As someone who has built lots of things professionally (houses, cabinets, lots of handyman stuff) and as a hobby (boats, 3D printers, working on a little saw mill), I second his opinion about the more blue collar trades. It would be nice to see a little more real world creation (fixing, building, etc.)
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.
It's a bit trite, but: Is it a shortage of labor, or is it a shortage of pay for labor?
I realize that other issues can come into play like barriers of accreditation, people not realizing demand exists, lack of funds to pursue education to supply the demand, or a perception that the whole career-direction is a "bad bet", etc... Yet once you've seen somebody say "labor shortage" to describe a situation where the pay is terrible, it's hard to un-see it as a kind of sneaky blame-shifting tactic.
Ex: "I can't find anyone willing to sell me a new car for $1,000! Clearly America is gripped by a devastating car shortage. Manufacturers must step up production, and the government can help fix this crisis by giving car-purchasers like myself a tax break."
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.
Bear in mind that Tool & Die makers are pretty much the top caliber of machinists and there are relatively few of them, so wages will naturally be higher. In many parts of the country, machinists report that they struggle to find jobs paying more than about $20/hour.
"In May 2023, the median annual wages for machinists in the top industries in which they worked were as follows:"
I.e. we're only looking at the top paying jobs. Then, look at that we're taking a yearly pay to calculate an hourly rate. Fifty hour weeks are more the norm.
Like becoming an auto mechanic, one must become a specialized machinist to make significant money. For example, my dad was an electrical + A/C mechanic to whom dealers contracted work. It follows then one should become a independent contractor in nuclear, mining, or aerospace machining to make significant money.
I am torn on that argument we see a rather high drop in quality of almost everything. It seems that corps go for lowering the quality of their products which they can produce with less skilled labor. The opposite is true for luxury goods were the skilled labor is still in high demand.
I'm doubtful outsourcing + shipping will be more expensive than raising wages + shipping - because tooling and automotive/aerospace parts are used further away than the machine shop door, shipping is a cost regardless. Sure, shipping is further from Uzbekistan than Connecticut, but seafreight is cheap as hell, and most factory lines are relatively stable.
Unless America is going to push business "leaders" to bring jobs home through tax and finance structures, I wouldn't count on pay going up. You cannot count on Mac or similar to bring jobs home to virtue signal - American capitalism generally means if you aren't cheaper or noticably better, you'll be fed to the wolves.
There is a HUGE shortage of workers who can operate tools requiring CNC expertise. It's an extremely high-stakes quantitative exercise in many cases and the cost of error can be equivalent to e.g. a SaaS outage.
CT has a robust technical educational system, a relic of the heyday of Colt, Pratt & Whitney, and UTC, now Raytheon. One of the best states for it, glad to see it getting some attention here.
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.
This is correct. The only shortage is the amount they're willing to pay machinists. I was just looking at these jobs online, and haven't seen one pay anywhere near $85k. If they were so desperate, the wages should be going up to try to attract people.
Most of these jobs have to deal with unions. So almost anything advertised to the general public is going to be for training heavy entry level jobs. Very few will move up the rank and those that do will have to do so through the union.
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.
knowing that not all JDs pass the bar, and in fact the pass rates can be quite low, what do you think is the career path for a JD who is unable to pass the bar?
I’m not even sure standard of living was remotely comparable to today on most metrics from interest rates to quality of life (especially for minority groups.) Sure cpi is up for specific categories, but cpi has spiked 2 - 3x today’s rates in recent history. So I’m curious what metric and source you have for this claim too.
Not meaning to discredit what you say, I am genuinely curious about any analysis you have!
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.
Australia has the "Cult of the Tradies" (builders/plumbers etc).
The starting salary of a qualified builder is AUD 125,000 (USD 83,000) and most earn much higher than that. If working in mining even non-skilled labourers are earning more than AUD 150,000 (FIFO).
Builders are charging AUD 1000 per day per person.
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.
26 comments
[ 28.9 ms ] story [ 1491 ms ] threadWe 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.
It's a bit trite, but: Is it a shortage of labor, or is it a shortage of pay for labor?
I realize that other issues can come into play like barriers of accreditation, people not realizing demand exists, lack of funds to pursue education to supply the demand, or a perception that the whole career-direction is a "bad bet", etc... Yet once you've seen somebody say "labor shortage" to describe a situation where the pay is terrible, it's hard to un-see it as a kind of sneaky blame-shifting tactic.
Ex: "I can't find anyone willing to sell me a new car for $1,000! Clearly America is gripped by a devastating car shortage. Manufacturers must step up production, and the government can help fix this crisis by giving car-purchasers like myself a tax break."
> Machinists and Tool and Die Makers
> 2023 Median Pay: $53,180/yr, $25.57/hr
Just in case geography matters, since TFA mentions Connecticut, dug down a little further by geography. Note the transition from median to mean here:
> 51-4111 Tool and Die Makers
> Mean wage: $71,360/yr, $34.31/hr,
> 51-4041 Machinists
> Mean wage: $60,290/yr, $28.98/hr
[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/machinists-and-tool-and-d...
I.e. we're only looking at the top paying jobs. Then, look at that we're taking a yearly pay to calculate an hourly rate. Fifty hour weeks are more the norm.
When there is a genuine shortage of labor, salaries rise to correct it.
Unless America is going to push business "leaders" to bring jobs home through tax and finance structures, I wouldn't count on pay going up. You cannot count on Mac or similar to bring jobs home to virtue signal - American capitalism generally means if you aren't cheaper or noticably better, you'll be fed to the wolves.
CT has a robust technical educational system, a relic of the heyday of Colt, Pratt & Whitney, and UTC, now Raytheon. One of the best states for it, glad to see it getting some attention here.
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.
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.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/612519/average-annual-re...
I’m not even sure standard of living was remotely comparable to today on most metrics from interest rates to quality of life (especially for minority groups.) Sure cpi is up for specific categories, but cpi has spiked 2 - 3x today’s rates in recent history. So I’m curious what metric and source you have for this claim too.
Not meaning to discredit what you say, I am genuinely curious about any analysis you have!
By comparison, Harvard and Columbia grads had the same median starting salary last year, $215k.
The starting salary of a qualified builder is AUD 125,000 (USD 83,000) and most earn much higher than that. If working in mining even non-skilled labourers are earning more than AUD 150,000 (FIFO).
Builders are charging AUD 1000 per day per person.
In NZ you have to own the business to make decent money in most trades.