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If a kid is graduating from HS and wants to do trades, he should just do an 18 month CC program then immediately move to Australia. If you are under age 25 you qualify for all the immigration points. There is also a 1 yr "working holiday" visa with the USA since 2008. Minimum wage for anything is $15/hr. Get hooked up with a guy who needs a helper and bumped up to $20/hr. Low skill trades like tiling pay $50/hr. Electricians make $85-$100/hr. And that's for the guys who don't work in the mines. Miners make even more.
Here are lists of jobs that pay comparable about half the degrees students graduate with today and many pay more than a lot of jobs that new graduates prepare for. Some jobs overlap and are on more than one list.
I think this thread started out an over generalization meeting an over generalization. I don't think people who recommend trades necessarily mean EVERYONE should join a trade.
When I was around 10 or so, my mom had a friend who had an 18 year old son. This 18 year old shocked his parents when he said he wasn't going to college and was going to enter a trade. My mom said things like "I can't believe he is turning down college." He entered the construction trade and started his own handyman service.
Now, I am sure he went through some bad times, some lean times and some good times. But as I sit in an office waiting for my lay off date, I can't help but think, if we added our total incomes over an equal period of time, I am sure his total would come out at a higher number. And particularly when you add in the opportunity cost of I didn't earn an income while going to school full time and he did make an income for those 4 years.
Which isn't to say he might the right choice and I made the wrong choice.
But it does make me me wonder, how come all through Jr High and High School, all my teachers, my mom, my grandfather, my girlfriend, all my class mates, and pretty much everyone I ever had any contact with held the option college was the only way to go.
Never once was it ever presented to me "You should go to college OR enter a trade". It was simply "go to college"
And I did. As did all my classmates, and darn near everyone else of my generation.
When my mom went to college, she was the 1st one in the family to do so. It was a big deal.
When near everyone of my generation went to college, we were told it was a big deal, and then we flooded the market with degrees, and found out, oh, it's no longer such a big deal, because near everyone has a degree now.
INC magazine recently ran an article that there are certain areas of trades where the country as whole is facing a shortage. In part due to so many went off to college and now deem these roles to be beneath them. Which isn't to say everyone should now go enter these trades. But perhaps there should be more of a balance between people entering a trade and going to college.
Even in my hometown, which was once heavily dependent on manufacturing and mining, training in the trades really wasn't possible until after 18, where one of the local CCs ran a vocational program.
Many times people don't go into the trades because they aren't pushed, so young people don't know about them, or training is not available.
There was an article in our local paper a year or so ago about a guy who owned a plumbing company. He needed workers, but he was having a hard time getting decent people to work for him despite the economy. Some of them simply appeared to be morons, doing things like lighting up a cigarette while working inside people's houses, and some of them just couldn't be relied upon to show up on a daily basis.
I looked into surveying. I have a degree in Geography and years of experience in GIS but wanted to make more money and work outside. What I realized is that it takes years as an apprentice living in poverty before you can earn a living wage.
Funny seeing this thread. My dad, who is almost 60, was just telling me today how he slacked off in high school because he knew he never wanted to go to college. He ended up taking some classes at trade school for HVAC and electrical and became a jack of all trades type the rest of his life. He was never a licensed anything, but he was a crew member for other guys' businesses. He mostly enjoyed building maintenance positions where he could do it all and be the guy in charge of his priorities. Here's someone who spent most of his teenage years blackout drunk and yet managed to make a decent living without a college degree.
I often hear folks recommending the trades for young people today. The truth is, most of the young people pushed towards the trades are really not trade material. The trades require manual dexterity, strong work ethic, a competitive drive, a thirst for knowledge, the ability to master metric/STE conversions, decimal to fraction conversions, sometimes trig, and the absolute desire to become a master of their chosen trade.
A major problem is that most people do not have all of those skills and qualities that you mention. For example, I have the math skills that you mention, but I don't have the manual dexterity or the competitive drive. Given how few people have all of the skills and qualities that you mention, the trades really should pay a premium, so that the best people go into them. Skills such as manual dexterity you either have or do not have, and not really something that can be trained. You can maybe fake a competitive drive, but it's still something you either have or don't have.
You also mention that you need "an absolute desire to become a master of their chosen trade". The problem is, we need some way for "average" people to make enough money to support a family with at least a minimal lifestyle. I know somebody will say "average is over", but remember, my definition, 50% of the population is average or below. Even if everybody had multiple advanced degrees in STEM fields from top universities, extensive unpaid internship experience, and willingness and ability to work 80 hour weeks with no time off and minimum wage, that will become the new average, and there will still be half of the population that is average or below. Employment can't be limited to a small elite, since we need some way for everybody to be able to live at least a minimal lifestyle.
A major problem is that most people do not have all of those skills and qualities that you mention. For example, I have the math skills that you mention, but I don't have the manual dexterity or the competitive drive. Given how few people have all of the skills and qualities that you mention, the trades really should pay a premium, so that the best people go into them. Skills such as manual dexterity you either have or do not have, and not really something that can be trained. You can maybe fake a competitive drive, but it's still something you either have or don't have.
You also mention that you need "an absolute desire to become a master of their chosen trade". The problem is, we need some way for "average" people to make enough money to support a family with at least a minimal lifestyle. I know somebody will say "average is over", but remember, my definition, 50% of the population is average or below. Even if everybody had multiple advanced degrees in STEM fields from top universities, extensive unpaid internship experience, and willingness and ability to work 80 hour weeks with no time off and minimum wage, that will become the new average, and there will still be half of the population that is average or below. Employment can't be limited to a small elite, since we need some way for everybody to be able to live at least a minimal lifestyle.
This is a very important point. Most people are "average" by definition.
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