America's Plumber Deficit Isn't Good for the Economy | Hacker News Reader

America's Plumber Deficit Isn't Good for the Economy

bloomberg.com

10 pointssamaysharma13 comments

I used to think the trades is where the money is. I've met so many plumbers, AC repairmen, general contractors, firealarm installers - who are really doing well for themselves. Then just the other day there was a Reddit thread about lack of jobs in trades in Toronto. I did a double take. The joke in our friends was our immigrant parents pushed us to study and get corporate jobs and all the trades folks and real-estate agents seem to be doing better than us. A true grass is greener on the other side moment.

I learned that at most trades companies, there are folks with over 20 years of experience and then newbies. No one in between. Every economic cycle, the folks with 5-10 years of experience get laid off. Apprentice are rarely trained by the old dog and put out in the field with minimal experience.

Perhaps this is a Toronto, Ontario problem. Ontario is going through a major economic cycle that has almost everyone feeling quite hard times. Or perhaps this is just the negativity that is Reddit. There is also the BS that income waged workers pay double, if not more, taxes that businesses or self employed workers.

> The mean annual wage for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters as of May 2022 was $65,190, the BLS says, which is higher than the national average of $61,900 for all occupations.

Yikes, no wonder. You can be beating that wage by a lot in a union factory job after a few years, and you can start that straight out of high school. TC, not wage, is probably crazy-higher. And that’s average for plumbers, not starting.

America has no labor shortages, just a shortage of people willing to work for the pay and working arrangements on offer.

Anytime you read these pieces, it is a call for immigration or other mechanisms to keep wages suppressed (vs wages and working arrangements improving to draw more labor into the domain [1]). Bloomberg frequently pushes this narrative [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/iDSPgorO6hs

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-05/us-immigr... | https://archive.today/eDWSt

> You can be beating that wage by a lot in a union factory job after a few years

I'm skeptical - what kind of factory job are you talking about and what sort of data are you looking at?

Something not often discussed when it comes to work in the trades is that it can really beat up your body after some years. Not uncommon to hear stories of guys getting hooked on painkillers.

PEX needs to be legal in more cities like New York and Chicago.

How long until AI can do the plumbing?

Building a robot that can fix or replace all existing pipes... Very long time.

Now if we redesign whole housing construction and accept some trade offs, maybe 20 years in new construction.

Some kind of humanoid or canoid robot? It’ll need dexterity. Doesn't even have to be symmetrical and have interchangeable tools at the extremities.

For re-plumbing a home, 2 piece robot, 1 to dispense the pex while the other rides on it to anchor it at its destination and cut the old pipe out and retrieves the piece to be discarded at the nearest safe point.

Then the dispenser scoots up, cuts the pex, and connects it, possibly with some epoxy or a 3d printed connector or both.

Rider robot uses lidar to plan next path while that is going on, until both robots arrive at their destination. Minimum of sheetrock repair needed, quick and easy, should last 15 years or so.

$100 million and a team of dedicated and passionate engineers with the sole goal of seeing that come to fruition could pull it off in 7-12 years, maybe less depending on the number of geniuses you luck into.

True, but we can give it long arms and an endoscopic camera, so it might even be an improvement.

Loooooong time

20 years after the singularity

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