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Comment by givemeethekeys | Hacker News Reader

White collar salaries still pay better than blue collar salaries. Making 6 figures is considered a big deal among blue collar workers in America, while making 6 figures is a baseline expectation among white collar workers.

The US gets thousands of people coming in through the border every day, who bring down blue collar salaries more than they bring down white collar salaries.

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Believe it or not, outside of tech, white collar salaries are still not 100k+. Median white collar salaries hover around $80k. Blue collar jobs like construction and plumbing can fetch you those salaries, but without the debt that comes with getting a white collar job.

When you own your own business you can easily make 6 figures, it just takes years of sweat equity and rough times. A friend of mine has grown his business from 100k/y in sales (and 5-10k profit) to millions per year (~300k profit) installing TVs and stereos in 13 years. He worked his ass off for a long time.

Is he doing the installations himself or does he have employees

Definitely has employees (or contractors he works with). From experience, beyond $300k (~$1000/day excluding Sundays), for blue collar jobs like that, it is hard to grow revenue without the additional help.

Doesn't really sound blue collar when he's mostly managing the blue collar workers. Is management a blue collar job?

Making 6 figures is absolutely not a baseline expectation among American white collar workers. Are you mistaking finance, law, software, and accounting as the totality of white collar work?

> mistaking finance, law, software, and accounting

add sales to that, and there isn't much left. HR and Marketing catch up after a couple of years.

much left as in I've accurately captured those few white collar jobs that do earn six figures or much left as in we've listed all existing white collar jobs?

much left as in we've covered most white collar jobs

hmm, I think there's a ton of operations work, marketing, clerical work, data entry, sales, production (like fashion) and merchandising, logistics, customer support / experience, that's just 10 seconds of brainstorming.

A lot of trades not only require hands on experience as apprenticeships, but also buttloads of certifications / legal liabilities to sign off projects, which act as a sensible moat agianst unskilled migrant laborers that dont know the language well, let alone able to navigate endless bureacracy.

Also in a lot of trades once you have a "name" and book of clients its easy to work on your own and start a small business

Nonono it's the apprenticeship business school model where you work summers to learn the ropes from your uncle who speaks trade Spanish + bankrupts a leaf-node company on every claim and penalty

And while plenty of people do make six figures in the trades, it's a much worse way to make it. That level of pay almost always comes from overtime, uneven demand tied either to seasonal or boom/bust cycles, or traveling away from home for work. Often some combination of these.

Almost no one in the trades is just working a 9-5 across town for $140k year after year after year that's for sure. You might have seasons where you make that much but at some point you have to stop pounding overtime, or the work just dries up and you have to coast on what you put away earlier.

So, sort of like game dev? Game Dev is the blue collar of white collar?

Most of white collar is the blue collar of white collar.

Plus many making more are independent contractors or own a company.

Buy your own truck, your own tools and gear, pay for materials out of your cut, etc.

There are a lot of costs people don't think of.

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