I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor.
If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a killing. It's nearly impossible to even get people to come out for normal household jobs anymore - they're all way too busy with more lucrative clients.
The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year.
We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of work, and doing physical labor can be hard on the body. One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same.
One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before.
There are no remote plumbers.
I firmly believe that if you show up on time, are pleasant, and are competent at your work, running your own business is a slam dunk and you can charge whatever you want (within reason). Because my experience is that it's nearly impossible anymore to get all of those things.
There are shops that specialize in "re-shoring" projects after cheap offshored contractors end up spending the complete project's budget without shipping anything working.
Their salespeople would talk to potential clients, get the project's duration, then quote them a reasonable price for domestic developers, get laughed out of the room as the company decide to go with much cheaper "best cost countries". Then a few months before the end of the contract they would contact the same company again and most of the times (assuming the company was still alive, a lot of badly capitalized startups just shut down at this point after having wasted all their runway) end up re-doing the project.
But hey, this time, it’s going to be different!
Only if PII isn't an issue. Which it still is for a large number of remote jobs. You have to do the work inside US borders because of liability or security issues for an incredibly large number of remote roles. If you don't believe me, just roll over to weworkremotely.com or any of the other remote job boards and check out how many current openings specify "USA only."
E.g., while I was growing up, a guy in the neighborhood was doing really well. He was in the peanut vending business, you remember, put in a coin, turn a crank, and get out some peanuts. So the customer, how do they know how much money the peanut vendor is making?
It’s really hard to outsource.
His business grosses about $2M per year, apparently after payroll and supplies he nets $500k. He was claiming something like $300k back when my mom stopped working in the late 90s.
For some odd reason, my folks have next to nothing to show for it, at least not to retire comfortably as he's about to turn 75. They dson't live extravagantly aside from going on a few nice vacations a year that might total $30k. The condo they rent is $3500 month. They mostly eat at home or family style restaurants. They have a couple used Audi A4s w/ lease/insurance/gas maybe $2k total per month. You'd break even making maybe $180k
Even being extraordinarily bad w/ money, there is no conceivable way my father makes more than half what he claims.
Also you want to look at real earnings, which take into account cost of credentials, tooling, ongoing education, things like that.
In particular, pipefitters make a significant amount more money than plumbers, so I'd gather that that number is skewed downwards.
otoh sedentary labor can be hard on the body
> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay,
you get high pay for a high paying job, and low pay for a low paying job. office or not is independent.
> stable hours,
maybe, but it again is down to the job itself, not just where you do it. the most stable hours i've ever gotten was working in a fab shop.
> relatively low stress
well, depending on the job. also, tge sedentary nature of the work in an office can be, besides hard on the body, a huge source of stress, and one that might be hard to identify until you've separated yourself from it.
> and get to work in an air-conditioned room.
thinking back to shitting in a portapotty at a quarter to six in the morning in winter-- i can't argue with this point!
On the flip side you stay in better shape, and therefore are healthier. When you work a physically demanding shop you exercise all day every day. With your typical office job, we’ll I have health issues from sitting too long.
Or to be a little pedantic, by mean, not average. When Bill Gates walks into a dive bar the "average person" is temporarily is a billionaire.
The joke ofc being that there is a 'shortage' of welders because it's actually very hard to become a good welder. If, somehow, we got a bunch of people to become really good welders, it would just go to being a low paid profession.
This isn't a contest IMO, we all do more than OK. But it's definitely not fair to say that college pays more than trades. Both have huge swaths of pay ranges, from effectively zero, to millions. But if you're optimizing for making as much money as possible, I'd argue you're doing it wrong anyways.
To not take into account the age is silly. And the entire point of the original post is arguing about earnings, so…
Learning a trade and going to college for a white collar job are two different routes entirely, in my opinion. Even assuming that the skillsets were interchangeable, a lot of trades people would never trade their job for an office job and vice versa.
some good points, but I wanted to call this out specifically. when we're discussing at a high level what career paths should be encouraged, possibly via policy, I don't think we should price in the ability to evade taxes.
Yup, residential clients are bottom feeders - avoid them at all costs - nothing but a hassle. The good money, and work, is with commercial clients.
Two of my tradies (painter and gyprocker) I actually found by having them do work at my office building, and then contacted them for work at home.
Who do I want to work for? Someone who appreciates the end result, but is reasonable about timelines and a 'structured but not fully firm' timetable.
In the trades, we are usually doing a fine dance between other tradesmen doing their thing, then it is our turn to do our thing. So many phases in the process of a new build or remodel effort requiring all these different trades to line up correctly, usually between at least a few projects going on at the same time. When the plumber is 3 weeks behind, it bumps the insulators, which bumps the drywallers, which bump the painters, which (can) bump some finishing details, etc.
So, I'd say honestly, the understanding of things being delayed (within reason) is my primary "will work for them again" metric. Obviously we all work to get paid, but being paid isn't the reason I do what I do. Taking pride in work done is how I'm able to 'stare at walls' all day, and be fine with it.
That being said, throughout the thread I see people stating that no one wants to deal with the residential work. I primarily focus on residential work. It's probably easier to bill to the moon and skip some corners in the commercial world (ie. 'make more money') but as mentioned above, I've zero interest in that - It's a combination of being compensating fairly and pride in the work.
Find someone that does good work, for a fair price, and be civil -- It will be remembered. I'd dare say that most trades people that I know/knew have no problems with the 'stress of work', but the interactions with over-demanding clients are what cause them never to be willing to take a call again.
OR bill out the nose, hoping they don't even get the job, as it's just not worth it. (irony is, most of these stories end up with them getting the job, anyway).
There are many different trades, with different income expectations. And of course if you are willing to own the business (not easy) is a factor, some business are more conductive to owning your own business.
We need to be honest with kids: it matters what degree or job you presue. While I can't predict the future perfectly I can look at trends and say some engineering jobs are better than others. Med school looks really good too. Music on the other hand should be a second major or a minor if you study it at all. Likewise in the trades some are better than others, though I'm not sure what to get into.
I wonder how much of this isn't also driven by the reduction in private union membership. I've worked white collar jobs in organizations with strong unions and I'm willing to bet the blue collar workers were probably almost surely, on average, more than the average white collar workers elsewhere. And when I worked in areas with weak union membership, the converse was true.
The difficulty in the former was that it was hard to get into the union, but once you did, you were probably making many multiples of the average household income for the locale.
It's almost always been this way. I remember a reading a quote from a prolific 19th century author (whose name I can no longer find online, thanks to broken phrase searching in Google) complaining about enterprising carpenters earning more than his government salary.
The issue is that it's not an apples to apples comparison. Small business owners who provide blue collar services can make significantly more than salaried white collar workers. However, runnig a small business requires a completely different set of skills, and the percentage of blue collar workers who can do their trade and run a successful small business is far lower than the percentage of people doing blue collar work.
