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Comment by bennysomething | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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