A problem that makes this particularly bad is that many now don't pay at all until you manage to become qualified as a high-skill specialist. A lot of the low-end work has been automated, which has gutted the traditional pipeline where you start with low-skill jobs and move upwards. It's not just that low-skill welding jobs (say) don't pay well; they simply don't exist. Only high-skill welding work is in demand, and a beginning welder is very likely to be unemployed. He or she might try to get free work to improve, but even that is iffy. I'm not convinced the odds are actually better here than the (already not great) liberal-arts degree -> unpaid internship -> office job route. If you really want to DIY a trade without a college degree, I'd recommend learning PHP or web design before I'd recommend trying to break into welding. Or learn something about CNC machines and get a job servicing the machines that replaced those low-end trade jobs...
I looked into this at some point out of personal interest, and really the numbers don't bear it out. There are a lot of anecdotes about how we "need skilled tradesmen", but the pay and jobs just aren't there. When you take into account the lack of training opportunities, the high risk of injury, the generally short careers, and the unstable unemployment, the expected earnings from taking up a trade are much worse than just getting a college degree.
I'm not sure where you're getting these anecdotes about poor pay, high risk of injury, short careers and unstable employment. Most of the guys I work with have had long careers (often with a single employer for 10-20 years) and haven't sustained any serious injuries. The ones who don't want to take on management roles get paid very well even though they're 'just' highly skilled tradesmen, and the ones who want to go further run their own companies and are doing very well for themselves.
Ironically, I actually terminated my career as a software developer because I was developing RSI and found the work rather unsatisfying (despite really enjoying programming work in general). Working as a tradesman has so far proven to be far more satisfying and far better for my health - plus it leaves me free to work on my own projects after hours rather than forcing me to leave them unfinished since I already spent a full day working inside.
I'm not sure this is really that ironic. Sitting in a chair for 8-14+ hours a day, focusing 25" in front of your face, slouching, pushing your hands into an unnatural position and tweaking your ligaments and tendons, and being stressed about maintaining a level of production is exactly what I would prescribe for physical degeneration.
Throw poor nutrition and little to no exercise in the mix and it's amazing how atrophied the back muscles get. Constant headaches from misusing the trapeziuseseseses and other muscles around c7, lower back pain, pain between the shoulders, this is all the type of back pain that gets "blue collar" workers depending on various analgesics and narcotics.
The fact that it's preventable is especially worrisome, as it's just as hazardous as shorting live voltage down your arm. You're trained to be cognizant of the risks and developers are not.
The worst case injuries are certainly worse - a switch room explosion which kills you and your colleagues on the spot is worse than RSI - but as you say we're trained to minimize those risks and most people will work their entire careers without major injury
Years ago I applied with the local IBEW, earned very high marks on the written test and interview, and it took them YEARS* to call me back with an invitation to start the program. By then I had other things going on and couldn't take the opportunity.
At the time I had a feeling I wasn't approaching things in an optimal way, but I sure couldn't figure out how to create a more immediate opportunity.
*not hyperbole, it literally was years later.
It's no different really to getting a job later on in life. If you do a lot of networking then jobs will fall into your lap seemingly without any effort, but if you don't have an introduction then you are probably going to have to do a lot of cold calling and respond to a lot of job applications before you get lucky.
As a new entrant to the work force your best bet is probably to get an intro from a parent or family friend, asking an acquaintance to take you on as a favour. If you can't do that then you either need to try your luck cold calling or learn to hustle
You might have been held back by your high test scores, believe it or not. When I first applied to start my apprenticeship the HR chap was very hesitant to give me a job purely because I had good grades and was currently working as a software developer. He didn't think I was the 'tradesman type' and that I might prefer an office job!
Isn't that have the exact same 'problem', where only high-skill developers are paid $40/hour and a beginner is going to have trouble finding work and when he does it will only pay $12/hour?
I think the GP was saying that the low end welding jobs have been automated out of existence; I don't think that's the case for low-end coding jobs.
I'm not so sure- it seems like times are pretty hard in the website business, which always seemed like the primary swimming pool for low end/beginning devs. Twitter + Tumblr can do a lot.
When I was doing it many years ago, in Memphis, TN, a first year apprentice made, basically minimum wage, or something close to it, but graduates of the program made an actual living wage, or a rate of something like $25 an hour.
Those rates have likely gone up, since I'm talking at least decade-and-a-half old numbers, but the notion that they don't pay well is a relative term. Compared to minimum wage, they pay extremely well, once one reaches a level akin to 'college-educated'.
The majority of my family are blue collar workers, in trades from electrical to HVAC to fiber optics, etc., and they're all doing well. They aren't rich by any metric, but they all have comfortable housing, adequate/reliable vehicles, ample food, and enough surplus that nobody's starving, and nobody's generally in more debt than their mortgage.
In today's economy, that is something worth mentioning. That there are 600,000 of these jobs[1] is baffling to me, and merits further research.
[1] - Potentially, I'd like to see how many of them match up to what I'm picturing, as I see the numbers in dispute, so it's possible that there are a few of these jobs, while the rest are far lower, I dunno.
As far as benefits go, they were indeed very good. As has been mentioned around here, these jobs tend to be somewhat more physically demanding than the average programming / desk jockey position, and the result of that was better than average health insurance. The insurance industry everywhere has changed a lot in the past decade, so I'd recommend doing your own research.
For perspective, my cousin got Lyme disease, and didn't catch it until well after he'd been symptomatic. He was a drummer in a band, had thick, long hair, and had a tick on his scalp that went unnoticed. When he first began acting erratically, his parents chalked it up to typical teenage rebellion. He drove a car into the house and didn't realize it, ran another car into a telephone pole, and basically got to 'late-stage' symptoms before it was inspected.
He spent months in the hospital, specialists were flown in, and ultimately, he was made better -- though later in life he's developed early arthritis, which is believed to have been caused by the Lyme. All totalled though, nobody was bankrupted by the medical treatment and cost of the rather excessive care involved.
As for job stability, there are indeed periods of boom and bust. Boom periods often involve working optional overtime, which is compensated as overtime -- nobody in a union works off the clock. When I was a member, I never had a day where I missed work due to lack of employment, but I know that it does happen. I can't speak for how frequently it is from experience, but the union hall makes an effort to keep everyone as employed as they're able. In an up economy, this likely means steady work, in a down economy, I don't know.
Anyway, if you have any other questions, feel free to email me (contact in my profile), and I'll answer what questions I'm able. The (again) disclaimer is that my experience is dated, and a lot has happened since then, but as most of my family back home are tradesmen, I can ask around for answers if need be.
PHP is what your neighbors can pay for.
Mike Rowe agrees with you, so what's your point? Of course it is hard. Mike's point is our culture is becoming increasingly averse to engaging in hard, physical labor, even in the cases where compensation greatly exceeds that of many other fields.
I do not see any rational reason not to engage in skilled tradeswork if one has the desire to. It's not my path, but I respect it.
[1] I am so not getting into an debate over this, having done both.
This is an interesting parallel to the fallacy that many fall into in trying to get really good at sports so that they have a straight path to a lucrative career. Simply put, statistically you are not likely to be able to cut it in that industry.
In fact, even working as a labourer at an oil well is easy enough that one of my friends who normally works as a graphic designer did it for a few months while traveling in Canada. The hardest part of his experience was that he didn't see his girlfriend very much.
I spent the first 23 years of my life as a weak, desk-dwelling geek. I never thought I could work a trade. I never even thought a trade was worthwhile work. Now I'm an industrial electrician with a great job and a fulfilling life. The work is 'hard', sure. There's a lot of manual labour and the sites we work at (abattoirs, waste water treatment plants, chemical mixing plants etc) are all unpleasant for one reason or another, but the day you get over yourself and get properly stuck into the job you realise that it's actually worthwhile work and it isn't even very hard. Even for somebody who spent the majority of their life training to work at a desk.
Comparing trade work to being an elite athlete is absurd, too. Statistically speaking, there's no reason what so ever that would prevent you from doing well in a trade. Quite the opposite. Most trades just require somebody willing to do the work. They don't require unusually high IQ (although high creativity can be great for problem solving), they don't require unusually high fitness, they just require somebody to do the work. If you want to do well, do lots of work.
It's pretty simple. Most people just aren't willing to do it because they don't think trade work is respectable. Oh, and it's 'hard'.
And, I am far from against trade work. If anything, I wish I had been more considering of them when I was younger.
Regarding my comparison. I meant simply that it was similar. Most "trade" jobs are things that you can make decent money on, certainly. Interestingly enough, so are most "sport" related jobs. You may not be the star athlete, but a lot of "mediocre" sport jobs pay quite decently. Especially if you are able to fully devote yourself to it. To think just getting your foot in the door is a sure path to that "straight line to a 6 figure salary" is absurd.
Maybe we're all fatter, but if we are talking about 18 year olds getting into a physically demanding job, that should be far less of an issue (less of an issue as it would be for, say, a 35 year old, who has had 17 more years of their body decaying and 17 more years of eating too much).
The general point about kids not necessarily needing to go to college, I 100% agree with. Though, all of the numbers I've ever been shown do paint a picture that statistically you are better off doing so than not.
Programming jobs are mentally taxing. Mentally taxing enough that people not properly suited for it might become depressed, decide that they're a failure, and/or have a very hard time.
Jobs in science require math skills that are hard / expensive to acquire, which one might never master or become good at.
Jobs in law require very expensive educations, passing an extremely hard bar exam, years of work for low pay and long hours, for a job that only might prove to be good paying after the fact.
Becoming a doctor requires expensive education; Surgery require that plus steady hands. Etc., etc.
Jobs and trades have different pros and cons. I agree that yes, trade skills are physically demanding, but having done them before, they aren't that physically demanding. It isn't the same as being on a prison chain gang, and an average work day is less intensive than a couple of hard hours at a gym.
Obviously, this varies from trade to trade, but the I agree with you that the idea that trade skills should not be considerable because they require physical effort is fairly silly, unless the suggestion is that we should all eschew all forms of work, because every job has some sort of down side.
I don't know of any high pay, low skill, low stress, cushy jobs in the world. If someone knows of one that doesn't have some other downside I haven't listed, feel free to let me know. Email address is in my profile.
Conversely, I've had a trade skill position, and considered it neither high-stress nor low paid. There are obviously higher paid positions out there, but there are also a bevy of far lower paid positions out there.
I'm curious as to how you discount the stress of high stress positions though. Not necessarily doubting it, but my personal anecdata contradicts it.
I can't find the studies right now, but I was simply quoting results from research from memory. Frankly, I call BS on the typical idea that higher paid jobs are more stressful in general. Sure, you can find examples to suit an argument, and I'm sure many of us have had a high paid job that is stressful, but we've also probably had a high paid job that isn't stressful, or isn't stressful most of the time. Being poor and having no control over your day is far worse, and I say this as someone who has only had brief bouts of financial stress.
I'm just saying that there are indeed jobs that are high-stress, and that typically, the trade-off for that stress is in higher pay. There are certainly high paying jobs that aren't inherently stressful, and I'd wager that most of us, as programmers, enjoy them quite a lot. There are also certainly low paying jobs that are extremely stressful -- state level politics, social workers, etc., are likely to fall within those demographics.
Just as certainly though, there do exist high-stress jobs that also are high pay, and that said high stress is a check mark in the con column against it, just as 'physical labor is hard' is a valid check mark in the con column against trade labor.
Are jobs that pay less than minimum wage even offered to citizens or documented immigrants?
I don't enquire into people's visa status as a rule of thumb, so I'm afraid I can't answer whether they were being paid under the table or not. However, the pay rates were quite respectable.
And did they want their kids to grow up to be landscapers working 70 hours/week as well? Or did they perhaps want their kids to become fat, spoiled Americans?
But let me make a few factual points, borne out of my experience and the experience I have in growing up around tradespeople and being related to tradespeople.
* The trades are physically hard labor
edit: It might not be clear what this entails, as perhaps not everyone reading has performed it. It entails working 40-50 hours per week, in nearly all possible weather (for outside jobs), where you must maintain (in addition to the work itself) a personal fitness regimen not to be injured through strain. In the pursuit of this work, you will probably find yourself moving objects up to perhaps several hundred pounds, with possibly zero help. You will almost certainly be on your feet (or knees) all day except for breaks.
* The trades expose you to non-negligable levels of risk of injury on a daily basis.
edit: A few examples, taken from real life experiences. Falling off the roof of a house and breaking vertebrae - lifelong medication after that. Wearing out knee mechanisms due to going up and stairs with 50+ pounds in your hands daily for many years - lifelong care required. Heavy object falling onto shop floor within inches feet - would have chopped feet off or required cutting off the boots if the steel toes had held. Other examples readily available from medical professionals and friends in the trades. These risks are systemic in the trades by and large.
* The trades do not pay well until/unless you specialize into certain areas.
Let me clarify a bit on what I mean by paying well. I mean, bluntly, that trades frequently pay in (current US dollars) between 12 and 25 dollars per hour; frequently without benefits and (due to seasonal demand and project-based nature of the work) frequent lack of steady employment. Mike Rowe cited a welder's experience as a counterexample of my thesis. The fact that supply & demand makes certain skilled trades very valuable does not obviate the reality of the poor pay endemic to the field, paticularly for the semi-skilled and unskilled areas.
All that being said, it's been documented in both popular culture and research that self-centeredness is on the rise; it's getting to be well understood that many modern Americans simply don't want to work hard in unpleasant conditions (Mike Rowe cited an example of people who quit training programs en masse in the SE US because of the heat). This has been borne out anecdotally by the number of immigrants doing these same hard work in unpleasant conditions while native-born "modern Americans" moan about being unable to find work.
That doesn't meant that it's a particularly pleasant experience to find out that "pursue your passion" means very little in the broader job market, after you've pursued your financially negative ROI degree (with the utmost support of your parents, friends, and other authority figures). And that's something that I think should be brought out of this debate: don't ruin your life in the pursuit of a dream - be responsible with your dreaming; fulfil your duties and calculate your risks.
edit:
I don't have a real conclusion here. But I think it's reasonable to evaluate the risk/reward payoff for the trades and seek higher education as an alternative.
I suppose a more knowledgable observer could draw some interesting connections between what unionization provides and what higher education degree jobs provide and infer some interesting conclusions. I can't guess as to what those conclusions are. I'd like to read some discussion on that topic sometime.