I went to trade school during law school. It left me stunned

It's very simple: salaries are not going up so it is not a shortage of labor.

When there is a genuine shortage of labor, salaries rise to correct it.

Yeah I think this is a lot of it. My dad was a machinist and we were definitely on the lower end of middle class growing up. I just checked, and in my area a machinist makes about double minimum wage. That’s decent money, but not something highly paid.

For labor that requires training and certification, there can be a shortage of labor despite the pay. (In general, I agree with you, however).

I’m glad at least in my neck of the woods NY supports vocational tech BOCES CTE (https://www.boces.org/advocacy-efforts/cte-provides-opportun...).

We have a few technical centers up here that high school students can elect to take courses with and get their hands on, including a short ‘internship’ during the senior year. Our Building Trades classes work on building houses that get sold off to the community to put on their own lots, even.

I took the Electronics class for my two years, grabbing the basics of digital and analog electronics. My internship slightly twisted into working more IT-related work, but hey — it was a good time and I learned some actually useful skills I still use today when I need to cable and wire stuff up, or build battery powered shenanigans. I’d say it was a lot more useful than the alternative of taking high-level Spanish classes and filler classes like Public Speaking.

It’s a nice refreshing pace to see investment and interest in CTE rising and I’m here for it.

Bonus - students also get to be introduced to trade labor as well. I recall being brought in with the Building Trades folks to meet the IBEW Local and learn about becoming a journeyman electrician as well as the various benefits of collective bargaining.

If it's that high-stakes, wages ought to be commensurate.

If there is a huge shortage, employers will be talking to people in the street, offering to train them at the employers' expense. If not, there ain't a shortage.

It's one of the things I genuinely like about Australia (despite being more on the "paying for expensive trades work" end than the receiving side of those wages) and also slightly mysterious to me - it's not like that "next door" in New Zealand, and I can't figure out why. It feels like a subtle difference in the class system, but some people say it's stronger unions. I can't identify any huge differences in labour market structure that would explain the discrepancy.

In NZ you have to own the business to make decent money in most trades.

It depends. One problem though is there an extreme oversupply of JDs.

In general, there is an oversupply of menial jobs, an undersupply of specialized talent, and an oversupply of under-differentiated semi-skilled workers.

It makes logical sense that industries lacking enough specialized workers (i.e., fabs) ought to collectively invest in the education pipeline and outreach to attract workers 5-10 years from now. And they can't just throw money at the situation, they must find mentors and industry ambassadors to become Youtubers, TikTokers, and volunteer for high-school and young adult outreach.

Also, another problem is that real wages for average Americans have been in free-fall for decades while productivity has skyrocketed. Most American workers are working for almost nothing and most have a worse standard of living than their parents.

Yale in particular has a bimodal distribution. I’d say that any Yale JD can get a job for $200k+ if they want it. But a large percentage choose public interest, clerkships or government, which pay less.

By comparison, Harvard and Columbia grads had the same median starting salary last year, $215k.