"It also prices out a lot of other better uses for their labor...."
"Projects I work on..."
"Projects I work on..."
More directly: I doubt there will be a meaningful increase in housing in states that have banned construction of new data centers (NY, Maine) than those where data centers are allowed to be built.
Lack of skilled tradesmen is a widespread problem and a major source of project delay (on top of massively higher housing production costs).
I assume next comes the zoning-causes-all-shortages and if only we could fix zoning then we'd solve housing – a thesis for which there's zero evidence.
If the AI boom crashes, how many of these people will get laid off and unable to find comparable paying work for years afterward? Even if it picks up again 5 years later, many of those people have moved on to new careers. And the only way to get them back, even temporarily, is pay them way more than their current career to pay for their losses and hardships of quiting their current career path. So ultimately boils down to "pay people more" because you aren't just incentivizing people to work for you specifically during a boom cycle, you are also trying to poach workers out of other industries for a job they know is temporary.
This is baffling to me from the homeowner's perspective.
I just checked the last invoice I had for electrical work - $300 for something that took <30 minutes and <$20 of supplies.
(And like, he did good work and I'd hire him again... but at those rates it's worth me doing anything I can myself even if it takes me 5x longer.)
Don't forget health insurance for when they have to use that sick time to get treatment - so they can get back to work ASAP. Plus, during a bust if they get laid off, we don't have universal health insurance, so they have to factor that in as well.
Obviously my electrician isn't making anywhere close to $30040 hours52 weeks = $600k+/year - and I don't begrudge my electrician making a good living.
But from my perspective as a homeowner, skilled trades are punishingly expensive, and my response was to a post specifically claiming that the pay sucks.
My post is a response to yours, showing that the provider’s pay can suck even if you find a service punishingly expensive.
Volatility of pay, body wear and tear, hours per day and flexibility of schedule, extensive travel greatly increasing morbidity/mortality risk, and other components go into whether or not pay sucks or not.