re: WSJ: The High-School Juniors With $70,000-a-Year Job Offers

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Same with a lot of white collar jobs. Work-life balance blows for a lot of them.

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Traveling to big cities and decent hotels isnt the same.

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There are plenty of trade jobs, like equipment techs, that are on the road but hardly leave their dealer territory. You can make a good living doing that.

Again, its not for everyone but as a society we are entirely too snobby towards these people until we need them.

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Theyre not paid enough, and there isnt any growth from there. Thats why no one does it.

The big money is in finance, law, and tech. Absolutely no one is going into big money from the trades unless theyve built their own business and thats rare.

As stated, the culture of the people in these positons and adjacent to these positions is unappealing and difficult to fit into.

Almost NO ONE that advocates for the trades here went into it themselves or sent their own kids into it....

I am the fifth generation of my family to complete the IBEW Apprenticeship Program in Atlanta. I have been in and around the building trades all my life and I have made a living either in the trades or trade adjacent since 1983 so going on 41 years. Every friend that I have save one is a building tradesman similar in age to me....50-80. Some retired, some still working in the trade, most, like me, working trade "adjacent" because we are all over 50 and 95% of us can not physically do the work at a pace that would keep us employed. This happens to almost ALL trades people somewhere around 25-30 years before they reach full retirement age. The only hope is you have enough brains to branch out or you can qualify for disability. This is a fact of life for most human beings. Even with technology the trades are physically demanding and employers expect a very high level of physical ability....if you can't roller skate on a job you will find yourself at the hall waiting on a call. Most people can't roller skate past 45 or so, certainly not like they could at 25.

I know at least a couple of thousand building tradesman from around the country. Almost all of them have spent a good bit of their career away from their families. Many are divorced because of it. Just a simply fact of life for tradesmen. Many have serious alcohol and drug problems because of the stress of marital problems, long term unemployment....that's another facet of the building trades, most people average about 9 months a year for a career of employment. Again, just simple facts of life that no one tells anyone when they are trying to recruit young people into the trades. Many of them have severe physical problems from injuries at work and being exposed to harsh chemicals and environments....again, simply a fact of life. Of ALL the tradesman I know most of them have kids. Almost none of them encouraged their kids to go into the trade and in fact just the opposite is true....they are very disappointed when their child does go into the trade because they know first hand what earning a living is like in the building trades.

I have a son and a daughter. I have actively discouraged both from thinking about going into the trades, even telling them, jokingly, that they had a policy where the 5th generation was the last one admitted. It is not a great way to earn a living. It is simply a way to earn a living. Most of the people encouraging young people to go into a trade have never come close to being on a pan slab in January 20 stories in the air at 10 degrees and 25 mile an hour winds blowing. Until you have done that 3 days in a row you ain't got a fricking clue what working in the building trades is like....

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I know what I pay every time we have to call a plumber, electrician, and hvac company at our healthcare facility. If I could go back I would strongly consider any of these trades

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and you think that 100% of that goes to the tech and is 100% profit?

One of our friends has a kid that went this route. Eagle Scout, amazing kid, chose welding. Graduated, went to trade school for a few months and already employed.

I think it's a great skill to have, one of my kids asked for a welder a few years ago and that's the kind of gift I love to give. He got a little wire welder and a plasma cutter.

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White men graduating from college are openly discriminated against more than any other socioeconomic group when trying to apply for work, and it's not close.

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lol

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I would have been *much* better off going to the trades for four years and owning my own business. It's not even close.

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LOTS of assumptions here

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Mike Rowes

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Mike Rowes is EXACTLY the wrong person to be touting the trades as an option to college. Rowe is the child of 2 public school teachers, both college educated. He is college educated. He has NEVER worked a day in any trade. Not a single hour.....certainly never a 40 hour week. Never, not once. Being on a jobsite while someone else does the shitty work is not the same as doing it yourself. Doing the shitty work for 5 minutes of film is not the same as doing it for 40 hours a week for 47 fricking years. If anyone needs to know why the trades push is suspect all they have to do is look at the main spokesperson....he was too good for the trades but your son or daughter? Not so much.....frick Mike Rowe and the mule he rode in on....

Once you get your ticket, you can go anywhere. There’s jobs and shortages.

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Is this a common sentiment of tradesmen about Rowe?

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I think it's common in most fields, it's kind of like "if the public knew what we know about this clown they wouldn't listen for two seconds"

So because I see that different trades are incredibly useful and profitable I am a good fit for a trade?

Thanks for the complement baw

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Theyre not paid enough, and there isnt any growth from there. Thats why no one does it.

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This. I turned out (graduated) the IBEW apprenticeship program in 1984 and was making just under $21 an hour plus benefits. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $64 an hour in March of 2025. If I were working with my tools in Atlanta right now I would be earning $39 an hour. That is about 45% of what I was making in 1984.

In 1984 we had time and half for every hour worked over 8 daily and any hour worked on Saturday and double time for any hour worked on Sunday or a holiday. They now have time and half for anything over 40 regardless of the day of the week or if its a holiday. The benefits that we had in 1984 were miserly compared to what my dad had in the 1960s and 70s but they were far better then than they are today. The fact is that the trades simply do not pay enough to make it interesting to many young people beside those who have little or no ambition in life. It is a simple fact of life.