> he couldn't make enough money to pay child support doing that
That’s my point. These aren’t traditionally high-paying jobs. The fact that they are right now says something.
That’s my point. These aren’t traditionally high-paying jobs. The fact that they are right now says something.
This was historically true for construction [1]. Yet their wages are on a smooth curve upwards [2]. The entire cohort of construction workers is currently seeing high real wages, and their data almost completely hide Covid.
I’d also argue that commodity and skilled painting are different. The 50-year old commodity painter who honed his craft can charge a premium because he can smooth my drywall and put on a finish someone with zero training cannot.
[1] https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/the-public-cost-of-low-wage...
I'll say that I've worked along side my cousin's baby-daddy (I think in future I'll just call him "T" as that's less unwieldy), and he's a fine painter, but ultimately there just isn't that much to the job. I remember the first time I used a paint sprayer on a new construction job myself; basically you just need to learn where the trigger is and in a minute you can paint a wall that would take an hour with a roller.
It’s looking at 2015 to 2019 data. I’m comparing that period to the post-2021 one.
> is 2 in real dollars?
No, nominal. They’re up in real terms, but I don’t have non-proprietary data for that.