Are the states without enough electricians making more reasonable licensing standards for becoming an electrician? You can offer $1M for electricians but if there's only a certain number of apprentice slots and you have to go through either the union or a few well guarded paths you're still fucked.
Yeah that’s the problem the unions have a conflict of interest and aren’t training enough. States like California need to just bypass the unions and train up cohorts of trades people, but our elected representatives are married to the unions so this isn’t likely to happen promptly.
The only thing states need to do is include trades as part of high school curriculum.
Personal interest and market will handle the rest. People will always go where the jobs are, and they will train themselves up if its something they believe they can do to improve their lives.
I grew up in a midwest state where they did that exact thing. Half of those people still ended up working at arby's/etc because there were only so many apprentice slots and the sons and daughters of tradesman got them.
The usual progression is start working as an apprentice and then as a plumber for a larger agency, then on your own, then you become the larger agency and hire assistants and other plumbers, then you “retire”. The latter part can be quite lucrative.
It's very important to distinguish that stuff, because as we saw in The Millionaire Next Door you can often end up classifying someone as "electrician" or "plumber" when more properly they should be classified as "small business owner".
The training going from apprentice to electrician is long, there’s lots of hard work, and the pay at the apprentice end isn’t good. It’s a good career to start in from a relatively young age, tougher to break into the older you get.
Walk through the electrical aisle at a Home Depot on any given weekend. You'll see hundreds of casual DIYers buying electrical supplies. Almost no house fires result from 104 weekend days every year worth of those DIYers doing this work.
Learning to do things right and learning what things to not touch isn't that hard.
If you limit yourself to simple work like replacing outlets, switches, and hardwired lamps, that's most of the likely electrical work for an existing house. Call a profesional for new circuits and maybe for replacing breakers; IMHO, it's a scary box, but the work is straight forward, so I'll replace breakers, but I would (and have) definitely call out for a breaker box replacement.
Agree, but I would definitely caution with getting your advice from YouTube. There are many, many home improvement YTers that give incorrect/dangerous advice. This isn't limited to small channels with Joe Blow working on his house; I've seen NEC violations galore and general bad practices on some of the larger DIY/contractor channels. If you get beyond the basic 'replace a light switch' level, the NEC often contains levels of ambiguity and dependencies on other rules that you might not be aware apply. It's also written in a legalese style that takes some time to be able to penetrate the jargon.
Just take a look at electrician forums or even Stack Exchange to see how seemingly simple things result in arguments.
>I've seen NEC violations galore and general bad practices on some of the larger DIY/contractor channels.
For an example more relevant to the IT crowd here: Linus Tech Tips and pretty much all their videos concerning "upgrading" a house, car, boat, etc. are rife with regulatory violations, safety guideline violations, industry standard violations, and the kitchen sink.
So if you want to learn any of the trades, even just superficially for hobby/DIY purposes, find someone who really knows what they're doing and ask them to teach you.
I wouldn't prematurely leave on the basis of AI, if it does happen you('re friend) can retrain there and then. Chances are there will be all sorts of jobs still requiring technical knowledge when that time comes, if it comes.
If it's an interest you('re friend) has then why not take a couple evening classes to slowly get the foundational skills & ensure you have enough of savings to make that jump in the future if needed?
Fwiw, I live in the Bay Area and one of the best paid people I know is an electrician - he can pull in $1k a day on some jobs - so the upside is there too.
Isn't 1k a day like, even if it was every day, an entry level tech job in the bay area? Surely you know some people who are making 400k+ in the bay area.
$250k/yr is attainable, but it's a bit higher than entry level. Fresh out of college, $100k/yr seems a bit more reasonable. Which is still a whole hell of a lot, way more than I made, but I didn't go to Stanford/MIT/etc.
Na, entry level roles are really around 120k. I know some people on higher amounts sure, but even places like Atherton and Woodside have average household incomes of $300/350k. I live in Palo Alto and have found the 200k mark for startups is pretty good for a fairly senior engineer at a cool company. Of course in the HN bubble we’re all making $1m before bonuses :)
That’s not as a contractor but as a master union electrician, and from what I gather it’s shift work on reactors so spending several months on site at that rate then having holiday until another gig comes up.
That checks out. I'm always skeptical of these happily-ever-after stories about working in the trades. We've been hearing about a shortage of plumbers and electricians in developed countries for decades. One would think that young people would rush in to fill this gap, given the risk of getting a costly degree only to end up working at a Starbucks.
And yet, the HVAC and electrician industry remains understaffed. Maybe it's not such a great industry to work in?
Lots of physical work for HVAC. Young people have other workforce dynamics as they often move from a job to the next, so maybe that explains the working at a Starbucks for a few months which quicly becomes wasted year or two. Also you won't get them doing two years of apprenticeship paying peanuts, they'll leave and seek other opportunities. Which is quite fine, can't really blame them.
I know a couple (so, n=2) of highly-skilled tech people who made the jump to being an electrician. They actually progressed rapidly. Neither regret making the jump.
One downside: they get pulled into more low voltage/systems work and they hate that part of the job as they wanted to get away from computers.
If you go the elechicken route specializing in low voltage is a great distinguishing talent; many electricians don’t like it and don’t want to understand it; even being able to diagnose a cat 6 drop with a tester can be worth.
And some localities don’t consider low voltage to be electrical at all and you need no training/licensing.
Had a network drop in a VIP office that worked fine for 10 years until we upgraded to gigabit (this was around 2010). Our very, very crappy cable testers (basic continuity testers) all said the line was good. Had a low voltage guy we used test the line, he ripped it out, and found out half way up the wall, the wire was cut, and then each strand was spliced with electrical tape back together.
The "high end" testers that do actual transmissions are worth the investment, if you do much wire-related work. And yes, so much of the "in building" wiring was done by electricians who only had experience with telephone cabling, and it can be notoriously sloppy.
My cousin was an electrician for a number of years, but gave up because he said it was too hard on his body; particularly his hands. He's now a welder. Don't know how much that's particular to his body / the kind of work he was doing.
Yes, being an electrician is a great field to be in! At minimum, you can expect to make $68k/yr with a Journeyman Electrician license and north of $100k+/yr with a Master Electrician license. If you further specialized in something like HVAC and had your own business handling commercial accounts, you can easily do revenues around $3MM/yr if not more.
Only software industry is so welcoming to unqualified people. In other technical professions even as "simple" as electrician or carpenter without solid apprenticeship started at young age, you'll never make money after switching in later age.
That's because the 'software industry' has a lot of jobs that have nothing to do with coding. Being in the vicinity of that however can be helpful for bridging the learning gap.
Even then, the amount of credentialism is extremely high for anything besides the lowest rung of dev jobs. Look at how people on HN turn their noses up at bootcamps, or really anything less than a CS undergrad degree.
> Even then, the amount of credentialism is extremely high for anything besides the lowest rung of dev jobs.
Biggest mistake I made was not going to school and buying into the “you don’t need a degree” stuff. While technically true, it feels extremely limiting when you want to venture outside that “lowest rung”.
My point is that they'll treat a self-taught person who wants to go into software development the exact same way. It's not bootcamps don't make you build real projects and put them on Github.
Practical downsides: considerably lower pay right now compared to a job at FAANG, although certainly nothing to sneeze at. A profession regulated far more than necessary, similarly to many other blue collar fields - for example in California, you need 8,000 hours of apprenticeship to get a license. You are also technically required to deal with municipal bureaucracies and get sign-offs on almost every single thing you do, although most electricians follow these rules rather liberally, and there's a ton of unpermitted work in every older house.
You're less vulnerable to AI, but you sure are vulnerable to downturns in construction.
You serve at the pleasure of your clients. You're gonna be getting emergency calls at weird hours and you're gonna be spending a lot of time in your car.
It's physical labor - you're gonna be spending some time in crawl spaces or other uncomfortable positions, it's rough on your hands, etc.
> but you sure are vulnerable to downturns in construction
This is also a really weird point. If you work at FAANG, you are vulnerable to economic downturns. Just look at how so many tech companies have decimated their workforce.
If you lost your FAANG job recently, you have huge prior earnings behind you and can probably slide directly into a non FAANG job that will pay more than most jobs doing electrical work.
This is just not the case if you're an electrician and construction is drying up.
Being on HN often reminds of the late '00s when I was on a message board called Wall Street Oasis, for undergrads who wanted to go into investing banking or private equity.
On that board, it was honestly seen a failure if a person did not get into one of the Big 4 IBs or PE funds. It was like entering a twilight zone, no one could lower themselves into accepting anything less than working at one of 6 companies on the entire earth.
It just doesn't make sense as a career because of the regulation. You can become a software engineer, get paid more, with less strain on your body, in far less time without any hours or licensing requirements. I have several books on electricity and electrical work, have an interest in it, but why would I ever take the pay downgrade or recommend this path to someone else?
The trades are going to have to start paying more and reducing regulation.
I think generally yes, it's a worthy jump, but one reason why not - these types of jobs can take a serious toll on your body.
This can be mitigated of course, just like how a desk worker can mitigate the risks of sitting for so many hours a day, but it may be harder to mitigate for a trades job.
That really depends on what you mean by "tech worker" but moving from knowledge work to trade work rarely works out unless you're already a master craftsman and just switching to an artisan business full time. The salaries are significantly lower, to the point where 90th percentile electricians often make less than 10th percentile engineers [1]. It is a physically demanding job that will lead to health issues and is no more immune to psychologically abusive management than tech with added life-or-death liability.
Don't confuse owning a business that hires its electricians to customers with actually being an electrician. The former is very lucrative, the latter much less so. It takes many brutal years to get from the latter to the former.
[1] As opposed to QA, customer service, etc, which are more comparable hence the "tech worker" caveat
This is very much a US perspective. In the UK for example, software engineering is nothing special with regards to compensation and trades can in fact yield more.
> The salaries are significantly lower, to the point where 90th percentile electricians often make less than 10th percentile engineers [1]
Do you have a source for this? How much of that derives from tech workers generally living in high COL areas and needing higher salaries, while electricians are distributed throughout the land at all COL?
I have no doubt that high-earning engineers outearn high-earning electricians, but the assumption about this disparity seems suspect to me, without a source to back it up.
The 90/10 number is definitely biased towards California, but the national numbers really aren't that better. The 75th percentile for electricians is $77,350 [1] and the 25th percentile for developers is $90,870 [2] so the overall number is probably closer to 80/20 or even 85/15.
Thanks for the links! Interesting to compare and contrast locations with this in mind.
In Indiana, seems 75th percentile electricians earn about the same as 25th percentile software engineers. In Nebraska, it's 90th electricians and ~35th software engineers. A lot to take into consideration, and a wider gap then I expected in non-tech hubs.
A bit of informal research suggests that the median software engineer earns 90-120K in the US. This might be slightly outdated. Due to my position, I have visibility for the salary of many software developers at my company (mid-size, about 5000 employees), and that's not far off. It might be low by 10-15K. We have developers across the US.
The same informal research suggests a pretty consistent 60K or so for journeyman electricians. The range is tighter because skilled trade wages are subject to more regulation. Based on my knowledge of the Oregon & Washington prevaling wage rates (my wife works in accounting and has several small business electricians as customers), 60K does sound about right. Though as an hourly worker, it is not uncommon for them to sign up for more hours to push their yearly compensation above 100K.
There's also a relevant bias. The BLS does not adjust their wage percentiles to local cost of living/taxes. Software development jobs tend to be concentrated in high cost, high tax, high wage regions. By contrast tradesmen the demand for tradesmen is the same (per capita) just about everywhere. This bias makes the numbers difficult to compare. Suffice to say trades earn more in real terms, and software engineers earn less in real terms.
Many electricians are working on 1099s, so you have to account for the extra payroll taxes they have to pay. And the higher electrician wages generally are in the same high cost of living places were SWEs make lots of money also.
How do you feel about making $15-20 an hour for a few years while you level up in the union?
How do you feel about standing on ladders and pulling wires with your hands for 8 hours a day? How about when it's -10F outside? (may not matter depending on where you live).
I think it has both pros and cons over software dev. For sure the success metric is clear (thing works and passes code and inspection? it's done). Vs the fuzzy software dev requirements. But it also can be a lot more physical.
About 5 years ago there was a discussion online. Somebody was considering getting a C class driver's license - commercial/trucking. This seemed like a horrible idea because this was right in the midst of the 'in 2 years we'll have full self driving' stuff. Somehow, 5 years later we're still right in the midst of 'in 2 years we'll have full self driving.' And there are now more commercial truckers than ever, with wages higher than ever.
As for electrician: universal demand, get paid to learn, and a really interesting skill on top of it all? I mean even if it doesn't end up being somebody's final career, it just sounds like a really interesting idea.
You also need to consider the building standards and general condition of buildings in your local area. This can vary between states/countries and some might be more enjoyable than others.
Where I live it takes about 5 years of working experience as an apprentice to even be allowed to apply for a license. So you're going to throw away 5 years of earning to get to the point you can go on your own and charge market rates. I'd probably say you missed the boat if you're over 30 at this point.
I asked bing for you(r friend) and it was generally encouraging. Apprenticeships take four years, you need a HS diploma etc etc. It had a good insight about joining a union as a first step to help find an apprenticeship though. I think I heard that long ago from a human electrician.
bing > consider joining a union or a professional group that can offer you guidance and support during your apprenticeship journey. Some examples are International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC), and Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC)
Anyway cant you(r friend) work both angles until something takes off? Apply to some unions / apprenticeships and dev jobs? Let the universe decide?
Personally I think its a great idea. I wish I'd thought of it during my last job search.
Probably not. My father is an electrician, and has been for over 30 years now. His body is falling apart, which makes it tough for him to work without an assistant, or in the summer due to the heat (heart issues). Standing around and/or driving all day is terrible for ones health, but working 10-12 hours a day is not conducive to exercising (or eating well).
He pushed me into college when I worked with him as a youth. He straight up told me, "be an engineer, those guys make twice what I do for half the work."
Also, an often ignored fact of trades is that recessions hit them hard. My dad had nearly no work for all of 2009 and the company he worked for nearly went bankrupt.
Do you like dealing directly with customers? Customers who have unreasonable expectations of your trade? Other construction workers? Do you like working with your hands, at the cost of your long-term health? Do you like making a lot less money?
My first question would be -- how old are you? Skilled labor is still labor, and it is fairly normal for middle aged electricians, plumbers, etc, to have significant chronic injuries. A smart electrician, HVAC guy, plumber, etc, is moving into supervision or business management at that point and hiring new young technicians to do the physically hard work.
> tech worker who might be made obsolete by AI
My advice would be to level up and become an software engineer instead of a coder. Even then, I don't think coders are in any danger of being explicitly replaced by LLMs. Regurgitating plausible code, which sometimes even works, is useful but still definitely requires a human to decide how to leverage it. If you're not interested in software engineering (by that I mean all the non-coding parts, which really start to dominate the higher you go), and I can totally understand that, then maybe change your title to Prompt Engineer :).
I really like the distinction between engineers and coders.
As someone who hires people (and having graduated as engineer), it is already extremely difficult to hire people who have an "engineering mindset", who know how things work deeply and would be able to make new stuff from scratch if needed. For "coders", who only know how to put a few libraries together and are allergic to novel stuff, I got stacks and stacks of resumés. Yeah, those will get replaced.
Who's looking down at them? In the US, we had a period where the trades were kind of shat upon, but then those fields dried up, and perceptions shifted. Now, they're good career fields with excellent pay.
You might be projecting or evincing a limited life experience. Where I live, there is no shame in being a blue collar worker. If anything, I've experienced more discrimination and hate from being a software engineer than my tradespeople friends have experienced from their jobs.
This is the truth, and apparently it’s painful for some people to hear and accept. Electricians are just as skilled and may end up being more in demand than the average tech employee because of this fact. If that’s the way it plays out, good for them.
Just like a large part of USA society, HN is full of “temporary embarrassed millionaires” trying to cozy up with the ruling class whereas most of them have more in common with the blue color worker than the millionaires/billionaires.
It's really is temporary for many readers here though. Assume a FANG engineer salary of $400k+/yr (with a large portion in stock) for someone who chooses to live unassumingly. If they're able to save $200/yr with some stock market trickery, during boom years, that's only 5 years to become a 1 millionaire. Which isn't enough to FIRE in the bay area, but a few more years of that, and a move to a lower CoL place, and, maybe you're still not "ruling class", but you need not work another day in your life.
The only question then is just how common are those kinds of salaries amongst readers here. I'll bet the distribution would be surprising. The only public forum I could see as having a higher percentage is Blind.
This respons feels like I struck a nerve or something, it feels like you identify as a temporary embarrassed millionaire. Yet even if you have like 10M in the bank, you are still closer to the blue collar worker than you'll ever be to the ruling/owning class.
No nerve, just the application of simple back of the envelope math on why someone would try so hard to get a FAANG job. Realistically they're not for everyone. To economist's dismay, humans actually aren't at all economically rational actors. I mistakenly thought that particular phrase would clue readers in on my opinions about the reality of chasing after a FAANG job.
I do take issue with calling me a "temporary embarrassed millionaire" though. Because that refers to a certain mindset where people will vote for politicians who try to take away social welfare programs, and believe that poor people are lazy and unintelligent (despite being poor themselves). Simply wanting to be a millionaire isn't enough, and I'll fully admit to wanting to be a millionaire - who doesn't buy a lottery ticket every once in a while? Or, say, I don't know, spend a bunch of time writing out the math for becoming a millionaire, or what $10m in the bank means.
My comment didn't get into my politics. I don't believe we should get rid of social welfare programs, and I vote accordingly. And to be crystal clear, I don't believe poor people are lazy or unintelligent. In fact, I think lot of poor people work harder - longer hours, for shittier pay, in order to make rent, car payments, and buy food - than the rich, who don't even have to get out of bed or go to a job to get all three of those things.
I live frugally, drive a older car that I fully own, and aren't afraid to admit that I want financial independence and to retire early (FIRE). I still don't want to run the government like a business or get rid of welfare or EBT though. Whether or not I'll make it is another question entirely, but wanting to be a millionaire and hating poor people don't necessarily go hand in hand.
For fun, lets dig into the reality of having $10M in the bank. If you have 10M in the bank, with a 4% APY, which even 1-month t-bills are returning more right now, you'd make $23,802/month, without lifting a finger or getting out of bed. By January 19th, you've made more than the federal poverty level for the year ($14,580). By February 9th, you've already made more than the US median income for the whole year ($31,133). (Last one, I promise.) May 9th is the day that your passive income on $10M will exceed a blue collar's median wage for Wyoming, which is where it's the highest ($56,345; ziprecruiter.com). And there are still 7 more months in the year to go!
So I dare say with $10M in the bank, you would never have to work another day in your life, which, imo, would put you far closer to ruling/owning class than the median blue collar worker, who has a job that they really have to go to and put work into, that pays < $30/hr, probably not consistently (slow months are hell on people's savings), from which they have to make rent, pay car fees, and feed themselves from.
With $10M not-in-the-bank, you could definitely buy and own a small business or two, angel invest in companies, move to a low CoL area and own a bunch of real estate and several cars, and still have money left over to live off the income. I don't see how that's remotely close to the life of a blue collar worker, even if you don't want to call them part of the ruling/owning class. Personally, that sounds pretty ruling/owing class to me though.
I don't think it's really a matter of these jobs being looked down on, at least any more.
These types of jobs require a long-term commitment that doesn't exist in other fields. If you go through the work to become an electrician, that's probably going to be what you do. You also need to moderately intelligent to do electrician work, and its hard on your body.
My personal opinion is that a lot of people with the aptitude for the trades look at white collar work, see that its easier on your body and has more career flexibility and choose the obvious choice.
I looked into a carpentry program when I was younger and went and got my Masters instead because I do semi-dangerous hobbies like skiing. If I break my leg skiing and I do carpentry, i don't work or make money. If I break my leg in my current career, I'd probably just take my computer upstairs.
A side effect of this that people don't consider is not only is the infrastructure not able to handle everyone electrifying their cars, stoves, heat, etc. but that millions and millions of homes don't have enough amperage to support it. Most homes built before the 1980's have 100A service. Most before 1950 had 50A and many still do.
If you consider that charging a couple vehicles while running electric AC/heat and using your 30A induction stove isn't even possible on millions of properties, you begin to see some of the issues. Consider it costs many thousands to upgrade a house and we have a problem. The biggest problem being just who is going to upgrade these homes.
And even if you can there's a greta chance they don't have space in their panel or that they will need a special circuit added to support things. This needs an electrician and costs significant money.
Solvable problem, but people who just say "make it all electric" don't even consider this.
I'm not sure what sort of smart meter integration is required to make this happen, but it would be sweet if the electric car could ramp down or pause it's charging near-instantly when the induction stove or AC kicks on, since those are both intermittent and the car charging can wait.
That's not really true. 200A has been sent to typical homes the last 30-40 years as our energy needs have increased. A normal sized home in America is 2,400-3,000 SqFt. which probably requires a couple AC units. Already if 2 units are going and the induction stove is running + whatever else in the house, you're already well over 100A. Now factor in that everything will trip at 80% so you don't even get your total load.
I highly doubt a 100A system would pass code in the type of configuration you're suggesting. "Trust me, I'll run everything right" isn't good enough. I'd be shocked your 100A panel even has any space left for a new 30A+ circuit.
> A normal sized home in America is 2,400-3,000 SqFt. which probably requires a couple AC units
I don't understand where you are getting this multiple AC unit thing.
My house is 4,700 square feet above grade (2000 more below grade), and I have a single AC. Now it is the absolute biggest, baddest, mode insane residential AC unit my HVAC place makes (5 ton seer 27 I believe).. but it is a single unit. I think I know a single person who has 2 AC units, and their house is a bit smaller than mine (maybe 4500 square feet). If my house were built today it would have 2 ACs.. but again, I am very much on the extreme end of size. And this entire thing is on I believe a 40 amp circuit.
There are millions of old homes that need to be retrofitted for AC. They don’t have duct work because they are heated by radiators. When they are upgraded to have AC they often have 2 (or more) units since running ducts up and down isn’t feasible. So for the first floor you run ducts in the basement and vent up. For second the coil is in the attic if possible and vent down.
These types of homes often have 100A service and running 3t + 2t already stress it.
People also do it for efficiency reasons. Running hot/cold air long distances is a good way to waste money.
It’s also better design to have multiple units and therefore multiple zones. Why are you cooling your bedrooms all day and your living room all night? Installing multiple units is better design but cheap builders just try and keep prices/quotes low to customers that don’t understand it.
A battery would help here to handle the surge. At least that's how I've got it setup on my boat, where my inverters supplement the limited 30A "service" by pulling from the battery when the load goes above 30A.
The feeders off the meter just need their own power meter and some smarts and a way to tell the car to pause charging (or just deenergize that circuit). The smarts monitor the circuit that goes to the kitchen, sees that there's been a significant power draw for some amount of time, and then shuts off the car charging circuit. Pretty straightforwards circuit to build from scratch, though I'd recommend just getting a unit that does that.
200A service here. At some point may need to upgrade to 400A.
I don't think EV charging is a huge deal for many. 20-30A / 240 will usually charge you overnight. You can run it after you are done with the induction stove. I think 100A service can still work for quite a while. Heat pumps are maybe the most iffy thing.
You need to consider in old homes (of which there are millions and will continue to be) things like AC are run in multiple zones since the ducts were added decades after the homes was built it's just easier to have multiple units. Also as the home scales in size you need more units, including heat pumps if you go that route.
So you have a couple of these units running at 30/40/50A each and a couple cars plugged in, possibly one of them needs super charging so it's using 50A and someone has 3 induction burners going and the electric dryer is running while your teenager blow dries their hair. Not to mention all the passive things likke the fridge/freezer, lights, charging devices, etc.
Point being, at any given time there's a combination of things that could need power and you have to be able to support that.
See other thread. If your house is taking multiple 30 amp AC splits, something is wrong with your setup. Many mini-splits run on 120V 15-amp.. the same plug as a vacuum or microwave.
Edit - Also make sure you understand the difference between 120 and 240V circuits. Not entirely clear you do.
Well, do the hard work when drywall comes off for any reason.
That should have been done for at least 10 years now, but somehow many lack the foresight/suffer from broken incentives (put in data wiring when you have the opportunity, and bury fiber/speedpipes when you dig a street up. Still, doesn't happen, because broken incentives.)
The definition they settled on is "when the number of workers available (the supply) increases less rapidly than the number demanded at the salaries paid in the recent past".
Wages have gone up about 1.9% over the last 20 years which is just under inflation. That leads me to believe that there may not be a severe shortage. Are they just talking about this year? In which case I think every industry has claimed a shortage.
It could be the case that many people rely on handymen or DIY to fill in the gap. Which may lead to demand being mitigated by shoddy work. Maybe a threshold was hit. The price of electricians could have gone up so high that people do it themselves or on the cheap, which leads to stagnation in electrician salary increases. If this is the case, inflation might mitigate the problem in the long run.... when people can afford electrician rates. I'm just hypothesizing here not claiming this is what is happening.
Electricians are a skilled trade. Not only are there not enough, many of them are older. As they retire there aren't as many becoming electricians as there are leaving.
If we want more electricians we need to embrace skilled trades as a positive path.
The structure of apprenticeship spots isn't the only factor able to discourage applicants.
For example: in the last years people have been pushed into college by being bombarded by messages of "you'll die poor if you don't". Wages are another.
There has been a culture in the US, for some time, that everyone needs to go to college. Many high schools have removed classes that guide/prepare people into skilled trades and guidance counselors almost always push everyone to college.
There is some change for that now where some schools are starting to go the other way. But, these are in the minority.
It's a culture thing.
I know a number of younger people who had the impression it was better to toil in a low wage job (like a sandwich shop) and pine for a college degree than to choose a skilled trades career path. To them choosing skilled trades felt like failure. This is the culture they were raised in.
that isn't the problem. the problem is, that in many 'gated' professions (electricians, plumbers, nurses, police officers, etc) the training is required, and usually restricted by the state.
And usually, the classes are full, and they have to turn away many qualified applicants. While they talk about how desperately they need new people in the career.
OP was discussed in a thread in r/electricians (a worthwhile sub if you're interested in tradecraft), which I saw last night.
The recurring points I remember were, "then why aren't wages rising to meet this demand"; and "you will feel more benefit from the electrification boom if you're IBEW."
There are lots of companies out there that pay low wages compared to others. And they do a lot to make their people feel like they only deserve that amount. Happens across so many fields. I'm sure it happens for electricians and other skilled trades.
There needs to be a significantly better pitch for electrician jobs than 'it pays more than the avg US salary'. The US avg is skewed by a giant chunk of the labour force working unskilled jobs at McDonalds, Dollar General and Walmart.
If building the grid would take as many electricians as maintaining it we should totally incentivize people to learn the trade, they would be practically guaranteed jobs. Otherwise it would be a big bubble of people being put out of a job once the project ends
My brother was an electrician for a few years. He quit because of long hours, lots of travel, and low pay. Maybe things are better now that there's a shortage? This was 10 years ago
Truckers have very similar complaints, yet there are plenty of people in WFH jobs or in air-conditioned offices thinking they're living the sweet life because they didn't get suckered into a college degree.
The main issue with lots of trades in the US is the onerous licensing requirements: 4 years of experience under a licensed electrician before you get a license. In most parts of the developed world, vocational training was/is seen as a lesser field despite trades absolutely making bank these days.
Also, technology has evolved in lots of trades making work a lot easier than it used to be: Wago connectors and a variety of push-fittings for electricians, PEX for plumbers and so on.
> The main issue with lots of trades in the US is the onerous licensing requirements: 4 years of experience under a licensed electrician before you get a license. In most parts of the developed world, vocational training was/is seen as a lesser field despite trades absolutely making bank these days.
In Germany, you need a Meister (=Master) title (not the academic degree) to start your own electrician business. Usually, after the apprenticeship which is 3.5 years you need at least another 3 years... so Germany has even stricter requirements.
> Also, technology has evolved in lots of trades making work a lot easier than it used to be: Wago connectors and a variety of push-fittings for electricians, PEX for plumbers and so on.
Technology maybe, but it has also become way more complex. Smart lights, smart HVAC systems, smart plumbing, energy savings requirements... planning an energy-efficient home requires insane amounts of knowledge these days, and you need to plan energy-efficient because no one will buy a house without top notch efficiency.
I really wanted to be an electrician when I was growing up, but everybody in my life steered me toward the white-collar computer programming profession I've settled into. I do enjoy what I do, but I also wonder how things would have turned out if I had really pursued a career as an electrician.
If you want to fix the shortage of electricians (and trades in general), remove the gatekeepers and open up the profession. People aren't entering the field not because it is undesirable but because the process is too damn onerous for newcomers (by design).
You first have to do 6-12 months in a state-approved trade school (costs $15-20K on average in CA).
Then comes 4 years of apprenticeship. But good luck finding a licensed journeyman who is hiring or actually gives a shit. And if you're lucky, you will spend the entire time doing bitch work and get paid a whopping $12/hr. It also comes with requirements like bringing your own truck to the job. Want to join a union? Rejection rates for early career apprentices is >95%.
If you somehow make it through this you finally get a license and the honor of fixing people's light bulbs. Do this for a decade or two and gain experience and you'll be making like $80K/yr (https://faradaycareers.com/careers/electrician-salary).
Perhaps those barriers are higher than they should be but for something this critical it's a good thing there's process, training, and regulation. Safety and reliability are more important than speed.
Software engineering could probably use a few barriers. There's some exceedingly shitty software out there getting pumped out by people who hop in to make quick money and get hired by companies who don't care and just want to pay people less.
The world needs to catch up to how critical software is and course correct away from it becoming a race to the bottom.
The barriers have nothing to do with safety - they are a moat designed to keep competition out and wages high.
The moat worked a generation or two ago - you could make a good middle class living as a tradesperson. It doesn't work anymore, now we just have a shortage of tradespeople and nobody wants to jump through the hoops when there are easier ways to make higher wages.
As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. The NEC is fairly complex, and there are lots of gotchas and techniques that you really only learn by doing it for some time alongside someone experienced that can guide you. If it was your house, would you want the equivalent of a bootcamp electrician mucking around with minimal oversight? Sure, there are inspectors, but they can't be expected to catch 100% of the issues, and most people wouldn't want the job to take 3 times as long as the junior electrician is forced to redo huge amounts of work.
That said, there should be stricter requirements for offering apprenticeships. If the law requires it to work, anyone that has achieved that status should be mandated to take on X apprentices over their career.
> No shit smart people are studying coding instead.
Unless you are playing the long game. With the advance of AI… 20 years from now he’ll have a stable job in a severe Electrician shortage, while the Silicon Valley teams will have replaced themselves and be out jobs.
I think that is closer than SV wants to admit. Outsourcing is getting higher quality, economic downturns are already hitting SV with layoffs, low-code is getting better… and ChatGPT, doing programming in 20 years? Seems pretty dang certain to me.
All of the history of programming has been magnifying the value of programmers by automating more of programming.
Automation doesn't replace automators (it makes their work more abstract and productibe, but that just increases the application space and quantity of output consumed.)
Software engineers in this country are perpetually on the brink of extinction. 20 years ago people would discourage you from the career because all the jobs were going to India. 10 years ago there were supposedly too many CS graduates and there could never be enough demand to sustain them. Today everyone is convinced that the AI takeover is just around the corner. I'm not panicking just yet.
Remember, all it takes is a blockade, not even an invasion, of Taiwan and new computing projects are on indefinite hold. And we will start de-computerizing industries out of necessity. It could be that quick.
That's a fascinating perspective. Okay, so Taiwan is blockaded and we can't get any more computer chips for the near future. Then somehow we decomputerize industry? Why wouldn't we just start using older computers, of which there is a glut of them? (Just check ebay.) Also many industries, after seeing efficiency gains, are unable to decomputerize. What happens to them?
eBay creates the appearance of a glut. But if you actually count, it wouldn’t sustain more than a few days of sales, or even more than a few days of hardware failures. Especially when they get scalped.
Intel still makes most of its stuff in the US. TSMC is building two new fabs in Arizona, which AMD, Nvidia, and Apple all plan to contract with. They're also building one in Japan.
If China is going to squeeze the global semiconductor industry, they'd better do it soon.
Yes, I know. But if you look inside a computer, you’ll quickly realize there’s a lot more than an Intel CPU and Chipset making the computer work. Everything from networking NICs to audio. Not much of a computer when you don’t have the Taiwanese chips for Ethernet. Or when you find out your BIOS was stored in a ROM chip that’s unobtainable.
I doubt the new fabs will produce things only from the companies I listed. You're right that a blockade would cause shortages, but I'm skeptical that it would be as bad as you're suggesting. The only industry that I'm aware of that was "de-computerized" during the recent shortage was the auto industry, and even that was just manufacturers temporarily leaving certain features out of new vehicles.
No, the moment that happens, the computing projects are going into defense contracts. Like image recognition homing missiles, electronic warfare, intel gathering, logistics. We've all seen how the Russians were doing without it. Talking on the mobile phone got them killed.
A lot of high schools teach kids they must go to college. Kids feel like failures to consider the route of skilled trades. Many schools have removed the hands on classes that prep people to be comfortable working with tools and their hands. So, kids have less prep to go out there. There is a culture element to this.
> You first have to do 6-12 months in a state-approved trade school (costs $15-20K on average in CA).
This isn't everywhere. Many other states have a much simpler setup to get into trades. Sometimes there is a trade school (and sometimes the industry covers the cost). Sometimes you start a job and learn on the job. You take certification tests along the way. What you describe for CA isn't everywhere.
Everyone keeps saying this but it doesn't really make sense. People chase money, not social expectations. Heck open up OnlyFans for the perfect example of this. More and more schoolteachers (a historically respectable career) are becoming sex workers (a historically disreputable career) simply because it makes more economic sense.
Let's say we do somehow make trades popular and everyone goes to trade school instead of college. What then? Is there magically going to be more state funding for apprenticeship programs? Will there be better union representation? Will states make better laws around workplace injuries? Will wages somehow get higher? (Quite the opposite in fact if more people are entering the profession).
You have to fix all this first, and that in turn will lead to better public perception of the profession. It can't be the other way around.
Most college educated people do not make the salaries that software people do. So, we shouldn't expect that. Making better than the mean or median within the US should be noted.
High schoolers don't make decisions on economic realities for themselves. Many will make decisions on economic ideas that often don't match reality. Ideas they are taught through the school systems and that their parents by into as well.
I know many people in the trades. Many places in the US are not like CA. Some places it's much cheaper and easier.
A lot of people who go through college and get a lot of debt hate their job and only make a median level salary. They did it because they thought that's how you make it. Many would be much happier and make better money in the trades.
People chase net gains. Social standing and achievement, as well as personal satisfaction of say seeing a child learn a new skill, are gains even if not counted in dollars.
These are somewhat individual-dependent. Onlyfans has a pretty big personal cost to subtract if you're a family oriented individual from a highly religious community that dislikes nudity, and you value continued social standing in that community. If you're an orphan who for whatever reason has little personal connection to mainstream society, it probably will come at a lower personal cost to you to be seen as a sex worker. So with sex workers, you're probably gonna disproportionately see people with weaker affiliation to mainstream society and/or connection to conventional family members and values.
Greater social acceptance of sex workers is the worst possible thing that can happen to the open-minded schoolteacher and others already in the game as it gives the out-group a less-worse comparative cost. Greater acceptance means lower personal cost / barriers to be seen as a sex worker, so wages depress. Eventually if it's seen as no different than working at McDonald's your stuck competing with literally anyone either attractive or charismatic and it becomes more profitable to at least pick something with a higher barrier to entry like teaching.
It is for electricians. I come from a family of electricians working in many states, including the so-called "red" states. This is the process. It was designed to impede entry into the skilled trades. That may have been a good strategy in another era, but it's not a good strategy now.
It’s even worse than this in the UK. For the first year of your apprenticeship you get paid £4.81 per hour which works out at $5.78 an hour. Unless you’re living with parents who won’t charge you rent, the apprenticeship route is off limits unless you find a company that pay a proper wage. They do exist but competition for the places is extremely fierce.
The wage does go up in your second year to your age band’s minimum wage, so if you’re 23 you’ll get a whopping (/s) £9.50 an hour, but if you’re 18-20 you’re on £6.83 and if you’re still under 18 you’re stuck on the £4.81. Absolutely disgraceful.
We're used to not having electricians readily available. In our region, which is a popular vacation destination, electricians are almost entirely occupied with servicing giant vacation homes owned by the wealthy. They simply aren't interested in small jobs, and can't make a profit servicing the locals because real estate costs are astronomical (thanks vacation home owners).
Whenever I manage to actually get an electrician in our home, I make sure they get a lot done because I know it's rare and I probably won't get them back.
We end up hiring "up-and-comers", and "almost retired" guys - everyone in the middle is too busy.
I hear a lot of talk about older electricians but I believe we need a new generation to join and usher in the era of CAT cables for lighting. There is no reason to not be using CAT cables for lighting.
The modern economy is built such that it creates shortages of any worker type that comes into higher demand.
When we need fewer electricians, we fire electricians and stop training new ones. This is bad for the electricians, and also means that when we need more electricians, we don't have a pool of electricians available to meet the need, and we don't have a pool of people available to train new ones. In fact, people will still be hesitant to become electricians, knowing that once the demand is fulfilled, we'll start firing them again and they won't have a great way to make a living.
We need idle slack in the system, and we need some form of guaranteed income so we can maintain availability of skilled labor of all sorts.
The question to answer is why the wage of an individual electrician (or tradesperson) isn't rising. A 90th percentile electrician makes <100k, and that salary has increased by ~2% per annum for decades, but customers complain about paying $xxx/hr for electricians/tradespeople in major cities, electrical/trade SMB owners seem to make $xxxK/yr, and PE shops are running around buying and rolling up electrical/trade companies.
Some combination of culture and regulatory capture keep the supply depressed, but only exploitation keeps the resulting surplus from accruing to the people doing the actual work.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadPersonal interest and market will handle the rest. People will always go where the jobs are, and they will train themselves up if its something they believe they can do to improve their lives.
Pretend we're talking about someone on the low end of programming knowledge, the kind of tech worker who might be made obsolete by AI.
No way you're making $200k doing residential work, even in large cities. Definitely not if you aren't on your own.
If you limit yourself to simple work like replacing outlets, switches, and hardwired lamps, that's most of the likely electrical work for an existing house. Call a profesional for new circuits and maybe for replacing breakers; IMHO, it's a scary box, but the work is straight forward, so I'll replace breakers, but I would (and have) definitely call out for a breaker box replacement.
Just take a look at electrician forums or even Stack Exchange to see how seemingly simple things result in arguments.
For an example more relevant to the IT crowd here: Linus Tech Tips and pretty much all their videos concerning "upgrading" a house, car, boat, etc. are rife with regulatory violations, safety guideline violations, industry standard violations, and the kitchen sink.
So if you want to learn any of the trades, even just superficially for hobby/DIY purposes, find someone who really knows what they're doing and ask them to teach you.
If it's an interest you('re friend) has then why not take a couple evening classes to slowly get the foundational skills & ensure you have enough of savings to make that jump in the future if needed?
Fwiw, I live in the Bay Area and one of the best paid people I know is an electrician - he can pull in $1k a day on some jobs - so the upside is there too.
And yet, the HVAC and electrician industry remains understaffed. Maybe it's not such a great industry to work in?
One downside: they get pulled into more low voltage/systems work and they hate that part of the job as they wanted to get away from computers.
And some localities don’t consider low voltage to be electrical at all and you need no training/licensing.
Even then, the amount of credentialism is extremely high for anything besides the lowest rung of dev jobs. Look at how people on HN turn their noses up at bootcamps, or really anything less than a CS undergrad degree.
Biggest mistake I made was not going to school and buying into the “you don’t need a degree” stuff. While technically true, it feels extremely limiting when you want to venture outside that “lowest rung”.
And for a good reason.
Practical downsides: considerably lower pay right now compared to a job at FAANG, although certainly nothing to sneeze at. A profession regulated far more than necessary, similarly to many other blue collar fields - for example in California, you need 8,000 hours of apprenticeship to get a license. You are also technically required to deal with municipal bureaucracies and get sign-offs on almost every single thing you do, although most electricians follow these rules rather liberally, and there's a ton of unpermitted work in every older house.
You're less vulnerable to AI, but you sure are vulnerable to downturns in construction.
You serve at the pleasure of your clients. You're gonna be getting emergency calls at weird hours and you're gonna be spending a lot of time in your car.
It's physical labor - you're gonna be spending some time in crawl spaces or other uncomfortable positions, it's rough on your hands, etc.
Almost all jobs everywhere pay considerably less than FAANG.
I find it curious that HN so casually uses FAANG pay as the benchmark.
This is also a really weird point. If you work at FAANG, you are vulnerable to economic downturns. Just look at how so many tech companies have decimated their workforce.
This is just not the case if you're an electrician and construction is drying up.
And even more mysteriously, treat working at FAANG as a de-facto career goal.
On that board, it was honestly seen a failure if a person did not get into one of the Big 4 IBs or PE funds. It was like entering a twilight zone, no one could lower themselves into accepting anything less than working at one of 6 companies on the entire earth.
The trades are going to have to start paying more and reducing regulation.
This can be mitigated of course, just like how a desk worker can mitigate the risks of sitting for so many hours a day, but it may be harder to mitigate for a trades job.
Don't confuse owning a business that hires its electricians to customers with actually being an electrician. The former is very lucrative, the latter much less so. It takes many brutal years to get from the latter to the former.
[1] As opposed to QA, customer service, etc, which are more comparable hence the "tech worker" caveat
Do you have a source for this? How much of that derives from tech workers generally living in high COL areas and needing higher salaries, while electricians are distributed throughout the land at all COL?
I have no doubt that high-earning engineers outearn high-earning electricians, but the assumption about this disparity seems suspect to me, without a source to back it up.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472111.htm
[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm
In Indiana, seems 75th percentile electricians earn about the same as 25th percentile software engineers. In Nebraska, it's 90th electricians and ~35th software engineers. A lot to take into consideration, and a wider gap then I expected in non-tech hubs.
The same informal research suggests a pretty consistent 60K or so for journeyman electricians. The range is tighter because skilled trade wages are subject to more regulation. Based on my knowledge of the Oregon & Washington prevaling wage rates (my wife works in accounting and has several small business electricians as customers), 60K does sound about right. Though as an hourly worker, it is not uncommon for them to sign up for more hours to push their yearly compensation above 100K.
There's also a relevant bias. The BLS does not adjust their wage percentiles to local cost of living/taxes. Software development jobs tend to be concentrated in high cost, high tax, high wage regions. By contrast tradesmen the demand for tradesmen is the same (per capita) just about everywhere. This bias makes the numbers difficult to compare. Suffice to say trades earn more in real terms, and software engineers earn less in real terms.
Electrician - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472111.htm
Software Developer - https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm
How do you feel about standing on ladders and pulling wires with your hands for 8 hours a day? How about when it's -10F outside? (may not matter depending on where you live).
I think it has both pros and cons over software dev. For sure the success metric is clear (thing works and passes code and inspection? it's done). Vs the fuzzy software dev requirements. But it also can be a lot more physical.
As for electrician: universal demand, get paid to learn, and a really interesting skill on top of it all? I mean even if it doesn't end up being somebody's final career, it just sounds like a really interesting idea.
Unless you're contracted on commercial projects, that's a large part of the job.
It’s a good gig.
bing > consider joining a union or a professional group that can offer you guidance and support during your apprenticeship journey. Some examples are International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC), and Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC)
Anyway cant you(r friend) work both angles until something takes off? Apply to some unions / apprenticeships and dev jobs? Let the universe decide?
Personally I think its a great idea. I wish I'd thought of it during my last job search.
He pushed me into college when I worked with him as a youth. He straight up told me, "be an engineer, those guys make twice what I do for half the work."
Also, an often ignored fact of trades is that recessions hit them hard. My dad had nearly no work for all of 2009 and the company he worked for nearly went bankrupt.
Do you like dealing directly with customers? Customers who have unreasonable expectations of your trade? Other construction workers? Do you like working with your hands, at the cost of your long-term health? Do you like making a lot less money?
If so, yeah, it's a great option.
My first question would be -- how old are you? Skilled labor is still labor, and it is fairly normal for middle aged electricians, plumbers, etc, to have significant chronic injuries. A smart electrician, HVAC guy, plumber, etc, is moving into supervision or business management at that point and hiring new young technicians to do the physically hard work.
> tech worker who might be made obsolete by AI
My advice would be to level up and become an software engineer instead of a coder. Even then, I don't think coders are in any danger of being explicitly replaced by LLMs. Regurgitating plausible code, which sometimes even works, is useful but still definitely requires a human to decide how to leverage it. If you're not interested in software engineering (by that I mean all the non-coding parts, which really start to dominate the higher you go), and I can totally understand that, then maybe change your title to Prompt Engineer :).
As someone who hires people (and having graduated as engineer), it is already extremely difficult to hire people who have an "engineering mindset", who know how things work deeply and would be able to make new stuff from scratch if needed. For "coders", who only know how to put a few libraries together and are allergic to novel stuff, I got stacks and stacks of resumés. Yeah, those will get replaced.
Electricians have no such qualms.
The only question then is just how common are those kinds of salaries amongst readers here. I'll bet the distribution would be surprising. The only public forum I could see as having a higher percentage is Blind.
I do take issue with calling me a "temporary embarrassed millionaire" though. Because that refers to a certain mindset where people will vote for politicians who try to take away social welfare programs, and believe that poor people are lazy and unintelligent (despite being poor themselves). Simply wanting to be a millionaire isn't enough, and I'll fully admit to wanting to be a millionaire - who doesn't buy a lottery ticket every once in a while? Or, say, I don't know, spend a bunch of time writing out the math for becoming a millionaire, or what $10m in the bank means.
My comment didn't get into my politics. I don't believe we should get rid of social welfare programs, and I vote accordingly. And to be crystal clear, I don't believe poor people are lazy or unintelligent. In fact, I think lot of poor people work harder - longer hours, for shittier pay, in order to make rent, car payments, and buy food - than the rich, who don't even have to get out of bed or go to a job to get all three of those things.
I live frugally, drive a older car that I fully own, and aren't afraid to admit that I want financial independence and to retire early (FIRE). I still don't want to run the government like a business or get rid of welfare or EBT though. Whether or not I'll make it is another question entirely, but wanting to be a millionaire and hating poor people don't necessarily go hand in hand.
For fun, lets dig into the reality of having $10M in the bank. If you have 10M in the bank, with a 4% APY, which even 1-month t-bills are returning more right now, you'd make $23,802/month, without lifting a finger or getting out of bed. By January 19th, you've made more than the federal poverty level for the year ($14,580). By February 9th, you've already made more than the US median income for the whole year ($31,133). (Last one, I promise.) May 9th is the day that your passive income on $10M will exceed a blue collar's median wage for Wyoming, which is where it's the highest ($56,345; ziprecruiter.com). And there are still 7 more months in the year to go!
So I dare say with $10M in the bank, you would never have to work another day in your life, which, imo, would put you far closer to ruling/owning class than the median blue collar worker, who has a job that they really have to go to and put work into, that pays < $30/hr, probably not consistently (slow months are hell on people's savings), from which they have to make rent, pay car fees, and feed themselves from.
With $10M not-in-the-bank, you could definitely buy and own a small business or two, angel invest in companies, move to a low CoL area and own a bunch of real estate and several cars, and still have money left over to live off the income. I don't see how that's remotely close to the life of a blue collar worker, even if you don't want to call them part of the ruling/owning class. Personally, that sounds pretty ruling/owing class to me though.
These types of jobs require a long-term commitment that doesn't exist in other fields. If you go through the work to become an electrician, that's probably going to be what you do. You also need to moderately intelligent to do electrician work, and its hard on your body.
My personal opinion is that a lot of people with the aptitude for the trades look at white collar work, see that its easier on your body and has more career flexibility and choose the obvious choice.
I looked into a carpentry program when I was younger and went and got my Masters instead because I do semi-dangerous hobbies like skiing. If I break my leg skiing and I do carpentry, i don't work or make money. If I break my leg in my current career, I'd probably just take my computer upstairs.
If you consider that charging a couple vehicles while running electric AC/heat and using your 30A induction stove isn't even possible on millions of properties, you begin to see some of the issues. Consider it costs many thousands to upgrade a house and we have a problem. The biggest problem being just who is going to upgrade these homes.
And even if you can there's a greta chance they don't have space in their panel or that they will need a special circuit added to support things. This needs an electrician and costs significant money.
Solvable problem, but people who just say "make it all electric" don't even consider this.
My induction stove is never ever going to run at 11pm.
Your heat pump and AC are what, 30 amps?
So it's ok if it kicks on at 11.
I highly doubt a 100A system would pass code in the type of configuration you're suggesting. "Trust me, I'll run everything right" isn't good enough. I'd be shocked your 100A panel even has any space left for a new 30A+ circuit.
I don't understand where you are getting this multiple AC unit thing.
My house is 4,700 square feet above grade (2000 more below grade), and I have a single AC. Now it is the absolute biggest, baddest, mode insane residential AC unit my HVAC place makes (5 ton seer 27 I believe).. but it is a single unit. I think I know a single person who has 2 AC units, and their house is a bit smaller than mine (maybe 4500 square feet). If my house were built today it would have 2 ACs.. but again, I am very much on the extreme end of size. And this entire thing is on I believe a 40 amp circuit.
These types of homes often have 100A service and running 3t + 2t already stress it.
People also do it for efficiency reasons. Running hot/cold air long distances is a good way to waste money.
It’s also better design to have multiple units and therefore multiple zones. Why are you cooling your bedrooms all day and your living room all night? Installing multiple units is better design but cheap builders just try and keep prices/quotes low to customers that don’t understand it.
I don't think EV charging is a huge deal for many. 20-30A / 240 will usually charge you overnight. You can run it after you are done with the induction stove. I think 100A service can still work for quite a while. Heat pumps are maybe the most iffy thing.
So you have a couple of these units running at 30/40/50A each and a couple cars plugged in, possibly one of them needs super charging so it's using 50A and someone has 3 induction burners going and the electric dryer is running while your teenager blow dries their hair. Not to mention all the passive things likke the fridge/freezer, lights, charging devices, etc.
Point being, at any given time there's a combination of things that could need power and you have to be able to support that.
Edit - Also make sure you understand the difference between 120 and 240V circuits. Not entirely clear you do.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1999/03/art2full.pdf
The definition they settled on is "when the number of workers available (the supply) increases less rapidly than the number demanded at the salaries paid in the recent past".
According to this graph:
https://www.careerwatch.co/blog/electrician
Wages have gone up about 1.9% over the last 20 years which is just under inflation. That leads me to believe that there may not be a severe shortage. Are they just talking about this year? In which case I think every industry has claimed a shortage.
If we want more electricians we need to embrace skilled trades as a positive path.
Some details for the US are at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electric.... Note, the average income is higher than the average income per person in the US.
If so, are they so poorly structured that they discourage applicants?
For example: in the last years people have been pushed into college by being bombarded by messages of "you'll die poor if you don't". Wages are another.
There is some change for that now where some schools are starting to go the other way. But, these are in the minority.
It's a culture thing.
I know a number of younger people who had the impression it was better to toil in a low wage job (like a sandwich shop) and pine for a college degree than to choose a skilled trades career path. To them choosing skilled trades felt like failure. This is the culture they were raised in.
And usually, the classes are full, and they have to turn away many qualified applicants. While they talk about how desperately they need new people in the career.
The recurring points I remember were, "then why aren't wages rising to meet this demand"; and "you will feel more benefit from the electrification boom if you're IBEW."
OK, found the link: https://old.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/11efewl/ameri...
There are lots of companies out there that pay low wages compared to others. And they do a lot to make their people feel like they only deserve that amount. Happens across so many fields. I'm sure it happens for electricians and other skilled trades.
But I don’t know how successful they are or whether they are actually making a big impact.
Also, technology has evolved in lots of trades making work a lot easier than it used to be: Wago connectors and a variety of push-fittings for electricians, PEX for plumbers and so on.
In Germany, you need a Meister (=Master) title (not the academic degree) to start your own electrician business. Usually, after the apprenticeship which is 3.5 years you need at least another 3 years... so Germany has even stricter requirements.
> Also, technology has evolved in lots of trades making work a lot easier than it used to be: Wago connectors and a variety of push-fittings for electricians, PEX for plumbers and so on.
Technology maybe, but it has also become way more complex. Smart lights, smart HVAC systems, smart plumbing, energy savings requirements... planning an energy-efficient home requires insane amounts of knowledge these days, and you need to plan energy-efficient because no one will buy a house without top notch efficiency.
You first have to do 6-12 months in a state-approved trade school (costs $15-20K on average in CA).
Then comes 4 years of apprenticeship. But good luck finding a licensed journeyman who is hiring or actually gives a shit. And if you're lucky, you will spend the entire time doing bitch work and get paid a whopping $12/hr. It also comes with requirements like bringing your own truck to the job. Want to join a union? Rejection rates for early career apprentices is >95%.
If you somehow make it through this you finally get a license and the honor of fixing people's light bulbs. Do this for a decade or two and gain experience and you'll be making like $80K/yr (https://faradaycareers.com/careers/electrician-salary).
No shit smart people are studying coding instead.
Software engineering could probably use a few barriers. There's some exceedingly shitty software out there getting pumped out by people who hop in to make quick money and get hired by companies who don't care and just want to pay people less.
The world needs to catch up to how critical software is and course correct away from it becoming a race to the bottom.
The moat worked a generation or two ago - you could make a good middle class living as a tradesperson. It doesn't work anymore, now we just have a shortage of tradespeople and nobody wants to jump through the hoops when there are easier ways to make higher wages.
That said, there should be stricter requirements for offering apprenticeships. If the law requires it to work, anyone that has achieved that status should be mandated to take on X apprentices over their career.
Unless you are playing the long game. With the advance of AI… 20 years from now he’ll have a stable job in a severe Electrician shortage, while the Silicon Valley teams will have replaced themselves and be out jobs.
I think that is closer than SV wants to admit. Outsourcing is getting higher quality, economic downturns are already hitting SV with layoffs, low-code is getting better… and ChatGPT, doing programming in 20 years? Seems pretty dang certain to me.
Automation doesn't replace automators (it makes their work more abstract and productibe, but that just increases the application space and quantity of output consumed.)
If China is going to squeeze the global semiconductor industry, they'd better do it soon.
Yup, just like FSD AI replaced truck and taxi drivers five years ago. Everyone now has a truck driver shortage.
A lot of high schools teach kids they must go to college. Kids feel like failures to consider the route of skilled trades. Many schools have removed the hands on classes that prep people to be comfortable working with tools and their hands. So, kids have less prep to go out there. There is a culture element to this.
> You first have to do 6-12 months in a state-approved trade school (costs $15-20K on average in CA).
This isn't everywhere. Many other states have a much simpler setup to get into trades. Sometimes there is a trade school (and sometimes the industry covers the cost). Sometimes you start a job and learn on the job. You take certification tests along the way. What you describe for CA isn't everywhere.
Let's say we do somehow make trades popular and everyone goes to trade school instead of college. What then? Is there magically going to be more state funding for apprenticeship programs? Will there be better union representation? Will states make better laws around workplace injuries? Will wages somehow get higher? (Quite the opposite in fact if more people are entering the profession).
You have to fix all this first, and that in turn will lead to better public perception of the profession. It can't be the other way around.
High schoolers don't make decisions on economic realities for themselves. Many will make decisions on economic ideas that often don't match reality. Ideas they are taught through the school systems and that their parents by into as well.
I know many people in the trades. Many places in the US are not like CA. Some places it's much cheaper and easier.
A lot of people who go through college and get a lot of debt hate their job and only make a median level salary. They did it because they thought that's how you make it. Many would be much happier and make better money in the trades.
These are somewhat individual-dependent. Onlyfans has a pretty big personal cost to subtract if you're a family oriented individual from a highly religious community that dislikes nudity, and you value continued social standing in that community. If you're an orphan who for whatever reason has little personal connection to mainstream society, it probably will come at a lower personal cost to you to be seen as a sex worker. So with sex workers, you're probably gonna disproportionately see people with weaker affiliation to mainstream society and/or connection to conventional family members and values.
Greater social acceptance of sex workers is the worst possible thing that can happen to the open-minded schoolteacher and others already in the game as it gives the out-group a less-worse comparative cost. Greater acceptance means lower personal cost / barriers to be seen as a sex worker, so wages depress. Eventually if it's seen as no different than working at McDonald's your stuck competing with literally anyone either attractive or charismatic and it becomes more profitable to at least pick something with a higher barrier to entry like teaching.
It is for electricians. I come from a family of electricians working in many states, including the so-called "red" states. This is the process. It was designed to impede entry into the skilled trades. That may have been a good strategy in another era, but it's not a good strategy now.
It's hard to come anywhere close to software money as a licensed EE designing the electrical things, let alone as the one building them.
Hey, that's good evidence that the supply isn't actually very constrained. (But yeah, apprenticeship terms are bullshit.)
It’s even worse than this in the UK. For the first year of your apprenticeship you get paid £4.81 per hour which works out at $5.78 an hour. Unless you’re living with parents who won’t charge you rent, the apprenticeship route is off limits unless you find a company that pay a proper wage. They do exist but competition for the places is extremely fierce.
The wage does go up in your second year to your age band’s minimum wage, so if you’re 23 you’ll get a whopping (/s) £9.50 an hour, but if you’re 18-20 you’re on £6.83 and if you’re still under 18 you’re stuck on the £4.81. Absolutely disgraceful.
Whenever I manage to actually get an electrician in our home, I make sure they get a lot done because I know it's rare and I probably won't get them back.
We end up hiring "up-and-comers", and "almost retired" guys - everyone in the middle is too busy.
When we need fewer electricians, we fire electricians and stop training new ones. This is bad for the electricians, and also means that when we need more electricians, we don't have a pool of electricians available to meet the need, and we don't have a pool of people available to train new ones. In fact, people will still be hesitant to become electricians, knowing that once the demand is fulfilled, we'll start firing them again and they won't have a great way to make a living.
We need idle slack in the system, and we need some form of guaranteed income so we can maintain availability of skilled labor of all sorts.
Some combination of culture and regulatory capture keep the supply depressed, but only exploitation keeps the resulting surplus from accruing to the people doing the actual work.