Guess what!
There’s a whole generation of old men about to pass away, most of them tradesmen. And in my experience, crotchety and unwilling to teach.Because this generation generally has less interest in trades, likely from being viewed down upon (see above), there is going to be a severe shortage of people working in the trades.
This will possibly mean two things:
Companies are going to scramble desperately to get new apprentices, so -good news- more jobs. But, expect a startling lack of quality in the years to come.There’s a startling lack of quality a lot of the time now, it’s gonna get hella bad when the trades-boomers go.
True enough. I can only hear “NoBoDy WaNtS tO WoRk AnYmOrE” so many times before i figure who’s to blame for that
Exactly. Nobody wants to work for unliveable wages. It’s a wage shortage, not a labour shortage.
Or, after being tired of being lowballed for work and offers to be paid in exposure, “fuck you, pay me.”
A local (and very well off) welding company wanted me to pay for my own courses and equipment when I applied. It would have been hundreds of dollars out of my pocket, for MAYBE a chance to be taken on as an apprentice, if I withstand being the shop bítch for long enough.
PART TIME.yea,
FUCK OFF
Those “small business” owners:
“Buying my third luxury car is so expensive, why are prices going up? Must be the government”
Unreal. What do they expect you to live off?
This is so crazy to me. I got into a low voltage trade and everything was paid for. I brought minor hand tools, but everything over 100$ was provided. And that is like standard around me (for new guys). Also amazing wages once you’re a well experienced worker. (Talking 5 years or so).
Maybe not welding, or electrician, but pipefitters, plumberd, fire guys, all great trades.
What kind of work is that if I were to go looking? I really enjoyed control wiring for HVAC systems, didn’t enjoy lugging boilers up flights of stairs or brazing compressors in place in Manhattan with 1/2sqft of space to work in…
My work specifically i very company dependant, but data wire, access control, fire, cameras, all the fun “low voltage” stuff. Normally you’ll find Access, Security, and Cameras bundled. Sometimes with Fire, sometimes Data. All depends on who ya look for!
The school I went to, you were basically sold to the employer LOL. They paid for your school when they hired you. You just had to agree to work there for a couple of years.
What trade? I’ve heard of that happening to auto techs
That’s the one
lost Italian?
uh
Sorry, it’s just that in Italy it’s the exact, same thing
Most trade jobs don’t pay enough. As an auto tech The offerings are not good, because most dealers keep most of the profits. Nurses are getting screwed left and right too. I tried switching over to being a truck driver and they actually pay less now than they used to, this is after the supposed shortage and I was out 14hrs a day.
??? How can they have a shortage of workers, but try to justify paying people less???
I swear to fucking god, the mental gymnastics these fuckers do is phenomenal
I’m a former auto tech who got into sales, after seeing my complete moron coworkers who knew nothing about their jobs and wrote bad checks that I was supposed to cash, making twice as much money as me.
Or in my case: “cool no one wants to pay me, I guess I’m taking the $1000 out of savings and starting my own businesses.” It’s way more stress, but I’m making enough money that I can think about buying a house and retiring before I die.
Waiting for Lemmy anti-capitalists in 3… 2…
Skill shortage probably comes the same way as bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly. We are probably in the slowly running out of tradesmen phase of the craftocalypse.
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One of them grew and sold weed all his life and now he’s out of business because of legalization.
DEY TERK ER JERBS!
Things are built to spec. Everybody wants that 4500sf house but most people don’t know what quality looks like. When I was house shopping, the new construction homes homes already made me very disappointed and leary. I eventually bought an older home with a Stablok panel and felt better about that. 😂 Swapped the panel out after close, I’m not nuts.
I eventually bought an older home with a Stablok panel and felt better about that.
My house had a Bulldog panel with the original 1960s inspection sticker still attached to it. Swapped it for a modern 200 amp panel when I had my solar panels installed.
It’s hard to buy a new house in my area… They’re so expensive, and the quality just isn’t there.
Leery is a synonym of wary. Leary is an angry man named Dennis that we thought was funny for a year or two.
Also a tenured Harvard psychologist turned spiritual guru through drug experimentation.
RIP Timothy Leary.
And apart from that, he’ll be so kind, and consenting to blow your mind
I doubled up on homes too. \o/
I’m 42 now and I left the trades a year ago after getting the life beat out of me for most of my life. It’s not that no one wants to do the work, it’s that no one wants to pay for a good tradesperson. When I left my last job they were only hiring techs for $16-$20 and hour. That was with HVAC certification. It’s laughable.
Matter of fact, the company I worked for withheld raises from one of their teams for 3 years and they pikachu faced when they all left. Literally the best tech team in the company too. (This team had over 100 years of total experience in the trades. Plumbing, electrical, you name it. They’ve done it.)
Not to mention like 99% of the companies require you to own your own tools and will not replace/repair anything that breaks while working for their company. Got a nice new impact and it broke doing a job? That $200 is coming out of your pocket. Always.
Fucking, also, all the jobs that require being on call. Got a family? Fuck you, go fix shit at 2am and then make sure you show up to work on time at 6am with no sleep. Work 10-12 hours, go home, get called the next night too.
A-fucking-men… That’s why I backed out too. Nothing worse than the 2am call, or JUST pulling into your driveway just to get a call and have to go back out for god knows how long.
Yes yes “money.” A little bit sure, but not enough to be ok with a company literally owning all of my potential time.
I thought most tradesmen were independent contractors. Doesn’t that mean that you don’t have to put up with shit like that? That’s what it means in IT…
Nah, you can work for companies and be a W2 employee. There’s a lot of both. I’d say a majority of the ones I’ve met work for a company so insurance is easier. They don’t have to be bonded and insured on their dime because the company does all that.
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Whew, my poor cousin worked for CN Rail a while ago. Absolute worst, most inconvenient on-call hours you could imagine.
On-call jobs can go to hell.
As someone who spent the last 5 years in trades, and is now going to retraining: nobody is willing to pay enough for you to destroy your body by the time you’re 50.
Tried getting into tiling/flooring, could feel it absolutely destroying my knees. Got out of that pretty quick. Totally not worth it.
AND, another instance of my hoping to be taken on as an Apprentice, only for the guy to be a complete prick and take me for a ride. What a waste of my time and energy and physical well being
Yeah apprenticing sucks. All the old guys seem to think apprentices are just floor sweepers and aren’t there to learn. And they all like to brag about what slow learners they are. “It took me twenty years to learn this!” So they refuse to teach you because when you learn faster than them it makes them feel stupid.
So glad I don’t work with anyone like that anymore.
“It took me twenty years to learn this!”
Shuuuuut the fuck up old man, you grew up in an era where the government was practically THROWING homes, cars, jobs and land at you. Now you’re pissy that a younger generation is just wanting to be treated fairly in a world that’s become increasingly hostile and greedy. Get your head out of your geriatric ass.
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Practical experience go a long way though, there’s some things you just don’t learn unless you’re exposed to it.
That being said, the fact that the people who are seemingly obligated to teach these kinds of things don’t want to bother with thatdeleted by creator
Germans have a word for it. Fachkräftemangel
I am seeing 3 words there Fach Kraft Mangel… Germans disapprove of Kraft making manual laundry wringing mechanisms?
I only know what a mangel is called because of a Steven King short story
I didn’t know that meaning of Mangel. In this case it’s just shortage and Fachkraft would be translated to professional.
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No one looks down upon them. They’re just crappy jobs that take a toll on your body and health over time.
- A former tradesman
They try to make it so appealing though, “Oh if you get your Red Seal, you can work anywhere I Canada.”
Great, I can be underpaid in ANY province I want.
Southpark’s latest special covers this.
Nobody knows how to do shit anymore!
I don’t understand why people pick on tradesman as if they’re somehow lesser than them.
There’s lots of skill and knowledge that goes along with doing any trade.
Also, while it’s back breaking work, and you often work overtime, construction workers make bank.
This is an aged and outdated take that devalues the contributions of a very important job.
All jobs are skilled labor.
Everyone shits on blue collar workers until their furnace stops working, their pipes leak, their car breaks, their roof leaks, their foundation cracks, the wiring in their house gives out… Shit, it’s almost like their work is integral to their jaded-ass day to day lives
I don’t. I talk them up to my kids who are under 5 and considering both blue collar and science/academic jobs. I don’t really care what they do anyway, as long as they’re happy and making the world a better place. Manual labor helps me clear my head a lot.
Entitlement seems to be a fundamemtal human condition. Look at how much traditional women’s work is looked down upon. Society is simply not possible without child rearing, yet it is seen as incomparable to wage-generating work.
The fact that universal child care isnt available for parents is another disgusting insight into what the governments priorities are. Generations of people told that the true sign of success is to go to school, buy a home, have a wife and 2 kids… Then when they’re grown up, the game has changed completely.
Also, while it’s back breaking work
This is why. It’s not so much “these people are dumb” as it is “you don’t want to have to do backbreaking labor the rest of your life”.
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They get to create useful things unlike a lot of white collar jobs
That’s not fair. Do you have any idea how hard I work to put adverts into your products without making them crash? God, think next time!
Hey, c’mon those programmers making minecraft mods during their work hours are contributing to society
Maybe some people decided to play Gregtech and got inspired to get a chemistry degree, who knows
Construction workers can make bank, mom!
Just have to wreck your back by the age of 35.
Not with strong worker safety laws you don’t
Former safety manager here. Workers are dumb with their toxic masculinity, and safety isn’t baked into the standard of work. Literally, it’s not part of the engineered labor standard.
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Because you’re the minority. I teach these young men that their body is their most important tool and yet they take shortcuts or say, “PPE is for pussies.”
Well you just proved my point then. If these “guys” you’re talking about didn’t take shortcuts with their health and actually wore PPE etc they would be in great shape. It’s not the job it’s them.
I have a near zero probability of getting a hernia or falling from a lethal height. Plus, I have several family members who were tradesmen with destroyed backs and addicted to pain killers by their 40s. One uncle that was in a coma for 9 months from falling from a ladder and another on disability from wear and tare being a roofer.
working out regularly, eating well, and sleeping well. That’s what keep you fit and in shape. That’s it. working a manual labor job gets you the excersize part, you gotta do it properly but that task is fullfilled by having a manual labor job. You still need to eat and sleep well and not get addicted to painkillers (that can happen to anyone). An office job fulfills non of the tasks required to be fit. Sure less chance of injury since you’re in an temp controlled cubicle. Much higher chance of being unfit though.
Figuratively and literally!
Yeah mom. Wtf you on. Also…what YOU doin with your college degree mom?
That construction worker has made more money at his entry level job than you have in the last twenty years mom!
~$24/hr x 2080 = $49,920 x 20 = $998,400. + 36/hr x 520 OT = 18,720 x 20 = 374,400. = $1,372,800 + benefits in 20 years.
Mom = -$200,000 first 4 years in reality -300,000 with interest for college. $9/hr full time job for 2 years outside of your industry. $17/hr first 3 years in your industry. $20/hr next 5 years. $25/hr next 5 years. $23/hr due to salary cuts last 1 year.
-300,000 + 37,440 + 106,080 + 208,000 + 260,000 + 47,840 = $359,360 for mom in 20 years with the good benefits only coming after she gets salaried.
Congrats, this is what the gender pay gap has been about since it was created. Men destroy themselves and off themselves in droves for it.
The irony is now that the situation is totally inverted.
My STEM degree has got me making a barely livable wage while the GEDs who went straight into a trade are making twice what I make.
And the cruel reality is there is not a good way to determine which way this market will go unless you’re one of the 0.01%. And if you were it would make this a mute point.
The meme should go “he’s probably in a union and has job security, health serurity and a living wage”. Fuck that guy. That’s what he gets for being an honest taxpayer.
What STEM path is barely getting by? Programmers and engineers are highly sought after employees rn.
I’m a Medical Laboratory Scientist (bachelor’s degree, nationally certified, and current on my certificate maintenance continuing education requirements) and it has taken 16 years for me to crack 100k/year. I started at 38k. There are not enough MLS out there to staff all the labs in the US. Labs are scrambling to figure out how to continue providing patient care in the face of crippling staffing shortages and yet pay is still shit.
That’s insane. They charge a fucking fortune for lab tests. Who is keeping all the money?
I think we can all guess
Absolutely insane. I’ve been workingfor my current company doing customer service for just over 5 years and I am making just shy of $50k/year. 16 years to claw your way to 100k after all the school you surely went through… Boggles my fucking mind. We all deserve better but this is just wrong.
Well I my skill set is in programming, however to date since my graduation, I’ve only managed to get into an adjacent job which was IT.
I’m gonna try and bring my skillset up ther by focusing on network administration, since for me it would appear that my programming skill isn’t really worth that much.
IMO the hard truth is that the niche skills sell, not degrees.
I would not say “right now”. This is the worst that the industry has ever been since maybe the dot com bubble.
There are lay offs everyday, and wages are being openly suppressed. Someone with x yoe should expect 10% lower than 2 years ago.
I think you mean a moo point
A μ point.
🐄🐮
I mean… At least as a construction worker my retirement plan is three-fold. The trick is to survive long enough and well enough to enjoy retirement.
The three are 401k, annuity, and the unheard of pension.
Granted, I’m also on my fourth pulled back muscle for the year. I really need to stretch more.
Don’t let your job be your only workout. Stretch daily, and then do low weight/high rep strength training in the gym a few times a week, to be stronger than you need to be for your job. You’ll stop pulling muscles so easily. I’m 43 and I don’t have even half the pain that most of the 30 year olds around here complain about.
That’s the thought that crossed my mind. As far as pay, it is being a good stable career option - the very physical trades tend to encounter a lot more injuries and physical consequences. I respect the heck out of the trades and I work with a lot of them on different things for work - but if you look at some of the older/close to retirement folks - physical ailments and shorter life expectancy is a real concern.
Think of the “silent generation” and “baby boomers” you know that are getting up there in years. Everyone I have known that reached their 90s had fairly “cushy” desk jobs. The ones I knew who did skilled labor and trades work lived to their late 70s/early 80s.
I think, at least in the US, that we are going to REALLY feel the decrease in trades like plumbers, electricians, etc. You can teach some trades much quicker when there is a need - but with licensing and such - its going to take time to turn that ship back on course.
my parents used that one: “do you want to dig ditches when you get older ?” it took a lot of work for me to lose that attitude towards manual and mechanized labor.
Me: Yes, excavators are fun. (Note: I am not in construction though.)
Those graves aren’t digging by themselves.
Are people actually still talking trash about tradesmen? Come on, what year is it supposed to be?
Year is irrelevant, as long as class exists (working, owning, and
middledeluded worker, aka “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”), so will classism.Yea well… Tell that to the Indians. Tradesmen are looked down upon quite a lot here (cuz they also tend to be poor and of the lower castes).
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I didn’t know people were talking trash about them. When I was a kid my parents warned me to do skooll gud so that I could get a cushy office job instead of a low paying back breaking job, not that those professions are shameful or anything like that.
But I think there’s still that implication that those jobs are for less intelligent people and that they’re less desirable.
The construction dude who dropped out of high-school at 16, never went to college, and makes $90,000 a year at age 25 is doing just fine lol
Until he becomes the construction dude who falls apart like lego every morning at the age of 45
🎼Everything is–hrk!!–awesome…🎵
The sad thing is these jobs do pay so well but are so gruelling that naturally a person wants greater relief from said job…so they spend their lofty earnings like a pirate who just got their share from a merchant vessel raid.
New shiny trucks. Big house. Pricey furniture…
Then the toll catches up when they can’t pull tons of overtime anymore, and all that “wealth” was in depreciating assets when the kids would’ve been better off spending more quality time with construction dad anyway.
Like the guy with steady pay, job security, benefits, and a strong union?
Shit I better stop studying
Labour adheres to supply/demand. Now that boomers are retiring who primarily made up most of the blue-collar workers, there’s a derth of them and its only going to get worse.
So homeboy with the hardhat is gonna be making 6 figures easily out of 2 year apprenticeship while your fancy university degrees will be competing with all the other Asian students raised with this mentality.
We were all under the assumption automation was going to replace manual labour first, turns out its actually the code monkeys and adminstrators who are biting the bullet.
A 2-year paid apprenticeship no less.
As an ex-programmer that is now in the trades I can say my mental health is way better and my back hurts less these days since I’m not sitting in an expensive “ergonomic” chair all day. There are a lot of high paying trades that are far from back breaking work. Personally I got in to finish carpentry building science labs specifically.
There’s also the added benefit that I like playing with computers again, when it was my day job I wanted nothing to do with them after work.
Finish carpentry building science labs…as an architect who has recently taken an interest in building science, that sounds interesting. The jump from programmer is interesting, too. Like, did you have prior experience in carpentry, or did you go in blind?
I grew up with my dad always doing work in and around the house himself and now as an adult doing the same with my house, so I wasn’t completely going in blind. My last programming job was in the office furniture industry and that gave me a leg up having knowledge about casework, tabletops, etc. My brother in law was also a finish carpenter (now a job superintendent, but we work in fairly different areas/companies) and I had helped him with side work over the years.
As an ex-programmer that is now in the trades
I’m trying make the opposite switch haha
phone marketing would be more apt job to scare kids with. It brings nothing of value to society and its awful for the worker and those being bothered. Or just skip pointing fingers at any job and just tell the kid they will end up being exploited if they are left with no options.
While construction workers should absolutely be respected, you definitely don’t want to end up as a construction worker in India. Construction workers earn like 300-400 rupees (3.61 - 4.81 USD) per day of work in the part of India that I live in (which is a very industrious part btw). These people overwhelmingly belong to the lower castes. They don’t have their own home, and live on site in temporarily constructed structures made from metal panels.
These people suffered the most when the COVID lockdowns happened. Their places of employment fired them. They thus lost their temporary home. These people, along with their kids tried to move back to the villages that they migrated to the cities from. However, for quite some time, they weren’t allowed to return back. Thus, thousands of people were immediately made homeless, having to sleep on the streets. Of course, they were harassed by the police a lot. Finally, when special trains were organized for them, there were instances where the police sprayed water into these trains on these people “to clean them”. Watch this documentary by Vice news if you want to learn more about them.
I swear there are so many systems that should have never existed let alone be perpetuated into the current era…
“It’s ok to hate that person, they’re ARBITRARY CLASS NAME.” …ughh
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There are many methods that the upper socio economic classes used to suppress the lower classes. Casteism in India was one of the most successful methods that suppressed generations of these classes for over a thousand years. Casteism led to further disparity in the socio economic classes. When such is the case, why does mentioning it make me lose my credibility?
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They do a pretty important job, I just wish every single one of them didn’t seem to be a die-hard Trumper for some fucking reason.
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Seriously. I work with tradespeople everyday. Society would collapse in a week without them. But also most of them believe in jewish space lasers and want trump to become god king and kick out all the gays and non-whites
Then they complain NO ONE WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE when they cant find anyone who wants to work with them
