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googoobah OP t1_ja3le7i wrote

Reply to comment by WoreOnFreedumb in So what should we do? by googoobah

Trades do seem very stable. But is it wise to stay a working class citizen as the wealth gap widens like never before thanks to tech advancements?

Though I guess most people don't have a choice.

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bodydamage t1_ja3uatr wrote

Do you have a quick way out of being “working class”?

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googoobah OP t1_ja3x6r8 wrote

What I meant was I feel like most of those type of jobs don't have much room for financial growth unless you start a business or something.

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bodydamage t1_ja3xf7f wrote

You can pretty easily make 6 figures+ in the trades and if you work for a large company you can grow and move up.

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the_6th_dimension t1_ja41ha7 wrote

Some people can, most cannot. This isn't a comment about the worker's merit, it's just the empirical reality seeing how the vast majority of trade workers are far from 6 figures. Here's just some examples of median wages for some common trade jobs based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as of May 2020:

  • Electricians: $56,900

  • Mechanics: $44,050 (automotive service technicians and mechanics)

  • HVAC servicers: $51,420 (heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers)

  • Carpenters: $49,520

  • Architects: $87,180

  • Boilermakers: $65,360

  • Millwrights: $59,080

  • Plumbers: $55,160 (plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters)

  • Welders: $44,190 (welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers)

These are just some quick examples I could find with numbers attached. Certainly even within these fields some individuals make $100,000+, but these stats show that it is certainly not the norm and therefore shouldn't be described as "easy" to achieve.

And just for the sake of clarity, I want to reemphasize that I'm using the median here, i.e., the value separating the bottom 50% of earners from the top 50%. As such, half of all of the trade workers in these occupations make less than the value I provided.

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bodydamage t1_ja42g4s wrote

That data is far from conclusive, and it’s too broad to actually draw any conclusions from.

I know dozens, maybe even more people in the trades who are clearing $100k and do so regularly.

Most of those annual wages = sub $30/hr pay

Union Millwrights, Electricians, Pipefitters etc are all well over $30/hr here and we’re south of the Mason Dixon line.

If you go a few hours north those same trades pay $40-50+ per hour.

I also know guys who will work 9 months out of the year, make $80-90k and then take 3 months off being “unemployed”.

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kvothekevin t1_ja4ks7j wrote

I know guys that completely refute what you said. So if your argument is based on your experience of the people you know, consider yourself refuted by me.

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bodydamage t1_ja4mjrv wrote

Which part?

Union Pay scales are pretty easy to find online and they’re not shy about it.

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the_6th_dimension t1_ja4it8p wrote

Those data are about as conclusive as you can get. The US gov carefully and methodically tracks this specific kind of data because the US gov values having an accurate read on various aspects of the economy with earnings being a huge part of that. You can check out more about the BLS here and here if you'd like.

The claims you are making are purely anecdotal. The data I'm referencing come from researchers who are trained in the proper research methods and statistics and are provided with the resources needed to collect huge amounts of information.

Of the thousands of people in these trades, you would expect that a small proportion of them do make $100,000+ and that's what you find. But it not the norm, nor is it even close to being common.

For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual wage for electricians was $56,180 as of May 2020. This means that half of all electricians earned more than this amount, and half earned less.Assuming a normal distribution of electrician wages, an electrician earning $100,000 would be in the top 10-15% of all electricians in terms of income.

However, income is notoriously positively skewed meaning that this 10-15% number is actually likely to be much much lower. But even if it weren't, I'd say that 15 out of 100 people being able to earn $100,000+ in a trade job does not constitute it as being "easy".

Also:

>Most of those annual wages = sub $30/hr pay
>
>Union Millwrights, Electricians, Pipefitters etc are all well over $30/hr here and we’re south of the Mason Dixon line.
>
>If you go a few hours north those same trades pay $40-50+ per hour.

Assuming one works 2080 hours per year (i.e., 52 weeks * 40 hours/week), they'd make the following before taxes in a year while being paid at a rate of:

$20 - $41,600

$30 - $62,400

$40 - $83,200

$50 - $104,000

So no, I'll finish by reiterating that it is in fact not easy to make $100k+ whether you're in a trade job or not considering that the vast majority of people will never make this much. You and anyone else can check up on the data I used on bls.gov. Here's an example of all of the kinds of data they have for electricians: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472111.htm. They have thousands of different jobs that they track that you can examine for free just by searching for it.

Edit: fixed quotation mistake

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bodydamage t1_ja4lmpx wrote

It is easy to do, if the best you can do is toss government statistics around and what you THINK goes on in the trades then by all means do so.

Tradesmen to travel get per-diem which isn’t considered “income” yet is money you get all the same.

I’m sure glad I didn’t pay any mind to BLS numbers, I’d like have stayed away from the trades, but now that I’m in them I’ve found that not only are those numbers largely nonsense, I’ve also found that $100k isn’t all that high in terms of income in the blue collar world.

Go to a HCOL area and many of the union trades are payed $60+hr

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the_6th_dimension t1_ja4trs8 wrote

Can you provide any evidence to support your claim other than your own personal experience? And can you provide any evidence that would suggest that the information I supplied is incorrect or misleading? Because the BLS is completely transparent with their methodologies; they provide multiple sources on their website that details this in pretty excruciating detail.

Because if not, it seems like you just want to prop up a narrative that fits your worldview and not necessarily reality. I'd be happy to consider contradicting data if you can provide it but if you can't, I'm going to stick to the data that I do have considering it's the best (only) data that's been offered so far.

It's also a super easy google search to show that blue collar jobs make a median annual income of $39,850 so I'm not sure what the $100k comment is about.

Actually, as an afterthought, I have a question that I should probably ask. I promise I'm not meaning this in a rude way but do you understand what mean (aka average) and median actually indicate? I made an assumption that you did but that wasn't necessarily a fair assumption on my part.

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bodydamage t1_ja4uvi9 wrote

I’m sure I could, don’t care enough to go look. Feel free to go look at union payscale different places in the country, I know of more than a few that are over $50/hr

I’ve never found BLS data on income to be particularly accurate in ANY job. It’s also entirely too broad, since you’re looking nationally at that fails to take into consideration the differences in COL and thus pay.

I’ll rephrase; If you live anywhere near a medium-large sized city, making $100k+ is easy to accomplish in the trades.

Average is just all your data points added together and divided by the number of data points.

Median is the mathematical middle point between the highest and lowest data points.

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the_6th_dimension t1_ja51mzl wrote

Well I'm not sure that you could because you haven't, so the answer to my first two questions is "no".

But here, let's look at multiple sources and where I can find cost of living information and adjust income with that:

With income adjusted by COL (where possible)

|Source|Median Annual Income for Trade Workers | |:-|:-| |BLS|N/A| |Census Bureau|$56,464 (as of 2019, adjusted for cost of living using the CPI-U-RS) | |Glassdoor|N/A| |Payscale|$60,015 (as of February 2023, adjusted for cost of living using PayScale's Cost of Living Calculator)| |Economic Policy Institute|$70,000 (as of 2021, adjusted for cost of living using the CPI-U-RS) |

​

Unadjusted income

|Source|Median Annual Income for Trade Workers | |:-|:-| |BLS|$44,840 (as of May 2020) | |Census Bureau|$45,555 (as of 2019) | |Glassdoor|$47,171 (as of February 2023) | |Payscale|$50,331 (as of February 2023) | |Economic Policy Institute|$54,000 (as of 2021) |

​

I mean, what can I say? 50% of trade workers are estimated to make less than these numbers and that number only increases as salary increases, and even after adjusting for COL the vast majority of individuals are making <$100k with many making less than half that. It wouldn't be that way if it were easy.

Yes cost of living affects pay, but not nearly enough to support your claim. Union members also tend to make more, but most people aren't in unions or benefitting from them (though I wouldn't argue with changing that). These are again just some examples I could find quickly.

  • From BLS, the union membership rate for all occupations in the United States was 10.3% in 2021. This includes both trade and non-trade workers.
    • The BLS also provides data on union membership rates for specific occupations. For example, as of 2021, the union membership rate for construction and extraction occupations (which includes many trade workers) was 12.9%.
  • From EPI, the union membership rate for construction workers specifically was 13.5% in 2020. This is slightly higher than the overall union membership rate for all construction and extraction occupations reported by the BLS.
    • The EPI also reports that the union membership rate for production and transportation workers, which includes some trade workers, was 15.4% in 2020.

So even if we assume these numbers are off, I think it's fair to say that <20% of trade workers are unionized. This certainly helps them, but it doesn't apply to most people.

Have I been able to make solid enough arguments and give enough evidence from a variety of sources to change your mind? Maybe you happen to make $100k+ working in a trade and the other people you work with or know in the trade are also doing similarly well. If that's the case, it makes sense that you'd extrapolate that most people who do a similar kind of job (e.g., trade work) would probably have a similar outcome to yourself. It's just in this case you'd be wrong specifically because you and your immediate circle of reference are all outliers. Like, I'm not trying to sway you on some political point here, I'm just trying to present the actual numbers.

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lavendersmoker616 t1_ja51py9 wrote

Bro stop coping!!!

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bodydamage t1_ja526j4 wrote

Yup definitely coping.

There’s idk, a dozen or so factories that I know of local to me where this is not only possible but also reality

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ApocalypseSpokesman t1_ja3v2wc wrote

I wouldn't sneeze at them, people in the trades make bank.

Check the income of say, an elevator repair technician.

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treeof t1_ja4izne wrote

Plumbers can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, they’ll be fine.

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TheFringedLunatic t1_ja4l6gz wrote

Nah. According to the BLS the real answer is the same as ever; judge, doctor, lawyer, engineer, or specialized IT.

Trades don’t even come close in the median.

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