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Skilled Manual Labor Critical To US STEM Dominance
Doofus writes: "The Wall Street Journal has an eye-catching headline: Welders Make $150,000? Bring Back Shop Class. Quoting: 'According to the 2011 Skills Gap Survey by the Manufacturing Institute, about 600,000 manufacturing jobs are unfilled nationally because employers can't find qualified workers. To help produce a new generation of welders, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, machinists and other skilled tradesmen, high schools should introduce students to the pleasure and pride they can take in making and building things in shop class.
American employers are so yearning to motivate young people to work in manufacturing and the skilled trades that many are willing to pay to train and recruit future laborers. CEO Karen Wright of Ariel Corp. in Mount Vernon, Ohio, recently announced that the manufacturer of gas compressors is donating $1 million to the Knox County Career Center to update the center's computer-integrated manufacturing equipment, so students can train on the same machines used in Ariel's operations.' How many of us liked shop? How many young people should be training for skilled manufacturing and service jobs rather than getting history or political science degrees?"
If work for a wage, you're losing at capitalism.
As many as possible. I've said for years the real money lies in being a welder, plumber, or an electrician.
All those people who have exhaustively studied the post modernism and sexism as exemplified by 17th century Gaelic poets with no left hand but who hadn't gone bald yet ... not so much. Because, as far as marketable skills go, some courses of study aren't exactly marketable at all.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It looks like it is barely part of the first world in this area these days ...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If someone really wants to go to college, and major in history, they should still do that. Having a passion or interest in something, even if it might not pay all the bills, isn't a bad thing. That being said, if someone is languishing in college or still on the fence about going, picking up a trade can be a tremendous benefit. They might not stick with it over the years, but it gives them something solid to fall back on.
Where the hell are welders making 150k??? Probably like 5% of welders make that much. Most of the manual labor jobs (electrician, plumber, HVAC) make like 60k with 10 years of experience. New people start around 30k.
Doubt it. Most welders work in boring repetitive jobs in dangerous conditions for precarious employment, and they do not make 150k$.
Until the dangers of sitting at a desk get raised up a few more levels the spectre of injuries in shop class has pretty much banished the once wonderful hands on practical skills from the ciriculum.
The lessons of the table saw and possibility of losing fingers or getting a 2x4 in the gut were taught to me in grade 8. I can't imagine the number of permission slips needed to allow such adventures in our modern school system. Also given the lack of funding currently in our systems the need for shop equipment, supplies, trained teachers and insurance is a financial burden I can't see the system taking on.
Certainly there are pockets were it could but done but but it would take several revolutions in funding, responsibilty and trust before it could be implemented on a wide scale.
Not everyone needs a college degree. In fact, most people don't need a college degree. What people need is stability and job security, and the "college degree == stability" heuristic is easy to learn but apparently hard to unlearn. If the only reason you're in college is "but I gotta get a degree, man" and you can't think of a reason why, drop what you're doing and go weld shit. I'm not even kidding. You'll make more money and have far better prospects than most other people in your position.
Given the number of fabrication shops that have closed or gone overseas and laid off welders in the past two decades, I find it highly suspicious that companies can't find people to fill their positions. Is this like the H1B "crisis" where Silicon Valley firms can't find tech workers anywhere locally, but it turns out they're asking for DBA administrators with 15 years of experience on 5 different platforms plus 10 years coding experience with 8 different languages and can sysadmin server clusters that are willing to start people at $40k/year? I mean yeah, that guy in India said he could do it at that price, why can't we bring him over here?
I read the internet for the articles.
So now they need workers who can actually build stems.
Table-ized A.I.
Dirty, 14 hour shifts, and working in an under-served skillset--not exactly the environment that lends itself to working on things you could take pleasure and pride in.
I learned to weld, do electrical work, air conditioning and refrigeration repair, boiler operations, etc. through an apprenticeship. It's a good deal. You get paid to learn. There's a catch though. You've got to join a union. No knowledgeable journeyman is going to train you if you're someplace where seniority doesn't count.
These days I've moved on to being a licensed professional engineer. Working my way through college on union wages, I graduated without owing any student loans.
I have a background in manufacturing. I have attended Chamber meetings, city gatherings, and focus group-thingies. I heard about this skills gap and how manufacturers needed good qualified employees but just couldn't find them.
Well, it's bullshit. They can find them... they don't want to pay them. You really think a welder is going to make $150k anytime soon? No.
The reason Ariel wants the local job center to have the same equipment they have is so they can pay some kid $9/hr (maybe) to run their machines. They don't want a truly skilled employee to run a machine all day. They want a dumb, barely passed maths kid that can follow instructions. Bonus if he already knows where they cycle stop button is located on your machines.
I like this idea. I think more kids need job training. I do not think manufacturers are truly hurting to fill positions. My last company had no issues with filling positions, even if they wouldn't think of starting someone at more than $10/hr.
I am not here to bash US manufacturing, as I do think it is vital to US success. But let's not look at this like all the non-tech's look at H1-B's and think that the poor manufacturers are just a victim of our lack luster education system.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
I've heard this kind of thing before. It seems to recur every 8 to 10 years or so. The thing about the skilled trades is that in order to earn mini-banker-like compensation you need to be highly skilled in the very high end of the trades because they're the people who can afford welders good enough for nuclear power plant requirements and things like that. Residential and commercial (i.e.: office and retail) trades aren't going to need the high end skills. It takes years to get there.
As for myself, my backup plan if I couldn't hack college were the electrical and plumbing trades. That was during the Reagan Recession, and as it happened I never had to seriously pursue that. But having been unemployed during the depths of the Great Recession, perhaps I ought to pursue getting an Electrician's license.
Young people in school aren't stupid. They understand that these are the types of jobs that will be replaced by robots in the future. These jobs are dead-end.
More Wall Street pimping of the "skills mismatch" myth, disproven repeatedly. Wages are not increasing for so-called mismatched skills and it might be interesting to see some actual studies rather than anecdotes being shovels out of manufacturer's lobby groups. Good grief, this is being reported as factual news?
I was a carpenter long before I was an engineer and I will always have that to fall back on. Now kids get $100k worthless degree instead of on-the-job training for $100k/yr.
This problem has already been solved. It's done with the state sponsored one and two year vocational school programs.
In more forward looking states, they build these programs in concert with local industries to meet specific needs.
However, there's a political problem.
The universities and colleges fight tooth and nail against these schools because they take funding and students.
"Can't find cheap" /= "can't find".
Becoming a real pipe welder requires superb hand-eye coordination, excellent close vision under welding conditions, and much more experience than you can
get out of "shop class". It tales talent and absolutely dogged determination.
American employers want cheap workers but won't train and grow them themselves. They want to hire off the street then discard when the contract is done, but be able to pick up where they left off from a pool of skilled people eagerly awaiting the opportunity to cup balls.
"To help produce a new generation of welders, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, machinists and other skilled tradesmen, high schools should introduce students to the pleasure and pride they can take in making and building things in shop class."
No, that's an UNFOCUSED investment. Invest in trade schools and weed out the seat-fillers so you actually graduate capable people.
Doing that doesn't suit the revenue model of most schools. Community colleges (I worked in one training weldors and now attend it taking CNC machinist courses) could produce enough trained workers, but the pressure to fill class seats means high rates of people who pass the course but are unsuited for demanding work.
Machinists don't make shit. The "hot dog cart" is a standing joke in machinist forums which you may visit if you doubt me. Real machinists do what they do because they love the work, but many move elsewhere so they can make more money. I'm studying CNC for fun, but I wouldn't try to get into that field for a career. It's too easy to get stuck as an operator due to lack of upward mobility. Good operators make their bosses money, but don't necessarily get to keep much of it.
Any employers reading this, consider what works elsewhere and worked superbly in the past. APPRENTICESHIPS with a CAREER PATH.
Apprenticeships train your people your way, and a career path keeps them onboard because gratitude doesn't pay fucking grocery bills.
Better yet, just outsource to someone who gets this. If you have to ask why you can't get good people you are incompetent.
I banged the drum of the German model before, but basically you apprentice somewhere for low pay (note, still pay) which increases each year. After that, you have a skill in demand and cannot be copied by someone that gets 2 weeks training or some such at a corporate camp in America.
My cousin went that route, going as a chef. First he wanted to stay in America, but would have to give out $60k over multiple years at one of the premiere schools here and it wouldn't be training at a real kitchen, but a student kitchen. Great theory and all but just not the same. Also, all he'd interact with would be other students and a handful of professors.
He went over there, snagged an apprenticeship at a very well respected hotel, and worked in varying stations in the restaurant kitchen from day one. A real kitchen that had to push food out the door at peak hours of lunch and dinner. And he got paid enough to live on and even save. Also got some theory at a state school they sent him every season (free). Now that he's out, his "European-trained chef" credential open a lot more doors than the stateside degree.
As I see the American model, it looks like most of the liberal arts degrees jobs require is to make sure they don't get an idiot who got passed along in the public school system. However, the degree is often meaningless in context of the job.
We essentially sold the youth of this country down the river, having diluted the high school diploma to toilet paper and promising them that an expensive college degree is a good way into a good job. Jobs that are increasingly not there.
If you look at trends of service jobs and outsourcing, the return on a non-stem degrees is questionable compared to having tangible skills that cannot be employed in China and bought back here in a finished product.
Looking at the longterm trend of US's economy (thanks to it's debt), I would definitely jump onto the skills market again if I were coming out of High School and not all into STEM degree.
Are you insane? Shop class means little Johnnie will be around big, dangerous machines and he might get hurt. And, if Johnnie gets hurt, his mommy and daddy are going to sue the school district!
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
they might realize how they're being screwed and then do something about it.
need more trades / apprenticeship less college yes even the NBA and NFL need to have minor leagues as well.
No welder is making 150k/yr. I've worked multiple welding jobs and even some of the best cap out around maybe 50k after 5-10yrs. The majority are still in the 20-30k/yr range. The manual labor market is also polluted with all kinds of unions that in contrary to popular belief, actually hurt the workers more than they help. They cost the company and the workers money for an illusion of job security. I've experienced this first hand as well.
From the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
Median Pay in 2012: ~36k
Job Outlook: 6% (slower than average)
I'm sure there's a welder out there SOMEWHERE than makes $150k. However, if you go into welding for a living then chances are its not going to be YOU.
Meanwhile, the median income for those with a Bachelors degree comes in at ~43k (and this is 2003 data). Of course, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/product...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Interestingly, I had metal shop in middle school, but not high school. (The middle school building used to be the high school, and the new high school didn't get a metal shop, although it did have other shops.) Whoever decided to let middle schoolers weld was crazy, but in a good way. It should definitely be available in high school.
I'm a physics grad student now, and I've used the student shop here to make custom parts -- in part because the real machinists in the instrument shop have a several month backlog. I guess that's inline with the article's claim. I've got a ton of respect for the machinists here: it requires lots of skill and problem solving abilities; it's not easy to make the crazy stuff we want. In short, their jobs aren't in danger of automation, and apparently there's demand for them. The same cannot be said for communications and journalism majors...
"Shop" and physically making things in school isn't so much about training people to do manual jobs at some point in the dim and distant future. Physically manipulating materials, objects, and tools helps to develop spatial awareness (AKA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...) which is a highly valuable and broadly transferable skill. If you want your kids to be good at Math, Physics, Chemistry, as well as the arts, design, etc., get them making stuff, taking stuff apart to see how it works, etc. from a young age. It'll work wonders for their cognitive development.
If they have a pool of operator candidates who PAY to train then they get off dirt cheap and can cherrypick.
Manufacturing uses machine operators, not "machinists". One thing is not like the other.
Companies can hire a few people to set up machines then hand them off to operators. The low labor costs more than pay for a machine crash now and then.
Looking at the comments so far, so many of them talk about safety and comfort being the reasons people take desk jobs rather than blue collar.
Bullshit.
After 40 years of continually shitting on unions, blue collar work, and glorifying every other career choice (badass cop! miraculous doctor! patriot marine! caring nurse! brainy engineer! saint virgin-for-life network guy!), Americans are now wondering why nobody wants these jobs.
And now that those who stuck with it are getting paid, suddenly there's a "labor shortage" and we'd better fucking train some people before they realize that a shortage of labor is an excess of pay.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
A labour shortage you say? The hotest labour trend right now in Canada is Temporary Foreign Workers.
Take a look at some headlines from the past couple hours:
Pizza place faces federal grilling over temporary foreign workers
McDonald's foreign worker practices halted in face of investigation
PBO: Temporary Foreign Worker Program May Be Taking 1/4 Of New Jobs
I went to a fairly large high school (3000+ students) that had an attached "career center". I took a few of the 1 hour classes, including basic electronics and drafting (including autocad). They also offered 3 hour vocational classes for people who did not plan on going to college. These included auto repair, plumbing, cosmetology, child care (where they took care of other student's kids and allowed them to stay in school), and medical/dental assistance.
It was a large building with a lot of expensive stuff in it. There is no way that a smaller school could afford something like that.
That's basically what Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) has been saying. He started a foundation to to provide funding for high school graduates to go to various skilled labor trade schools instead of college. Most skilled labor jobs are currently held by aging baby boomers and when they retire, there won't be enough people to fill the need. College isn't the answer for these jobs.
Don't need apprenticeships and don't need to invest in any training. Just do what the Royal Bank of Canada does - bribe the government into letting you bring in "temporary" foreign workers. God knows how terrible the conditions and hazardous the work in a bank is that they can't find Canadians to do the job. Drives down the wages of everybody - bonuses all 'round for the CEOs.
Just for the record, the line is "The world needs ditch diggers, too."
(On a serious note, tradesmen in the difficult trades will make barely and average wage. The ones who make a lot of money go on to own or run businesses either instead of or in addition to their trade. A smart, motivated individual will make good money as a welder by ultimately running a welding or ironworking business. You're average unmotivated wage employee who is a certified welder will simply make an average living.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Where does one find a place that would teach/certify me in welding? I've already got a day job developing. Useful skills to have when the zombie apocalypse comes.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Some time about thirty years ago we got this idea in our heads that the trades were for stupid people and that manual labor, no matter how skilled, was below the dignity of a 'smart' child. Now look at us. Our educational attainment is higher than ever, and yet college graduates with advanced degrees have trouble finding work. Those 'stupid' people in the trades make the rest of us look dumb and command a skill set that's far more practically useful (and frequently more intellectually challenging) than most of the skills college grads now carry - oh, and they're usually not eyeballs deep in debt.
Some of these jobs might soon be obsolete. High paying trade jobs are very much a target for automation, and not just the 'robots making cars' automation you immediately think of. We're getting to the point that we can turn some of these 'skilled' jobs into unskilled jobs with the assistance of software. IE, the computer takes care of all the higher level stuff, and walks the human through the process of whatever it is they are doing. One doesn't need much skill to follow simple instructions("unscrew screws A and B," "is the part rough?", etc).
For example, right now we are pretty close to automating the job of CNC operator to the point that it can be done by unskilled labor. IE, the computer generates a plan of which machines to use and CNC code to run and the operator's job simply becomes following exactly what the computer tells them to do.
I contend that the greatest value in shop class goes way beyond any career goals. Working with physical stuff teaches you the basic nuts-n-bolts of reality. Shop class is applied physics and of value to anyone, regardless of life goals.
I have one question - how in demand will these jobs be 10 years from now? 10 years after that?
Seems to me as the populations becomes more dependent on others, being a welders, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, machinists and other skilled tradesmen will pay off. But at what point do we become like mexicans *in mexico* who know how to fix everything they need to live? Broken pipe? Dig it up and fix it. Broken car? Take it apart as least as much as possible and fix it. Need to build an extra room or two on your house? Pick up a hammer and some supplies and get to work.
I wish I weren't disabled - someone asked me the other day what is my dream job - living off the land with a few farm animals and growing crops for a family.
Very few welders make $150K. The ones who do are the ones who weld expensively fabricated parts together under tough conditions and get it right the first time. They're probably welding some pressure vessel for a chemical plant, the weld will be X-ray inspected and the unit hydrostatically tested, and if there's a problem, a do-over is really expensive. Most welders aren't that good. Not even close.
$12-$18/hour is typical for average welders. Even then, most of the jobs are in construction, which means a layoff at the end of each project.
They make one that will stop if you touch the blade. Usually destroying the blade in the process, but you only get a nick on your finger.
Look up the SawStop saw.
They couldn't get any of the big manufacturers to integrate the tech, so they went the sleazeball lawyer way and tried to get it mandated by law. After that failed they got a clue and started building their own saws, which by every account I've heard are very well built.
It's a problem of stigma and classism.
Trade jobs, although rewarding and valuable, face a negative stigma. Parents want kids to be "University Educated" as some sort of stupid status symbol and most kids buy right into it. "You don't want to be a plumber, do you?"... God forbid.
So, instead we have Engineers who learn nothing and graduate with Cs and are unemployable, arts and business majors who are also unemployable, but hey - they're smart because they have "university degrees"! (Maybe college degrees, but I'm Canadian, so that term doesn't mean the same thing to me).
THIS is the problem. Maybe many kids would enjoy trade jobs, but many will face ridiculous judgement from their parents and stigma from their peers. This has to end for there to be any change.
Don't go thinking that learning trade X or skill set Y or getting credential Z means anyone is set for life.
There are no simple fixes for the current situation where anybody's livelihood(*) can be reduced in value by automation. All the old middle-class certainties like:
- I own a house, which is an asset whose value will only go up
- I have a college degree, which guarantees me a middle-class job
- I have trade labor skills that have been valuable for many years, and will be valuable for the foreseeable future
are no longer certain.
(*) If you're lucky enough to have monetary assets of $500,000+ that you can invest conservatively, and are disciplined enough to live on only the proceeds, you're pretty safe.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
It's an interesting term to Google (video 4:20): http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/04/germanys-mittelstand
Also, these companies have a long term focus and eschew debt, something which is anathema to the US corporate culture.
Learning history is great. Paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn history, OTOH, is a bad deal when you're eighteen and have negligible assets and job skills.
I'm in the position where I get CVs from recent college grads from brewing school. And posting anonymously 'cause it's a small community.
Some of those cats are hilarious. 2 years out of high school. No practical work experience outside of working the Slurpee-ee machine. Little experience dealing with liquor regulators. Gaps in their knowledge. Unrefined palates (seriously, food and beverage industry -- a brewer who can't taste is like a chef who can't taste). Coming out of a for-profit school that, shall we say, has no incentive to cull the herd. Asking for $50k a year and looking to skip over the less glamorous side of the business (bottling, cleaning, lab work, quality assurance) to focus on recipe development and being ... you know ... a rock star.
Seriously? I'd rather hire someone who spent two years mucking out mash tuns and fixing leaky pumps with duct tape. And if they say something like, "I'd like to know how to do cell counts and Siebel has this online course," damn, that person's a hire.
As others have said, I so, so want the German-style apprenticeship system. The pleasure I get from thinking about it makes me tingly.
Check out what Mike Rowe has to say about this problem, he has some really great insight.
Now my thoughts: Unfortunately we as a society look down on skilled trades. I remember when I was 16 my dad asked me if I wanted to work with my back or with my brain, implying that there was something wrong with skilled labor. If you show aptitude for math or science in High School your counselor will dissuade you from shop or auto repair and push you into AP math and science with the intent of you going to get a STEM degree. Our public school systems, especially the wealthy ones, almost exclusively push 4 year universities as the only option to graduating seniors.
Furthermore, there are a lot of "help the kids in the inner city" teaching programs where the soul goal is to get kids from impoverished school districts into 4 year colleges. These organizations are doing some good work but I have to strongly disagree that the only or even best way to break the cycle of poverty is to force someone into a 4 year university while completely and intentionally ignoring the many skilled trades that person could pursue. A kid with a apprenticeship in welding or high tech manufacturing is going to be able to change his life in a much more positive way than a kid with a degree in comparative lit and $60,000 in student debt. These programs really need to offer a more complete picture of the options facing graduating high school students.
American culture has promoted the 4 year university as the "only" way to be successful for decades. Blame the liberals, blame the academics, blame the politicians, blame the student loan companies, blame whoever. We have a shortage of skilled labor because we as a nation have treated skilled labors as a lower caste for years.
anything taught in shop can be taught in 3 months, tops. Usually through an apprenticeship program.
Nothing is STEM can be.
STEM promotes critical thinking, and exploration. Trades do not.
High School Education is NOT about making money. It's about getting a wide education that you can apply.
Learning STEM helps with the trades. The trades do not help with STEM.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We need more of these people *so* the salaries for these professions drop. If there were more qualified electricians, then there would be less demand for them and it wouldn't cost so much to have electrical work done, and I would actually hire one rather than trying to figure out how to do my own electrical work on youtube.
programmers make 500K a year, and don't work OT
Oh, not all programmers, but no welder I know make over 100k, much less 150k.
http://www.indeed.com/salary/W...
http://www1.salary.com/Welder-...
You are making 150k a year as a welder, you are working 60+ hours a week.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"American employers are so yearning to motivate young people to work in manufacturing and the skilled trades that many are willing to pay to train and recruit future laborers."
If that's the case, why not change the entire structure of how the college education system works? We have too many people taking on huge debt for useless degrees while becoming unemployed or working as a cashier or barista. I say have the prospective employers train and pay for the worker's college education. Require an agreement for like 5-10 years or if the student bails, they're on the hook for whatever is left of the balance. Other than the contract I see no downside to this approach. I knew what career I wanted even in high school and I totally would've gone for an opportunity like this.
First, the "Manufacturing Skills Gap" report only comes out once every 5 years or so. The last one is from 2011.
The report says that only 5% of manufacturing jobs are un-filled. It also says that "only 31% of respondent-companies report having formal career development", and that "respondents indicate that access to a highly skilled, flexible workforce is the most important factor in their effectiveness."
So there's the problem. Manufacturing companies are asking for a pool of immediately available ("flexible") employees with specific skills, and less than a third of companies are trying to train their own. Even then, there's only a 5% shortage. They want government to solve the problem for them, instead of putting more money into training or apprenticeships. There's a need for basic shop education, but from the numbers, it's not a big need.
Welding is a very specific skill, learned through practice. It requires some visualization talent; if you can't whittle or freehand sketch, welding is a bad career choice, because hand welding is a precision freehand task. Welding training requires a modest amount of instruction and a lot of practice. If companies want better welders, they can hire beginner welders and train them up. This means a lot of people on the payroll busily burning rod and working up from making angle irons to welding two pipes end to end with a strong, leak-tight joint. (I suck at welding and free-form sheet metal, but can do machining and rectangular sheet metal.)
I'm *positive* this is true. I spent well over a decade doing I.T. in manufacturing environments, and my wife spent years more working in similar facilities. Since then, I've also done on-site computer service calls for a number of manufacturing places (mostly steel fabricators and plastics molding companies).
The one thing I've found in common at ALL of them is a strong desire by management to squeeze costs to the bare minimum, to the point where "standard practice" dictates using as much unskilled, barely qualified labor as possible, while sticking one or two "senior level" guys with the job expectation of training everyone else.
Of course, this usually leads to disgruntled senior level workers, who feel like they have to spend most of the work day "babysitting" incompetent people all around them (while still being expected to turn out the same amount of work as they always did before). The other low-paid hires tend to be a revolving door, as management fires them whenever they don't learn something quickly enough, or they make a costly mistake or two while trying to learn.
From the I.T. standpoint, I witnessed the same "penny-wise but pound-foolish" behavior more directly when it came to the equipment on the shop floor or in the labs. They'll invest tens of thousands of dollars on special equipment (most of which is tied in to a standard-issue PC running DOS or a flavor of Windows, except creatively mounted in some kind of steel cabinet so it doesn't *look* like an off-the-shelf PC on the outside). Then when something goes wrong, they want an I.T. guy like me to try to fix it, because the hourly rate for a service call from someone specializing in servicing it is "way too expensive". So far, I've been asked to tear into and try to fix everything from X-Ray Spectrometers to a control system for a "web press" machine that punches holes in steel beams as they roll down a conveyor belt. Truth is, if it's just something simple like bad RAM or a failing hard drive, sure -- I can eventually get that going for them again with a little trial and error. But so often, the issues have been with calibration (mechanical parts drift out of calibration over time, so the software needs some adjustment of values in it to compensate). Or it's some failure with an oddball hardware controller board in the system that I have no way of finding a suitable replacement for.
A quick google search finds two sites (indeed.com, salary.com), which I'm sure are not the most accurate in the world, but probably give some decent estimates. I found results more along the lines of 30k (entry) to 50k (experienced) for welders. I'm sure there are top welders out there commanding high salaries, but the same can be said of many fields.
Well, my old man did the technical school route (welding and plumbing for a year) in the 60s after a hitch in the Marine Corps, then went through five years of apprenticeship as a pipefitter/welder with a union local here in the Midwest. Everybody howls how it's obscene that they make 32 bucks an hour (time and a half over 40, double time on Sundays), but he's damned good (has worked all types of job sites, including nuke units), and he passes inspection nearly every time when the engineer comes around with the x-ray unit. On top of that, last I checked they still regularly test you when you newly arrive to a job site.
To me, it's a skill, almost like being an artist. I can't do it. On top of that, I don't know how the education is now, but they even got into basic metallurgy and materials science, not just reading blueprints and such. I work as an electronics technician and systems administrator, and I have much respect for him.. especially when he's out there in about five layers of clothing freezing his ass off in a field some place working. He might make 80k a year, but he damned well earns it.
It really pisses me off when I see the UAW and the like screwing it up for some of the skilled trade unions. It seems to tar and feather all of the unions, and all unions are definitely not created equal.
Even with the safety gear, you do wonder about all the shit they inhale on the job.
I don't think the majority were ever really shitting on blue-collar work that requires special skills, for one thing. That's just a false perception, brought to you by crybabies in the unions who are mad they didn't get a free ride all the way through to retirement with 100% paid healthcare, while not making more than the minimum effort.
To be honest, I knew an awful lot of people in I.T. who switched careers both INTO it from a blue-collar job AND back out of it to a blue-collar job. It used to be surprisingly common, for example, how many long-haul truck drivers took an interest in an I.T. career, and by contrast, how many who worked in I.T. for years got burnt out and said they'd rather go into construction.
Doctors are kind of in their own separate class in the work-world, IMO. They're so heavily invested in their schooling, it's a pretty major commitment to change careers after that and discard the medical training. Many who you'd think earn pretty big salaries never get to enjoy their money until they're within 10 years of retirement, because they're still paying off student loans until then.
But yeah, skilled trades like electricians, carpenters, plumbers? I think they've always commanded a certain level of respect, if they can prove they're competent. ... but when there was a general downturn in manufacturing in the U.S., fewer people needed to hire tool and die guys, so he struggled.
The real problem with those trades is they're tied to how many clients out there have the financial ability to remodel, rehab, or build new properties. When the housing market goes into a slump, people in these fields start having problems finding work. I had a buddy with a lot of "tool and die" experience, for example. For years, everyone told him his skillset was in high demand and he could command premium salaries. For a little while, he did
A lot of "white collar" jobs, by contrast, tend to be a little more stable, only because they deal in things a business needs every day it stays open, like accounting. (When your pipes aren't leaking and a bathroom remodel isn't on your "must do" list, you don't need to pay a plumber. But you probably DO have bills to pay and bills to mail out and collect on every day.)
"getting history or political science degrees?"
funny how the article says STEM, but when people need to find examples no one uses a STEM career as an example.
" I've said for years the real money lies in being a welder, plumber, or an electrician.
nope. facts do not bare that out at all.
average incomes:
welder - 32K
plumber - 26k
electrician - 39K
software - 71k
software engineer - 90k
electrical engineer - 83k
civil engineer - 78k
social scientist - 86k
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Living in Orange County, CA, we see kids in high school with a successful parent or parents who feel like "hey, I'm going to have an easy ride, with my dad being a millionaire who's going to leave me a fortune, having connections to get me a job, get me into a school where I'll cruise by because I'm so hot.
One of them rented a place next to me (on attorney daddy's nickel, before colleges 'next year') while driving his free Beemer. Started doing drugs and selling them immediately and only escaped a drug bust barely by throwing the drugs in the bay.
Then these kids don't want to work in a restaurant for coins while they go to school, they want a self-filling credit card.
The idea of studying and working hard until you really create and accomplish something which leads to a great income is foreign to their mindset.
What I call 'smart kids' are the ones who bust their hind end and know they are only going to get some help to get through school and they better be the best they can or opportunity will not knock.
To be honest with you, most welders from the south that I've run into haven't had a proper apprenticeship and are hacks, while most of the welders I know here in Ohio actually know a bit about materials science and make around 70k. My father has been doing it for 40 years, has an associate's and a five year apprenticeship. Behold the power of union trades education... which you don't have. And yes Skippy, they've had actual honest-to-goodness metallurgical and mechanical engineers come in and teach.
Put it this way, when they need precision welders for power plants or Alaskan pipelines, they don't bother with southerners.
Just because you're a bunch of knuckle-dragging retards willing to work for less (and even worse, live in Alabama), don't blame us in Ohio. We're the rust belt, and say what you will, but our industrial education system for trades is light years better than anything you'll find down south, and even out west, with the possible exception of the extreme west coast (e.g. California, Washington, Oregon).
We need quality of labor, but instead our (brilliant) politicians and business leaders pursue quantity.
while others don't. Taking a step back and looking at the big picture, there is only a finite demand for skilled people of any profession, and flooding any field with new talent rarely does anything but increase the ratio of poorly paid to well paid people. That's why I hate these "Oh my god people who do X make N amount of dollars, let's all do X!"
The real thing that matters when it comes to money is 1. Doing something that society needs, and 2. Doing it well. And unless you've studied philosophy or something, chances are there's someone out there who needs what you do.
BUT, can everyone be good at something? Obviously not. MOST people just aren't born with the talent and intelligence to be exceptional at anything. This is where we've been lied to, and is the main reality we're going to have to face if we want to deal with the world's problems realistically.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Good, let them. The "education" system couldn't be worse at teaching useful skills.
Problem with being a corporate pilot: if your boss dies, you are likely to be out of a job. That is what happened to my brother.
Now, he cannot get any flying jobs at all.
Seems crazy to me, all that skill, training, and experience, going to waste.
My brother is in his late 40s.
NOT SO
For welders, plumbers, and electricians. Trained in Indian plumbing, welding, and electrical work.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
How is telecommuting a possibility for the highly paid welder that we are talking about here?
If robots can weld then a remotely operated welding machine is doable.
FWIW, some science fiction I read decades ago had welders and others operating heavy machinery used in new lunar construction operating the equipment remotely from inside the existing lunar habitat.
The flight school they are talking about is for commercial multi engine aircraft, like college it is expensive and takes a long time. We are not talking about the local flight school where you can get your private pilots license in a Cessna 152.
Being tied down for the length of a commission is not very relevant if you are flying military aircraft, it will probably be the best flying time of your life.
You can cut college costs in half by going to your local state university. Working a part-time and summer job can put a big dent into state university costs.
... that someone who spent 4 year learning music means they get to be a barrista.
Or they get to be an officer in the military. The military does not care what your degree is in, just that you earned it at an accredited four year college.
$150,000 for a welder, some of the "welders & boilermakers" and other tradies here in Australia make close to that, if not more. Catch is that you're working remote sites (and by remote we're talking middle a desert, every day 40C+) on a 2, 3 or even 4 week roster with 12+ hour shifts.
my civil and mining engineering mates, some of them with 30 years experience on major projects, are actually getting paid less than some of the best tradies.
With the down turn in investment and most new mines and infrastructure projects on indefinite hold some of those guys and girls might want a well paid job in the US so they can keep themselves in the fashion they are used to... and bogan chic is not cheap... what with a new Harley and Hilux to buy every year
My Ex's sister - Yes, Sister, you can break out your "Flashdance" jokes now - was a master welder in Europe. She worked contract assignments all over Germany, Sweden - wherever steel was going up. She was doing very, very well for herself.
She went back to university and completed a long-abanded degree. When asked why she was quitting her welding career, she said simply that being on a job site at 6 in the morning when it's below freezing and you have to crouch over a piece of frozen steel for 11 hours, it's not much fun. It's like military interrogation "stress positioning" for a living. She also indicated that there was some recent (mid 2000s) research in Europe that the gasses released during the welding process were suspected as having a causal relationship with highly increased odds of developing Parkinsons disease.
She crushed university and got a lower paying but still comfortable professional job riding an office chair 8-5.
I have an old friend in Ohio who's brother in-law owns a successful machine shop. He told me over dinner a few months ago that some of his competitors will order large project pieces from China. It's literally cheaper to have men fabricate a large part - A 25' long, 3' diameter steel stack for example - truck the thing to a dock, ship it across the pacific ocean, truck it to Northeast Ohio, then have one or two of their guys fix nearly ALL the fucked up Chinese welds, THEN deliver the part to the customer - than it is to fabricate and weld the damn thing on site.
This WSJ article is full of smoke written by a journalist who's probably never pulled a splinter out of his hand, swung a hammer or broken a sweat without wearing fluorescent trainers on his feet.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
and the only way you can make a living is to live somewhere the cost of living is low enough you can survive off your meager sales? In the 3rd worlds they mostly leave you alone if you maintain your citizenship in the origin country. There's several developers that left London for Eastern Europe.
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Infographics like this sorta ignore that in the US (unlike Finland) funding is not evenly distributed. By Design in the US funding for schools comes from property taxes. So the Lion's Share of that funding is going to rich kids.
That said, large sectors of our school system are being privatized for profits, so is it any wonder the numbers are going to hell? If I'm running a school and getting $2k per kid it's in my best interests to keep as much as I can. Coincidentally private schools have a much higher proportion of "Administrative" costs (too lazy to google the Study, do it yourself).
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A corporate pilot for one guy almost certainly means a single type of aircraft, and almost certainly not the type of aircraft that an airline is going to be flying. Airlines are a lot like other companies. When they look to hire someone, they always want someone with lots of experience in the particular type of thing that they use, even if no other company in the world uses it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
"Mike, you're such an intelligent young man. Why would you ever take a vocational curriculum?">p> But I'm taking the academic track too!
Doesn't matter. Poeple will see that vocational stuff, and ignore your academic work, because Vocational people are not intelligent.
I ignored the assholes, and it all worked out well.
So here we are, toward the end of the failed experiment of every American being a manager, every American being in service fields, and somehow miraculously, we'll manage to get along that way. with no one supporting the infrastructure of the country.
It's a sad ending when the Manager at McDonalds has the good job, with the career track.
And the rest of their employees get information on how to apply for Government assistance. because they are paid so little.
You figure out how long a country can exist like this. Today, Henry Ford would be castigated, not for his well documented weirdness, but that he believed that the people working for him should be well paid. One of the world's foremost industrialists would be condemned today as a socialist, when he was just imbued with the knowledge that in order to sell things, people had to have the money to buy things.
There is a clue in there.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It was not quite ROTC, no drilling or classes during the school year, but when I looked into it the Marines had a program (Platoon Leaders Program ?) where you spent two summer breaks at Quantico (OCS) and received your commission upon college graduation. You had no obligation during the school year nor between your second summer at Quantico and graduation. Although God help you if you showed up after graduation unable to pass the PT test.
The unique thing about this program was that, at the time, it had an aviation "guarantee". If you earned your commission through this program and passed the naval flight physical and other aviation specific aptitude tests then you got a slot in flight school.
That said, having grown up around a number of family members who had served I knew enough to not fully trust any aviation guarantee nor any promised training or career track, and that before signing I should be entirely willing to end up crawling through the mud with a rifle for a couple of years.
Companies are crying for skilled workers? You know why? I do. None of these companies are willing to take on apprentices, an apprentice takes like 5 years to be able to be considered licensed. These companies just got the attitude of "someone else can train these people". Now they are paying for it. I went through school as a millwright, and also a year in the electrical field. Walk out the door to look for an apprenticeship, I got laughed out of interviews.
In California, most community colleges have a lot of trade classes, welding, culinary, etc. that's where I would start. If you're hobby oriented, and there's a "maker community" near you, you might find someone doing classes. But I'd head to the local 2yr public college: they'll teach you the "industrial way".
If software jobs die, at least you won't go hungry. Entry level welding pays poorly, but better than welfare and fast food, and is actually a 40hr+ a week kind of job. Figure $25/hr as an independent, maybe 20/hr as an "employee"
Very much a boom/bust kind of job though. But if you're sober, show up on time, don't have felony convictions, you're way ahead of a lot of your co-workers. You'll never lack for (low paid) technical work.
The Wall Street Journal is doing a selling program.
What they are selling is this offer of a new kind of educational success:
"...high schools should introduce students to the pleasure and pride they can take in making and building things in shop class."
Who is the audience they are selling something to:
"They are asking High School and Junior College Board members to re-allocate education funds to re-open shop classes. The article is selling an educational concept to the School Boards and the people who elect them.
What is the interest group on whose behalf the Wall Street journal is proposing this cumulative billion dollar shift in educational priorities?
Well I ask you, what is the hottest industrial sector in America at this time? As of April 2014 it seems to me that we are in the midst of a boom of the natural gas extraction industries and the Canadian and North Dakota tar sands petroleum extraction industries.
The problem is, the Mauna Loa CO2 observatory CO2 level is 399.65 PPM and the CO2 level is increasing 1 PPM about every 5 months. Many of the industries that employ high pay welders and pipefitters are industries that extract petroleum. Petroleum when burned, even natural gas produce CO2.
The deep, extremely important issue not addressed at all by the WSJ article is as follows: The major structures from the initial petroleum boom are already built. The oil boom is now in a political phase as cas rich oil interests try to buy elections and stall CO2 emission reduction activity for another 2 years.
So this article is a diversion. The Roman empire was felled by lead in the drinking water of the Patricians. The American empire is experiencing the twilight glow of petroleum business success as it breathes in more and more CO2. Remember kids, eat more Jellyfish!
Slashdot really needs more commenters like this.
"How many of us liked shop? How many young people should be training for skilled manufacturing and service jobs rather than getting history or political science degrees?"
I don't know, perhaps you could ask someone who could give you an answer based on prior experience - like an economic historian?
Once you become an incorporeal abstract concept, your needs are much simpler -- two coins for the ferry man.
--
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
I'm an engineer in a small manufacturer that uses this model. One really terrible consequence of the "everyone goes to college" mentality is that people who go to trades school are increasingly bottom of the barrel people. So, we have a lot of 18-25 year old welders who can't read drawings, can't think for themselves, basically can't do anything but make mediocre tig welds. We have some smart old-timers, and yes they are well paid because without them the low-paid young guys would be useless,