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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

I was working for an aerospace manufacturer for a while. We were getting 40/50 year old apprentices for the trades, guys coming off the production floor.

Electricians, millwrights, CNC machinists... we couldn't find enough of them.

I get it. Nobody wants to stand in front of a machine (or 5-6 machines) for 10 hours a day. Nobody wants to be in a 90 degree factory all day. Nobody wants to work 2nd or 3rd shifts.

The pay isn't incredible. $25-30/hr. You get overtime. You get health insurance. You're a union member. As long as Boeing and Airbus are still flying planes, you'll have a job.

But we just flat out didn't get many applicants. And the people that we'd get, would only work for a couple days, or a couple weeks.

Some people think it's because there's drug testing. Some people say young people "don't want to work". All I know is if I needed a job, I'd apply.

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> You get overtime.

I think this comment represents a fundamental disconnect in cultures. The days of people "wanting" overtime are kind of gone. If I saw "overtime pay" on a job description all I am seeing is "work long hours, never see your kids, no time for hobbies, etc".

Maybe that translates to me "not wanting to work", but that's the situation.

There's a similar disconnect in expectations of outcomes. The same days when people "wanted" overtime were the days where people expected to get ahead by busting their asses; sure, you could work short hours, play with your kids, have time to develop a hobby, but then you wouldn't become wealthy.

That option is still there today, to work only enough to sustain oneself at a lowered standard. But it seems that there is a part of the millennial/gen-Z culture that expects ass-busting outcomes without the busting of the ass.

The ratio of power between labor and capital has swung hard toward capital over the past 30 years.

I think the number of people who become "wealthy" due to salary income alone is probably small and shrinking. You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years.

> You used to be able to buy a house in 12 months instead of 18 months if you worked overtime. Todays economics make it so working overtime lets you buy a house in 13 years instead of 17 years.

Actually, if 50 years ago you used to be able to pay for a house in 18 months, today you should be able to pay for a house in ~30 months: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco.... You're thinking of a time that didn't exist, perhaps outside of when people were granted plots of land and built their own houses on it.

Blame the Fed and idiotic policies at every level for that, anyway; the economics of housing is totally skewed by artificial scarcity on one hand and asset inflation on the other.

I don't disagree that capital has more power now due to the effects of technology, but I also believe that culture has been shaping away from the idea that we are masters of our fate; both due to technology, which becomes increasingly harder for laypeople to understand as it gets more advanced, and regulation forced by that technological advance, where the universe of economic activity one can engage in without needing the state's permission is getting smaller and smaller. Not to mention all the effects that social media has on envy.

Perhaps I sound like I'm repeating the age-old mantra of the old complaining that the young are ruining the country ;-) you decide.

Yeah, my napkin math is probably superlative. The biggest factor is certainly housing - 1950s homes that cost $20k would easily cost 50x that today with similar lot size, layout and location. I think perspectives on what housing is 'comparable' are pretty squishy.

Inflation only accounts for 12x since 1950.

I think "median' might be adding some error to your analysis: I suspect skilled trades were probably earning more relative to median in 1950 than today's skilled trades earn relative to today's median. But wasn't able to find good historical numbers with a quick search.

Here is the bls publication "Union Wages and Hours: Building Trades" from 1950: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl...

Compared to the median tradesmen salary it has not kept up to inflation: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472061.htm

But to be quite honest, those are exact comparisons, but it was what I found in like 5 minutes.

> Blame the Fed and idiotic policies at every level for that, anyway;

Many of these policies were voted in at the local level by the populace. It isn't the government's fault if every city counsel member who supports upzoning loses their next election.

Sounds like you're blaming the fed and idiotic policies...all of which were put in place by old people. ;-)

Well the old installed the fed and regulated the housing market. Will probably take violence to fix.

It's the other way around. Younger generations have discovered that the busting of the ass in and of itself does not lead to financial comfort or stability. At least going to college and working an office job kind of still holds that promise. Why stand 10 hours a day at a machine, when I can work 7 at my desk for better pay and better long-term prospects?

Exactly this. Even in a white collar environment, busting ass does not really provide good returns.

Living within your means leads to financial comfort and stability, no matter what you make. Millionaire next door etc

Sounds like the old avocado toast and lattes argument.

> ass-busting outcomes without the busting of the ass.

Perhaps. But one only needs to look up to the original post to see that is not what we're talking about here. Busting of the ass for $25-30/hr plus overtime...not exactly getting wealthy here.

I don't know where GP's old employer was located, but it sounds like it's in a low cost-of-living area, the kind where homes can be had for under $100k. Earn $50-60k a year, pay off your house in maybe ten years instead of thirty, save a little each month and invest and let it compound over time; at the end you could have enough for a comfortable retirement and maybe even have some left over to hand down to your children.

It's not "fly to Paris on a whim"-level wealthy, but it sounds like a life well lived to me. What is your definition of wealthy?

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 that this middle-class life where you own your home free and clear and have time and money for the occasional indulgences of life is a "basic" one? In other words, why is your bar calibrated so high?

Statistically it is maybe a median level outcome. Maybe. If you’re okay with your kids going to the worst public schools, living in an area with little to no amenities, shopping thrift stores, etc as a trade off to owning your home outright (which itself as a goal is dubious anyhow).

And yea obviously wealth is relative. But to anyone accustomed to living in a reasonably developed country what you’re describing is not wealthy. We both know this. Not sure why you continue doubling down.

I'm doubling down because you haven't offered an explanation of what your counterfactual is. As best as I can guess, are implying that were something to be different, the outcomes will be different, whether that is that people who bust their ass will become truly wealthy (which again, you have not defined) or perhaps that people who don't bust their ass will also be better off.

I want to know what that something is, in what way it should be different, and why you think that difference will lead to the difference in outcomes you anticipate.

I’m not sure why you could possibly want all of that information from me.

My original response was about how “kids these days” expect “ass busting results without the ass busting”, and I was pointing out that that is definitely not the case with OP’s job offer of $25-30/hr plus overtime, which is the exact opposite…ass busting without the results.

But if you must, Let’s say somewhere in the top 50% of asset holders is a reasonable line for “wealth”. Do with that whatever you like.

According to the Federal Reserve[0], the median household net worth (that is, the assets that a family holds minus its liabilities) in the US is $122k, which means that owning free and clear even a modest home in a modest area -- like in the life I've described -- would already put you at the 50th percentile or above.

Among households that hold at least one asset, to filter out those who don't own anything, the median sits at $228k. Again, that's a nice home in a modest area or a modest home in a nice area, even before the recent real estate craze. Or from another perspective, someone making $60k a year (full-time employment at $25-30 an hour with no raises ever, which is an unreasonable assumption) who works for 40 years and manages a slightly above-average (remember, ass-busting) savings rate[1] of 10% will have that by the end of their career. We can conservatively assume that by investing their savings in a broad-market index fund they can at least match inflation.

Which is to say, entering the top 50% of asset holders from below is by no means unreasonable even for someone who isn't making a cushy $400k a year working at a FAANG. It just won't be overnight and it will take some amount of busting ass.

Your perception of how wealthy the median person (or asset-holder) is may be skewed by what you observe in a presumably very wealthy location.

[0]: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf20.pdf

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

I said "somewhere in the top 50%", not 50th percentile. I was being purposefully vague so that you wouldn't do exactly what you have done and try to pick apart whatever definition of wealth was brought forward. If you like, you can pretend that I said "90th" percentile exactly is the exact demarcation of wealth. Or take 50% as the mean and it's ~$750k net worth. Or take a definition of "poll 1,000 randomly selected Americans if your example is a wealthy person and take the majority vote". Go ahead and take those down also, if that's how you'd like to spend your time.

Even the "$100k" house your example uses does not get you to the median (you don't get to casually add 20%+ to the house value just to get to the median). And you're, again, still living in a tiny house in the poorest areas with the worst amenities, the worst healthcare, the worst education, the worst economic prospects for your children, the worst obesity, the worst of the opioid epidemic, etc, effectively zero disposable income, zero college savings, zero travel, crappy old used cars, thrift shop clothing, pinching every penny just to pay down your mortgage quickly and get to the 40-45th percentile of wealth statistically. Worth it? Not for me.

It's a perfectly "fine" life, if that's what you want. It does not meet a reasonable definition of wealth in the US.

You can stop any time.

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.

I don't know where you live but in my poor as hell area (12 an hour is considered decent pay), $100K doesn't really get you that much anymore. That is like the bare minimum for a lot in the trees and a small and poorly insulated 2 bedroom house.

15 years ago it might not have been so bad. But now you would get a run down shack on a tiny plot of land and you are living in a poor as hell area deep in the sticks where the nearest store besides walmart or dollar tree is minimum 60 miles away and your only choice for internet is 4G wireless that is shoddy going through all the trees.

I'm in a midsize city in the Gulf Coast region. Not exactly the boonies (though that is very accessible from where I am), and not exactly a bustling metro. One can buy a serviceable house under $100k in a not-so-great part of town. $12 an hour is a little under what people would consider decent pay here.

Your area seems to have a particularly disadvantaged income to home value ratio. Is there some other factor involved? From what I understand parts of Montana, for example, are like that, where there is no economic base to support higher wages but nonetheless the natural beauty of the area drives up home prices from out-of-town buying and whatnot.

In software, overtime pay usually means we aren't going to work you 60 hours a week.

But we're still full of idiots who think sacrificing your twenties to never see the sun is going to make the rest of their life easy, instead of full of health concerns. And divorce.

I'm curious, has your employer tried paying more? There are a fair few desk jobs that pay $25-30/hr, and it's entirely possible that people are trading job stability for something that isn't so physically demanding.

There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here.

However, our Seattle location has that problem. It was almost closed down because of competition.

edit: can't reply to the person who replied below, but if you have a contract to sell parts to a company you can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want and have it be sustainable.

There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here.

But that doesn't answer the question. If you can't get people to apply for a physically demanding job, despite other benefits like stability, unionization, etc, at $25-30/hr then it seems rational to try $35-40/hr unless the need really isn't there. We've been living with so much inflation relative to such little wage growth that if I was told things are more expensive because machinists want a wage they can use to buy a house with I would still chafe at the inflation but the justification would be a lot more palatable than "the board raised the prices and did a stock buyback with the profits".

>but if you have a contract to sell parts to a company you can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want and have it be sustainable.

Renegotiating a contract sounds more sustainable than not having workers.

The bottom line is always that the pay to quality of life at work is insufficient.

>Nobody wants to stand in front of a machine (or 5-6 machines) for 10 hours a day. Nobody wants to be in a 90 degree factory all day. Nobody wants to work 2nd or 3rd shifts.

>The pay isn't incredible. $25-30/hr. You get overtime.

For this much, there are lots of office jobs in front of a computer with zero risk of injury where you can sit. And overtime is not worth much if you do not get to enjoy life outside of work.

> There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here.

So, I shouldn't be around there?

> you can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want

I respect that it's a challenge, but job seekers aren't responsible for solving Boeing's supply chain problems. Either the job is important enough to draw people into it, or it isn't.

> if you have a contract to sell parts to a company you can't just increase your worker pay to whatever you want and have it be sustainable.

Fire whoever quoted the job such that the contract doesn't pay enough to hire workers to fulfill the contract. They are worse than useless.

If you have a contract to sell parts then your incentive to give higher salary would also be greater, given contracts would have penalties for failure to deliver. The companies are apparently in equilibrium with this situation, so either shortsighted in management or complain because effectively they want to pay less than they currently do.

It's not the pay that's the problem. if it was, people that work at McDonald's or Walmart would be beating our door down to double their salary

McDonald's in my small 5k population town in Montana (which has a bit of a reputation for shit wages) was advertising $20/hr (might be $19 and I'm mentally rounding up) last summer including paid leave. McDonalds is nearly to your starting pay. The market has adjusted.

McDonalds has $11/hr on their signs here

https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=4c142ca25712bc94&from=se...

Does your company train unskilled workers? Or are previous skills or credentials required?

To add to this: it's a union shop so you can't hire someone off the street and train them to be an electrician, for example.

You need to take the training classes and then wait for an apprenticeship opening (get in line and you better know someone)

You have to fill out this form apparently.

http://www.ibew.org/ContactForm/

No. They will hire people who are taking or have completed classes at the community college as apprentices occasionally.

Companies are afraid to spend money training when they don't think they will have reliable people (based on past experiences)

If a large number of people who are already credentialed for a job get it, and then quit soon after, why would it be rational for someone to spend their own time and money pursuing unpaid training in the hopes of also being hired onto that job?

It seems to me that companies have unrealistic ideas about what they need to do in order to attract employees. Start training again. Cross-train, even, if the boredom issue is a real one. Make work floors more hospitable (provide heaters/fans, lower noise, etc.). There was a time when typists and "computers" worked regimented shifts in sweltering/freezing, warehouse-style offices, too; very few workers will put up with being triple-layered at their keyboards or drowning in their own sweat these days. Maybe that needs to change for trades; or, businesses need to pay more to reflect the trouble people are putting themselves through for their paycheck.

Given that you have more specific requirements for the role, why are you comparing your salary with that of Walmart?

> don't think they will have reliable people (based on past experiences)

People who have been burned become insecure. Insecurity can lead to irrationality. This is something which effects relationships.

> There's not that many jobs that pay that much around here.

Hiring movers to pack your stuff and move it across the country costs a few thousand dollars, and it's never been easier to rent an apartment via online showings. Your competition is a lot broader than your immediate geographic area.

This is a few thousand dollars when something like half the nation can’t afford a $500 surprise bill, right?

This statistic is so misleading. I know you have honest intentions, but I think you find this statistic appealing because you have a worldview that poor people are helpless. If you read the actual report that statistic came from, you would see that about 40% said they had enough in savings to cover a surprise $500 expense. Another 21% said they would rely on a credit card, while 20% said they’d cut back on other expenses. Another 11% said they’d turn to family or friends for the money. So roughly 92% of people have a way of covering a $500 expense.

If you look at the discussion this statistic has started, it's basically a pissing contest of more and more extreme means that either help or hinder one's ability to move. But both sides of the argument are total strawmen: a vast majority of Americans can cover a $500 expense. Most people can find a way to move if they really want to. Those who can't are likely people you wouldn't want to hire.

That much-repeated factoid is the result of sloppy, clickbait reporting of a lousy survey.

People were asked "If you had a sudden $500 expense, how would you pay for it?" with options like ["cash", "checking account", "credit card", "pay-day loan", "borrow from family"] and unsurprisingly many people said "credit card". This then got repeated and reported as "Americans can't pay $500 without going into debt".

Yeah, would like to see the source of that. My generation puts everything on rewards cards even if they have no debt; so of course $500 is going on a card first lol.

That statistic originates from this report by the Federal Reserve from 2014.[0] In the report they define it as "paying for it entirely using cash, money currently in their checking/savings account, or on a credit card that they would pay in full at their next statement (referred to here as “cash or its functional equivalent”)."

[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/2014-report-econo...

Of course. Might as well turn it effectively into a $495 bill.

The target worker in this case is people in Gen z? They're young out of school and own nothing. It doesn't cost anything to move in that case. I moved across the country with a suit case. My only cost was the plane ticket

So that didn't cost you nothing then. Then what did you do when you got off the plane? Presumably you paid a security deposit for an apartment and didn't just camp on BLM land. For someone with no credit history, a landlord might ask for 4 months rent as a deposit these days.

When I was working shit jobs for minimum wage in Washington I hitchhiked to North Dakota's oil rush and slept in a train yard. It literally cost me nothing.

When an able bodied, single, mentally competent and healthy young person says they don't have enough money to move across country it is actually code for "I have no initiative so I will sit and cry like a pathetic child." Meanwhile people are successfully walking across the Darien gap and the Sonoran desert with entire families to find success.

> When an able bodied, single, mentally competent and healthy young person

Might want to add 'male' to that. I'm a female with a damn high risk tolerance (I worked third shifts in major cities, lived alone in one of the most dangerous cities in the country, and had no problem walking alone in a Middle Eastern country where I didn't speak the language well) and I wouldn't hitchhike. And I definitely am not sleeping in a train yard. So that cuts out half of Gen Z right there.

You made it fine, and others who try and hitchhike sometimes end up robbed, kidnapped, or worse. Don't blame an entire generation for not doing something that you know for a fact comes with a ton of risk.

Making a significantly lower wage is probably more dangerous in the long run than hitch-hiking a few trips in a lifetime to relocate to higher wages. That is the relative risk is likely actually negative.

You can't really find work in an oil field if you are trafficked before you get there

i moved into someones spare room

That's nice you found that, but oftentimes these arrangements are not so easy to find or otherwise take some time to line up.

If your try hard enough, you can always find a plausible sounding reason why it's impossible to improve your life. It's best not to take any risks, and always blame others for your problems. You can earn a lot of upvotes that way.

Nothing like a pull yourself by the bootstraps argument

Your info is a little out of date. Two months ago I hired movers to go 150 miles, and I did the packing myself. I have a house rather than an apartment but I don't have that much stuff. Cost was $3500. A full service pack and move across the country would probably be upwards of $5000. Even more if you were moving a whole family.

I literally just had a move from NYC to Stanford quoted at $5,500. A full pack-and-move from NYC to NJ suburbs was $2,500. Perhaps you have more stuff than me. I definitely have more stuff than a young person.

You can't use that argument because uprooting people blah blah

The funny part is fifty years ago people were moving to the area to work here.

Your current pay rate isn't working — who cares what other jobs pay in comparison? Pay $10-15 more an hour and you will see more applicants.

You can't do that in a union shop. You have to increase everyone's pay and there isn't money for that.

25/30 hr is not great. Hate to tell you

Small point: According to Indeed, the (average?) salary for a machinist at Boeing is $87k, so it'd be more like $40-45 an hour these days.

It's relative

It's extremely easy to clear more than 25-30 an hour waiting tables in a lot of places.

The places where you can easily clear more than $25-30 an hour as a waiter are also places with high cost of living and expensive housing. As a counterexample, in my area (a midsize city in a low cost-of-living state), restaurants universally suffered from sharp labor shortages last year. $25-30 an hour would let you live comfortably here, meaning they should have had a lot of applicants; therefore the money just wasn't there.

My wife was a waitress for years (but not in the last decade or so). A four hour shift at Sizzler (yes, the stake house that everyone loves to hate) would get her about $25/hr on average easily. A decade ago. In a small town in the Inland Empire of SoCal, amongst the lowest cost of living in California.

To what? Working at McDonald’s?

Relative to what other jobs in the area pay and the cost of living, of course. The competition may in fact be McDonald's paying $12 an hour or Walmart paying $14.

It is interesting that, in a modern machine shop, these are skilled roles. Good millwrights are worth their weight in gold. A CNC machinist has to have a huge range of skills, from understanding tolerances to programming (CAD, toolpaths, gcode).

These are not assembly line skills. If the work environment is so shit they leave in days I would take a guess that the problem is more than the low pay.

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