. Moving is unfortunately not an option because my sister's career is very location-dependent. "Well if you aren't in one of the good area…

I’m skeptical of the narrative that trades is some great career choice, but "Well if you aren't in one of the good areas you'll get fucked" applies to pretty much every career choice.

The distribution matters. How common are the bad/good/mediocre scenarios? Some just might be mostly bad, with rare exceptions. While other jobs might be mostly good, with rare bad cases, so you might risk this outcome.
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