The decline of skilled trades

Great Debates
1

This thread got me thinking. Someone brings up the fact that skilled trades are becoming less and less common among the lower and middle classes because everyone’s sending the kids off to college.

I come from a working class/lower middle class background. My dad’s only had one job, ever (how crazy is that?!)- when he got out of the Navy he started working as a laborer for an air conditioning company. When the owner retired my dad bought the company, and has run it ever since. He went to college when I was a kid to get his degree, and my mom only has a high school education. But, times are tough and my dad can’t seem to find good help so my dad, who is 62, still crawls around in attics installing air conditoners. Why bust your ass in the Florida heat for $10 or $12 bucks an hour when you can sit in a nice cubicle as a telemarketer?

My entire family (4 kids) has worked there at some point or other, and my sister still does. Hell, I think I’m still technically on the payroll because they gave me W-2s for last year for like $200. My dad tought me how to do installs, replace drain lines, and wire thermostats (I’m a chick BTW) and still calls me in sometimes because moving an air handler or condensing unit is not a one-person job.

The majority of my (male) friends work in skilled trades- about 50/50 surveyors and pipefitters. The pipefitters are in the union, and talking to one a few weeks ago I found out I could join the union (Plumbers, Steamfitters, Pipefitters and HVAC), probably as a second-year apprentice because of my prior experience. If it weren’t for the creepy roofers I had to deal with in the past (boobs are a liability on a job site) I probably would. Making $14 bucks an hour working 7-3:30, with the possibility for time and a half on Saturdays would eliminate my need for student loans, and still allow me to attend classes in the evening. Plus, a trade is a good thing to fall back on if necessary, even if you’re not planning to retire a union man. Good pay, great benefits, and almost guaranteed employment for the rest of your life. Right?

Maybe not. It seems that skilled labor is no longer attractive to your average kid entering the workforce. College is seen as a necessity for even the most mediocre students. Nobody wants to go to trade schools anymore. My dad was shocked to hear me talk about my friends in the union, he said he hadn’t heard the word “pipefitter” in 20 years. The union guys often complain about contractors who use non-union immigrant laborers because they’re competing for the same jobs but will take half the pay.

This doesn’t seem to bode well for the average Joe without the ability, desire, or means to go to college. Don’t get me wrong- I think everyone should have the opportunity for higher education, but it’s not for everybody and I don’t think that kids should feel pressured to do it. The skilled trades are losing the prestige (if you can call it that) they once had, unions are dying, and immigrant laborers willing to work for a pittance are everywhere. What does this mean for future generations? Will the skilled trades as respectable middle-class employment all but disappear?

2

Let me tell you something.

My brother is no dummy, but he was always one of those guys who wasn’t a great book learner. All of his teachers loved him, he had tons of friends, he was a good athlete in school, but his grades were mediocre. His guidance counselors of course pressured him to keep them up, which he did as much as he could. After high school he attended one year of college, which was a complete and total disaster. He didn’t like the work, stopped going to class, partied a lot, and bombed almost every class.

He joined the Navy, chose a job very much in keeping with his mechanical aptitude (machinist mate on a submarine). He did very well. This experience got him into an apprentice program as a millwright in the steel mill he worked in after leaving the Navy, a big step up from just being a laborer there.

Now he has his journeyman’s papers, and absolutely loves his job. Plus he has a valuable credential that should keep him employed for some time to come. He makes more than some college graduates, and his lifestyle is very family centered and comfortable.

If his counselors (and, admittedly, my parents) had not pressured him to go to college, they would have saved him a lot of disappointment and time.

3

I come from a middle class family, I went to parochial schools and private high school and i graduated from college, as did pretty much all my friends. And several of my friends work in construction, doing home remodels and such. Not the kind of work that a degree in Government, History or Fine Arts would seem to prepare one for. It also seems a little funny (ha ha funny that is) the some of the dumb jock guys that we used to roll our eyes at in high school are also working in “skilled trades”. Do we call tile work a skilled trade?

But none of these guys are in a union as far as I know.

Remember the episode of “The Cosby Show” where the Huxtibles had their bathroom remodeled by the oldest daughter’s college friends? It was quite a shock for the parents to see all that education go to waste, at least initially. But they did the work well, in a timely manner and at a fair price. So we all learned a lesson about the value of doing a good job, even if you wasted a Columbia University engineering degree to do plumbing. :wink:

4

The nice thing about being in the trades is that your job can’t be outsourced. However, you are, as you say, vulnerable to immigrants who do the job cheaper. Around here (the Boston area), most of the painters are now Brazilian, and nearly all of the flooring guys are Vietnamese. However, where licensure is still regulated by the state (plumbers and electricians, mostly), there is still plenty of opportunity.

Part of this is the good old law of supply and demand, and as the supply shrinks and the price rises, I think you’ll see people going back into the trades. Look what’s happened with nursing, where wages have skyrocketed, and the demand to get into the profession is huge. Nursing schools are turning people away by the boatload. I think you’ll ultimately see something of the same thing for the skilled trades – particularly now that college has gotten so expensive, even for state schools, and the value of a bachelor’s degree has been diminished by oversupply.

5

Depends on the job. I’ve had relatives who were pipefitters at the local factory. They retired well before the factories closed up when manufacturing went overseas, fortiunately for them. You can switch to plumbing houses and businesses, of course, but you wouldn’t be doing the same kind of factory pipefitting.

6

True enough. I was thinking of the kinds of tradespeople who work on private houses. Even there, I suppose, evolution in the technology means that some of the work can be more effectively outsourced – to the homeowner. For instance, these days, changing a faucet is easy, because you just swap out the flexible hoses. You don’t have to sweat a joint anymore, or run new pipe.

7

My brother is fortunate to have chosen the trade he did. Millwrights maintain large machinery and industrial processes, and I gather that there aren’t many of them entering the field these days.

His skills should be easily transferable to any kind of industrial process.

8

In time, many of the skilled trades will be done by immigrants. Right now, the trades that have seen the greatest influx of immigrants are the skilled trades that take the least amount of technical training: roofers, drywallers, bricklayers and painters. In time, trades like tile work will be done more and more by immigrants.

Trades that take years of advanced training, and require high levels of English will remain resistant to large amount of immigrants. HVAC, Electrical, Life Safety, Plumbing/Pipefitting, Controls, etc require much higher levels of general aptitude like math and English and diagnostic/reasoning sklls. It will take time for immigrants to dominate those trades in the same fashion that drywallers have. But it is certainly possible.

Skilled trades have fallen out of favor. They are hard, dirty jobs in many cases. And we live in a society where being a computer programmer has more cache. (pun intended) Yet many skilled tradesmen make very good livings. It is common for a skilled tradesman to make more than a college graduate; often much more. There are also many career paths in the skilled trades that the average high schooler isn’t told about. Many are estimators, CAD operators, project managers, Foreman, sales people, etc. I know many people in the skilled trades who make [much] more than $100K per year; and I know at least a half dozen who started their own shops and are multi-millionaires.

An enterprising, bright, hard working person who enters the trades and go through technical training (which in most cases is as much education over 4-8 years as a BS degree) can expect to make a decent living----and in some cases a very, very good living.

It’s not for everyone. If a person enjoys working with their hands, can take difficult or dirty work, and has an aptitude for it, it can be a very satisfying career.

9

Almost all the millwrights in Michigan are unemployed.

10

But if they moved somewhere else, they might be employable, wouldn’t you think?

That’s a commentary about Michigan, not about millwrights. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’ve had problems there in the last few years.

My brother is pretty clearheaded about his career choice. If he has to move to work someday, he’ll do it.

11

They can find work here in Colorado. My brother is facilities engineer for one of Denver’s largest hotels, can’t hire a decent millwright to save his hide. He has to have work contracted out at exhorbitant prices, while his own shop goes unstaffed.

12

I don’t know that it’s really true. Specific skilled trades are falling by the wayside while others are taking their place. Every time I see a new glass and metal monstrosity pop up overnight in Manhattan I lament the loss of the art of stonemasonry, but at the same time there are tons of Graphic Artists, Audio Engineers, Systems Engineers, Massage Therapists, Chiropractors, Sculptors, Painters, Architects, Gardeners etc…

Certainly a generic liberal arts degree is not a skilled trade, but people get trade degrees all the time, and many of them end up working in their trade.

13

What skilled labor can be outsourced? Any job that can be scripted.

That was the conclusion of a guest on the Bob Brinker radio show several months ago.

What was ment by that statement?

If you can “script” the job…if you can describe it; first you do A, then B, then C…that job can be performed cheaper by someone overseas. And, it was concluded, at some point that job WILL be outsourced.

One strike against many skilled trades may not be that they’re losing prestige, but that they’re able to be shipped out. Don’t we keep running across stories that the U. S. is now more of a service economy?

14

It’s just a feeling we have, I think, that skilled labor is “beneath” today’s kids. Young people aren’t really encouraged to go into the trades. It would be interesting to see what number of jobs have been turned over to machines, especially in factories.

15

I don’t think it’s a matter of being ‘beneath’ people, simply the lack of a coherent tradition to teach people the value of it.

16

The death of skilled trades:

  1. Killing the training in high schools. Everybody is now above average, and if a guidance counseler tells a kid to get their automatic transmission certification instead of taking the college prep classes, they are evil. I went to high school in Tulsa. There you could go to school for half day, and spend half day at Tulsa Vocational Technical. When you graduated high school you also finished with your training certs for welding, machinist, etc. It was a great program, and Los Angeles is now re-examining this type of training in high school.

Face it folks, only 1/3 will get their bachelors.

  1. Putting down the skilled trades. We make fun of plumbers crack without realizing that we just paid that guy $200 to fix the toilet.

  2. South of the border immigration. This can depress wages, reduce safety controls and change the dynamics (especially when it is done by illegal immigrants). In Southern California, a job boss needs to speak Spanish. In Colorado, non-Spanish speaking construction workers have trouble finding work because so much is done by immigrants.

17

I guess it depends on who “we” are. What generation are you? I’ve actually found that, in my generation (I’m 33; I have friends ranging from 25 to 39) work has been decoupled from that sort of judgment.

One friend has a masters in education. He decided he hated teaching, and went into HVAC instead. Worked there for several years, crawling through attics, etc., before he was able to purchase a bicycle shop–cycling is his big love–and now he sells and fixes bikes all day.

Another girl I know graduated from Vassar with an English degree. She’s a baker.

My wife went to college for costume design. She now works as a winemaker, which mostly involves her hefting 120-lb. barrels about, scrubbing gunk out of tanks, adding sacks of chemicals to wine, operating pumps and hoses, and fixing various cranky valves and fittings.

A number of my friends are carpenters. They do everything from creating custom cabinets, to designing sculptural mirrors, to building additions onto homes. Some have college degrees, some don’t.

18

As a sidetrack, I wonder how history will look at the building boom of recent years. As I see so many Mexican immigrants building the homes around me, I wonder if they’ll be remembered in 50-100 years the same way that we remember the Irish and the Chinese for building the railroads, or the Mohawks for walking the high steel in New York?

19

Yeah, that seems to be the case for pipefitting as well. My best friend’s dad was a pipefitter (that’s how his sons got into it, and then got their friends jobs too- my friends are slowly but surely taking over the local) and 10 years ago, there wasn’t much pipefitting work to be done around here. He travelled to New York, Boston, etc and spent most of the year out of town. But he managed to support a wife and 3 kids on his income, even though his wife did work part-time as a Home Health Aide to the elderly.

Now there’s a huge construction boom here in town, so there’s plenty of pipefitting jobs to be had. Of course, he just retired a couple years ago, but it means his sons can work locally instead of travelling or moving.

20

Germany has an exquisite system that addresses this. From what I gather, the school system bifurcates at around grade 8 where students go down trade tracks or college-prep track. I don’t know whether it’s true, but in any case, I think such a system should be implemented, even as a pilot program, in the United States. It ensures that high school graduates will be able to make a living doing something.

  • Honesty