What are you talking about? Just try and find a plumber, carpenter or contractor that isn’t backlogged for months.

There’s a ton of really good blue collar jobs, often where you are your own boss. Unfortunately, society is pushing everyone to college.

Sort of.

Many trades here in Australia spent two decades employing apprentices in insufficient numbers, for whatever reasons, to meet projected requirements.

Now we have insufficient tradespeople to meet demand, blowing out wait times to things like "not gonna happen this year mate" to repair a roof, and 7 months to fabricate new windows. The builders, roofers, and glaziers that do exist would prefer to work on green fields developments where they can do the same thing 50 times without moving their tools and equipment further than next door, so prices on minor repairs to existing houses have increased by a factor of "don't want the work, multiple the cost by five and quote at that" and that capacity is being eaten up by people borrowing $700,000 to fully renovate.

It doesn't help that the building and fabrication trades have been run almost entirely by obnoxiously unbearable pricks, and when you spend twenty years telling everyone bullying isn't ok, is it any wonder young people don't want to do physically demanding work in terrible conditions working with obnoxiously unbearable pricks? When it's -10 degrees C outside, it's minus -10 in your work environment, when it's 40 plus degrees C it's 40 plus degrees in your work environment, and people rarely make big changes to themselves, so here we are.

You're right.

At the same time the common alternatives of computer games and tiktok aren't going to build much of a future.

Then for those that are motivated or smart there's plenty of other pathways in Australia today.

This is really only true for certain locations. Also, to be your own boss means you have to understand how to obtain the licenses, start the business, etc. Many of the people who could do the actual job may not be able to the overhead to be their own boss. The companies do background checks and most don't really train. The overall percentage of these blue collar jobs are a much lower percentage than they used to be. So there's more competition. Good luck getting hired with even a minor criminal record or it you don't have a driver's license.

I would quit my job today if I could make $100k

It's possible that most people just dont want to be plumbers, right? Maybe they would like a chance to do something they think is more interesting.

To suggest people just do the thing that makes them money highlights another problem if you ask me.

The question at hand is whether there are opportunities for people to make a living and support a family, not whether everyone can have a dream job. For the majority of humans throughout time, work has never been something that people do because they couldn't think of anything they'd rather be doing. It's always been a means to an end.

Your comment suggests that it's not opportunities that have been lost in recent decades, it's that the younger generations' expectations for what life owes them have changed.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, to a point. But it's not accurate to claim that the lack of dream jobs out there means that there are fewer opportunities for gainful employment than in generations prior.

I think I'd rather be a plumber or electrician than a dev. I'm so tired of all the BS at work. At least in those jobs you aren't sedentary and you actually get to see the positive impact you make on someone's life. Sure you might get some difficult customers occasionally, or be dealing with literal shit.

I think this speaks to the heart of the matter, the expectations that people want.

Yes it's beyond possible, it's clear that's the case, otherwise there wouldn't be a shortage of plumbers given they can make money to live or even raise a family on.

But the sense of expectation has grown way beyond that, everyone wants to be an actor so they spend their time on tiktok, which is a winners market, and then the leftover masses that didn't build skills or work ethic complain about having to start at the bottom of the more 'realworld' pathways available.

For most of human history people just did what made them money to live, and were glad if they have the chance to do just that. Go and spend six months in a third world country and you will see this is true.

The fact that people long for fun and interesting jobs that don't exist, is indeed a sperate problem.

It does not negate the fact that there are high paying jobs available without college degrees.

So people should do only what they like and society is to fulfill anyone's wish and expectation?

How would this be doable?

Here's an alternative: everyone is responsible for himself, society is responsible only for the ill end disabled. Everyone is provided with a framework that enables him to learn, work and find himself a way to live and fulfill his wishes.

> Just look at the lack of non-college work in the US that pays a living wage.

A problem that doesn't exist. Plenty of that work out there.

Try to get a custom 3-phase power line run in the datacenter. Average age of electricians is about 55 around here. Nobody goes into the trades because the trades will "destroy your body before you're 35" yet all the thin healthy tradesmen around here are mid-50s boomers. Hmm. The union local total compensation package for mere journeymen is a hair over $65/hr because of mandatory health care and retirement extras that most people can only dream of, but even the takehome pay alone is still over $45/hr. On one hand that's only about twice what you'd get for emptying trash cans at Costco. On the other hand, you don't have to empty trash cans at costco AND you get a cooler more interesting job. Either way that power line isn't going to install itself.

The real mystery is all it takes to be an electrician is ambition, low time preference, agency, self discipline, motivation, concentration and study, and especially staying away from drugs, so how do you find people like that in a culture that glorifies the opposite and vilifies those values? Well, you don't ... thus they end up very unsuccessful in life and my power line ends up not installed.

If doing what you are told leaves you unsuccessful, maybe time to start distrusting those people when they give life advice. That's going to be the real turmoil and rebellion point in the next decade. "We were promised all our lives that self destructive behavior and self destructive beliefs would lead to a pleasant mirage."

Or maybe that the majority that possess those traits go into other higher paying jobs that also require those traits. Starting around here for electricians is closer to $25-35. If you are concentrating and studying the NEC, you could alternatively study to be a dev and make more.

Union elections in the bay area rake in about 140k/year after 5 years on the job. Highly competitive, but no college required.

That's in a HCOL and about half the starting salary of a FAANG dev, probably about the same as starting for a non-FAANG dev in that area, right?

If I could be reasonably expected to make that in my area (Philly region), then that sounds great and is substantially more than I make as a dev.

That sounds about right.

Im not saying it is the best job in the region, just demonstrate that blue collar jobs can still provide a comfortable living with such salaries.

I would expect it to scale by regional COL.

And this is perhaps the issue, people compare expectations against 'best' much more than they did in the past, because of all the (soc)media pushing it at them.

>especially staying away from drugs

We know very different electricians ;). But seriously, I wonder how much of the 'conservatives are uneducated!' trope that gets thrown around in conversations like this is due to conservatives in high school placing a higher value on providing for a family, doing the math, and consequently getting into the trades rather than university.

> Nobody goes into the trades because the trades will "destroy your body before you're 35" yet all the thin healthy tradesmen around here are mid-50s boomers.

I just wanted to point out that this is quite literally textbook survivorship bias. Instead of looking around and talking to the people that made it that far, you should try talking to those that didn't.

To be fair, I feel that the sedentary lifestyle of being a dev is just as damaging. Heart surgery vs joint replacement basically.

You can't replace your back.

And if you become obese from a sedentary job, it is easy to herniate the disks in your back doing ordinary things.

People doing manual labor are just as obese as us office workers.

I live in a poor country than US and skilled car mechanics, skilled construction workers and skilled nurses are able to make a decent living. Some even better than people with an University degree.

Maybe you mean both non-college work and non-skilled work?