> no one could dream of owning a house and supporting a family of four with no college degree today

There are plenty of tradespeople who would beg to differ.

Are those the same ones being squeezed out of the workforce by companies who are unwilling to pay for their skills? Companies who offer $18 an hour for welders with 10+ years of experience (and gripe about the lack of skilled labor when nobody takes it)?

Reaching the median household income requires around $26 an hour for a single income. It’s getting harder to make that in the trades. Especially when you’re effectively trading your long term health for a paycheck.

The difference seems to be whether you’re in a state with a strong union culture or not.

I’ve seen trade jobs and apprenticeships paying less than what fast food restaurants are offering right now, but everyone swears to me that it’s a 6 figure job. Glassdoor and BLS tell different stories, at least for the regions I’ve lived.

Well I was going to double check and back up my data, but the BLS website is down till Tuesday???

Apprenticeships everywhere get underpaid. In Germany, the idealist model for apprenticeships, I remember reading a few years ago that the pay was 2-3EUR/hour...how does that compare with the US minimum wage? I believe they brought in a minimum wage law to deal with abuses but wages in the US are pretty high (yes, even after healthcare...the US has a public health care system that is as large as most in Europe, double places like the UK).

> Reaching the median household income requires around $26 an hour for a single income.

A bunch of secondary data suggests the average wage for most trades hovers around that average. This implies many Tradespeople earn in excess of the average and that they very much can hope to raise a family of four etc.

Those tradespeople are older. Young people going into the trades often require a degree from a community college.