Hacker News Reader

Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

Do trades even pay that well, or is it just selection bias making them seem like they do?

According to BLS, median annual income for plumbers, electricians, and welders are respectively 56k, 57k, and 44k. Meanwhile, the median kindergarten and elementary school teacher—a famously non-lucrative career among those requiring university education—earns 60k according to the same resource.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers...

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electric...

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers...

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/kinde...

View on HN

In my experience (I grew up spending a lot of time on building sites, family business was property development) the guys in the trades who set up businesses that employ other trade guys do really well. For example plumber / electrician guy had his own business, he was really wealthy. Big house, multiple cars etc.

On the other hand, the guys who never set up on their own and just worked for wages ended up poor. I could give specific stories , but even 15 year old me could see the difference.

If you need to employ N other tradespeople to earn a high income, that means that the ratio of high-income to low-income tradespeople is semi-fixed. If you need to have 9 employees to get 100k income, that means only 10% of the people entering the field will have a chance to earn 100k. In addition, unless N is 2 or 3, it cannot be the case everyone gets a chance at higher incomes in their life; that they will earn lower salaries the first few years but then start earning high salaries when they move up.

So, what is N? Unless it is a low number and almost everyone earns high salaries after a couple of short years, we are doing the next generation a great disservice by encouraging them to get into careers where they destroy their bodies for the benefit of the boss, not themselves.

Also I'd say that it starts out pretty well and your earning potential increases quickly, which for a lot of people matters a lot.

I'd echo what you say and say the trades can be great if you also have a talent for the business side. Otherwise, you plateau pretty quickly and your body starts giving out.

> Also I'd say that it starts out pretty well and your earning potential increases quickly, which for a lot of people matters a lot.

I don't understand how that can be the case. Let's say you work as a plumber. The median income is 56k, meaning half the workforce earns less than 56k. There are two ways this can be the case: (1) the field is rapidly expanding and the median is thus artificially low by all the new entrants; (2) the salary of a mid-career plumber is 56k.

You cannot have high salaries over the board (save for the few percent new entrants who have not yet paid their dues) and 56k median income at the same time. Either the public perception about trade salaries is wrong or the BLS is wrong. I don't know which one is the case, but in the absence of better heuristics, I trust BLS more than anecdotes.

I'm speaking from the POV of those who go into the trades. I'm from a very working-class/blue collar background, and most people who choose to be plumbers aren't choosing that over being a lawyer, doctor, or even a grocery store regional manager. They're choosing it over the service and hospitality industries or basic white collar work.

Prior to the pandemic, most of those career paths/jobs were only getting you like 10/hr and raises are either non-existent or at the whim of your manager (and still small). The trades usually have defined pay scales and increase to a basic standard of living pretty quickly. It's easier to support a family as a 25-year old plumber than a 25-year old Walmart employee or a 25-year old bank teller, for example.

I wasn't looking at all jobs, only the set of jobs that would be competing for the career decisions of future plumbers.

"High" is a relative term.

That makes perfect sense. My comment was more pointed at those who believe people who have the option to get university degrees and enter white collar careers should instead go into trades, because they would make more money that way. I have seen it often that engineers making 100k are lamenting on HN about studying engineering, saying that if they had gone the trades route they would have earned the same or more from an earlier age and be better off financially. Every thread about university education is full of people advocating steering young people to choose trades over university, because instead of starting their life with a load of debt, they can start earning a good salary at a young age.

And I am sure the above are true for some people going to trades. But unless the average tradesperson's earnings improve significantly, I wouldn't recommend it as a general advice.

I don't know how these stats are made, but I know in later years I've had consistent problem booking good tradesmen, and several of the good ones I knew basically told me they are booked months in advance and refuse all but the most lucrative jobs. And basically getting anything - even the smallest of jobs - done at below $200-300 is out of the question. Larger jobs get into four and five figures really fast. So I think these numbers may not reflect the real picture.

OTOH, I see a lot of (relatively) young people on these jobs, so I think the newer generations get the idea, or at least some of them do.

Yep, that's what I've heard from friends who have tried to do even decent-sized projects on their houses. And I've personally taught myself to do things like patch and paint-match drywall because I know it'll be near impossible to get someone out to do jobs like that.

I don't know if it's the same in the US but here, in the UK, there is a similar issue except that there is also a sub-domain of partially skilled tradesman fighting over the scraps and this group is growing fast because of the surge in demand.

If you want someone on the job tomorrow morning you can still find people. You will very likely regret it though.

Depends if they are in a boom bust area. If they are, then they can be really lucrative during a boom and disappear during a bust. Construction is one area where lots of people wash out during housing busts, creating shortages when the next boom comes (and the cycle repeats). Natural resource extraction is similar. Kindergarten teachers have fairly stable careers in comparison.

Selection bias?

> Meanwhile, the median kindergarten and elementary school teacher—a famously non-lucrative career among those requiring university education—earns 60k according to the same resource.

It's only famously "non-lucrative" because it is to the benefit of those in that profession to say so.

When it costs >$15K a year to send a kid to public school, which is more than the average private school, and this cost has tripled since the 1960s [1], public school teachers have to lean on something. That "something" clearly is not competence, so martyrdom and lies about "budget cuts" will have to do.

Median household income in the U.S. is $67K, so jobs that pay 56K are very good.

[1] https://www.cato.org/commentary/no-we-havent-defunded-educat...

> It's only famously "non-lucrative" because it is to the benefit of those in that profession to say so.

I have several teachers in my extended family and circle of friends, and they would definitely disagree with that statement.

> Median household income in the U.S. is $67K, so jobs that pay 56K are very good.

Only if you have more than one person in the household working. I know that's a lot more common than it was 50 years ago, but is it a majority these days? If not, I would not consider making below median to be "very good".

Of course, picking teachers as the poster child for this argument that university-educated jobs don't pay that much is a bit silly; there are plenty of jobs that required a degree that pay much better than a teaching job.

> but is it a majority these days?

Very much so.

Statistics from the Census [1]:

  The proportion of dual earner married couples more than doubled between 1960 and 2000, increasing from 25 percent to 60 percent (Pew Research Center, 2015)

So, not only is this close to median income, but 60% of workers have to have two people to achieve it. And teachers work 3/4 of the year (annual amortized salary would be much higher), and have unassailable pensions.

The reasons for this, of course, are that 3% of all workers are teachers, school board elections are held on odd (or off) years with low turnout, and controversial legislation is put in the docket on those elections. It is money for votes and it has been for a long time.

[1] https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2019/CES-WP-19-19.pdf

> And teachers work 3/4 of the year

This is a common misconception.

Teachers teach students in the classroom as part of regular instruction for 3/4 of the year. The vast, vast majority of teachers do a lot of work both during the summer and on evenings and weekends to prepare for that teaching, including lesson planning, grading, teaching summer school, supervising extracurriculars, and even coaching school sports in many cases.

And any teacher getting hired now (or, in fact, within the last few decades) doesn't get what you'd think of as an "unassailable pension", at least not in most places. I think that NY State would generally be considered to be one of the more teacher-friendly places, and the last of the "Tier I" retirees here—those whose pensions cover basically their full final salary—are already either retiring or on their way to it.

The idea that teachers are overpaid is bullshit propaganda.

Teachers may not be overpaid on average, but there's way too many of them that are badly underqualified, do not have a proper education in their specific subjects (and let's face it, it's not like a degree in "Education" has much useful content, either) and just do a very poor job of supporting their students. I'm quite willing to believe that the very best teachers should be paid no less than any highly-skilled STEM professional, but the institutional arrangements in K12 education make it unfeasible to spot these effective teachers and pay them what they're truly worth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com