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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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"Go to trade school" is my guess. I've even suggested it. I'm not sure it's really being over pushed, but maybe it is. Easy answers to complex questions are a trope.
The downside to that is it is much harder to continue working as you age depending on the trade. Usually the "best" route there is to start early, learn what you can, and go independent eventually hiring other people to do the hard stuff you no longer can do.
Also need to be careful specializing.... I went super specific and well... Yeah... Ice cream refrigeration machines aren't exactly ubiquitous. I should have stuck with residential HVAC but I hated crawling under houses and being on call all night :/
I currently work in a factory (yeah I'm just chock full of bad decisions) and I can say from what I've gathered from my coworkers being a "machinist" isn't so much of a viable trade anymore. Everyone pays like shit now.
Yes, agreed at least for my industry. My company hires "machinists" with no experience or education, gives them minimal training on how to push a button and not stick their hand in running machinery, and expects at least half to leave for a job that offers ten cents an hour more as soon as they can. They killed the pension for new employees and wonder why no new employees have any "loyalty" to the company.
I've always had massive respect for welders. That shit is an art. Not so with the folks we are hiring these days. Fast food fry cook wages don't get you artisan welders.
Glad you mentioned that. It can be very hard on the body, and for older people they will likely want to transition into ownership, or a supervisory or admin role...and those slots are limited.
We need to think about using technology to help people work less. Not just fatten profits.
It's such a hard topic to deal with because you have to tackle the concept of ownership.
As it currently stands in capitalist economies the owner, as the title implies, owns the means to increase productivity that would enable people to work less, but since they are the owners they see it is morally repugnant to have other people who did "nothing extra" get "more" money as the math is essentially: less work, same pay = greater value, except you didn't provide any greater value to them, the machine/technology that they own did.
It's a shitty situation for sure :(
Yup, this is all true. Worker cooperatives, unions, and expiring patents faster are all things that can help. None are a magic wand. But they make a difference.
Excellent point right here. I spent nearly twenty years in a trade till arthritis began to develop. I spent the last three years of that job using the education benefits to get a degree and a new tech skill that has morphed into my current career. (I looked into running my own crew but that particular trade was and is in a downturn.)
Only thing I'll disagree with you here is the machinist comment. My dad's been a machinist for like 45 years now, same industry, same building.
He is constantly complaining to me that they can't find machinists, or even people who are willing to learn. I have zero machining experience, and he was trying to get me hired at one point, that's how desperate they were getting.
And it's not a bad company, to be clear, they're a government contractor, have very good benefits, competitive pay (he's even complained they've given guys with a year's experience multi-dollar raises to keep them), etc.
According to him, if you have mechanical aptitude and are willing to learn all of the intricacies of machining, you can and will make a decent salary for the rest of your life so long as you're willing to work.
I've heard there's an enormous demand for experienced tradespeople, but apprenticeships are pretty much full up...
Kind of a nobody-wins situation. Money to be made, just not by anyone on the ground floor.
I haven't met any parents telling their kids to go into the trades aside from one dad who is already in the trades and knows the life.
Most of the parents of high/middle schoolers I speak to are pushing STEM and entrepreneurship. I coach this age group, and the parents still want their kid to go on to higher education. They just are more aggressive about it being a meaningful degree.
There is also more discussion of the cost of schools. A degree from a local school with in state tuition or a community college transfer is looked upon more favorably now. Frankly, a lot of the elite schools are bullshit and the general public is waking up to that now. The work a student is willing to put into learning is much more important than if the school has a high rank.
I have definitely heard parents encouraging kids to go into the trades. Could be a regional thing. Anecdotal either way.
I agree elite schools are bullshit for the vast majority. There are some PhD and medical programs that aren't. But that's a tiny percentage of students who would benefit.
Yeah, it is definitely dependent on region and lots of other factors. Plus, I fully admit it is a small sample size. But I just wanted to say my part because suggesting the trades certainly isn't as universal as advising kids to go to college was a generation ago.
Also, I agree with the elite schools for grad programs. But so few kids get to that point and would have to get through undergrad (and likely crippling students loans) to even apply to for the good grad schools.
John Deere and a few others recently paid like 20m to build a diesel tech training center for my university that includes several large vehicle bays and a fuel development lab, with the expectation the students would work for their companies after graduation. It's starting to look like these kids will be opening their own businesses and ending the cycle of ripping off farmers in the community.
As a former mechanic with lots of lovely health issues before even hitting 40, I really hope they do work for themselves so they can get out of the grunt work when they are my age and still earn from their experience
If Trump gets elected, and he mass deports millions of people, there will be a surge in construction demand.
There will be a surge in "nobody wants to work anymore".
We could literally shut down the economy in defiance if we all got together and did something about it.
Pipe dream, though, tbh.
Trump may beat everyone to it. Bash on immigrants as he loves to since it brings out poor white folks, many of his financial backers are industries like service (hotels, restaurants, Ag) who are already understaffed because they've made the jobs so awful only truly desperate or illegal workers will stand them. He will seriously trigger "a day without immigrants" meanwhile upending prices through tariffs that will screw most Americans who are already living in debt and skipping basics. Unfortunately for America, there will not be another election if he wins this week.
It's the new thing that parents want their kids to do. I feel like it's going to backfire, lol
Agree. We need trades people but we also need jobs, re-shoring, affordable housing, affordable health care, affordable education, etc. to go along with. It could become another bubble like pharmacists and knowledge workers.
The longer I'm in the workforce the more I think David Graeber was right.
I’m dreaming of an oversupply of trade workers. It’s too expensive right now to get any work done. Lots of scammers too.