That might depend on the area - my understanding (from the electricians I know) is that union electricians in my area tend to work either on new construction or for large employers that keep electricians on staff , not for the licensed electricians I might hire to work on my house.
I worked for a fire alarm and equipment company. I started as a field tech, recharging fire extinguishers. The economy was in tank, the slaughter house where I was working closed its doors and this was the first job I could find. It was a small company and there was one technician who installed and maintained alarm systems. I had spent a few days pulling wire for him.
He suddenly quit. The boss asked me if I thought I could do the job, and I said sure. It was a learn as you go endeavor. He was very understanding, and we went on from there. Eighteen months ago I retired from that company.
Snap On (Strap On), Mac, Matco, – they all stopped. If I remember correctly each one offered no interest payment plans through the driver and he owed several hundred dollars to each, one close to a thousand dollars. Plus their “sales”, $400.00 extension set ON SALE!! for $275.00 and get a FREE HAT! What a deal!
The kid wants to fit in and not have “cheap” tools, older more experience coworkers tell him "borrow a tool once, fine, need to borrow it twice, buy it. Hard to convince a 20 year old that yes, your sockets, ratchets and hand wrenches that you use all the time should be top quality but the tool you only use rarely for a odd job, Craftsman, Masterforce, etc… would be just as good.
As he is still paying back his loan to us, any tool purchase over $50.00 needs to be approved by me.
Yeah.
I mean, I might have been interested in joining the military at one point in my life but I have physical issues that means in a peacetime volunteer army (AND being female at that time period) I wasn’t really welcome in the armed forces. Honestly, I don’t entirely disagree with the reasoning, either, but knowing that and then having someone to pressure to take such a test… it wouldn’t kill me, but it’s like mocking someone for wearing thick glasses or having asthma - no matter how well I did on the test it wouldn’t matter because I wouldn’t be wanted.
ETA: I did talk to two recruiters when I was 17/18 so the bit about my issues not being something the military wanted to deal with is not a hypothetical. I will give both the recruiters credit - they were extremely tactful about explaining why I wouldn’t be accepted and the reasons why and left me feeling OK with that, which, when dealing with a teenager, is a pretty good trick to pull off.
Do students have to pay for the SAT/ACT whatever? I know the ASVAB would be taxpayer funded.
If all the tests were available evenly to all students, I’d be cool with that.
I question the ASVABs usefulness in helping a high school student find their way forward. It is designed for the use by the military.
Besides for all that, the professional GC has a lot more leverage with the subcontractors, both for pricing and scheduling priorities, than a one-off homeowner does.
Yes, the ASVAB is designed for military use, but aptitudes are applicable to civilian life as well. To a high school kid who wonders just what to do after graduation, the ASVAB could provide direction.
The ASVAB doesn’t determine who will excel at marching or field stripping a weapon. There are many, many jobs in the military besides being a grunt.
~VOW
Some states pay for those tests for their high school students, but over half don’t. For students whose schools don’t pay for the test fees, there’s apparently a need-based fee waiver which can be applied for.
I took the ASVAB to join the Air Force. I don’t recall being given a breakdown that told me anything about myself. It was also 40 years ago. I’m sure things have changed.
That’s a bit rich. I never had a guidance counselor referencing the ASVAB to advise on occupational guidance for non-military occupations nor heard of anyone else having that experience. The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery is exactly what it says; a standardized test to assess high school students potential for filling military occupational specialties and give recruiters names, addresses, and phone numbers of those students to pursue. Pretending as if that isn’t the actual purpose of the ASVAB, and that the Department of Defense doesn’t have a privileged position in identifying, accessing, and recruiting high school students is nonsense because of course it does.
As the largest single employer of non-college educated adults with perennial challenges in meeting enlistment quotas, military recruiters use the ASVAB and access to high schools to maximize their access to potential recruits, and while the gross excesses of fraudulent ‘promises’ of bonuses and prized assignments of the past has been largely curtailed you don’t have to dig too far to find stories of recruits enticed with a contract for some specific MOS only to find themselves doing some other less desirable duty because the military ultimately decides where it needs a cog to fit into its machine. And while it is certainly possible to pick up a trade useful in the real world like engine mechanic, medical technician, electrician, et cetera, the reality is that most occupational specialties don’t translate to good paying jobs in the civilian workforce, hence why there is such an issue with unemployed veterans, notwithstanding the mental and physical health challenges many veterans who have served in our recent wars suffer from with inadequate support.
The best thing to be said about military recruiting out of high school is that it does offer a path for students without traditional backgrounds encouraging post-secondary education, and at least they don’t sign guileless eighteen-year-olds to enormous and unforgivable student debt that they won’t pay off for decades. The Chapter 33 Post-9/11 GI Bill is actually a pretty good deal in comparison to the Montgomery and VEAP versions, although it has also lead to a lot of predatory promotion by unaccredited for-profit colleges, often advertised through the military with little vetting or guidance on the value of such degrees.
Stranger
Mr VOW retiredfrom the Army in 1988. I’m sure things have changed.
There are different job opportunities in each branch of service. The Navy, Air Force, and Marines offer guaranteed placement in job fields. The Army is the only branch which offers guaranteed placement in actual, specific jobs.
There are also monetary incentives for accepting certain jobs and/or place of assignment.
These are two major differences between the Army and The Other Guys. My husband had recruiters from other branches come right up to his desk and accuse him of flat-out lying about those differences. The other recruiter would have a kid shopping around between the branches, and the other recruiter wasn’t about to lose an enlistment by fraudulent recruiting tactics.
Sgt VOW had to pull out his manuals and show The Other Guy that indeed there absolutely were differences.
Many trades translate to civilian counterparts. Many do not. But the military offers training in leadership skills and public speaking. And Active Duty servicemembers can take college level classes with the University of Maryland.
I totally agree that the United States has fallen far short of its obligation to provide medical/physical/emotional care for the servicemembers after discharge. This country is deeply indebted to the men and women who serve.
That service is an honorable job.
~VOW
In my high school, so in the late 80s, the ASVAB was an optional thing that the school arranged for people to take if they wanted, and students got out of class to take it. So definitely supported by the school, but not mandated for everybody.
I did take some sort of vocational aptitude test, which I recall as being oddly specific about things. It recommended that I pursue a career in bending glass to make neon signs. Ironically, I recently found out that my ancestors back in the “old country” were glaziers.
I recall it had questions like
- do you want to work with animals under the direction of veterinarian?
- do you want to clean teeth under the direction of a dentist?
- does installing roofs sound fun?
- have you ever been interested in painting buildings?
No disrespect to hard working vet techs and hygenists (sign post I’m going to say something disrespectful), but why can’t I just be a dentist or a veterinarian?
Well stated. I did a career in the Seabees. It taught me useful trade skills, but it also taught me personnel management, project management and leadership. Along with a degree obtained in night school, this enabled me to work in ever-better construction and facility management jobs and bank my retirement. I don’t regret any of it.
The really good tradespeople like to deal with new construction, where you have a general contractor that hires them to tile 50 bathrooms in a new development , as opposed to having to do 50 individual contracts with homeowners and have to deal with cats and Karens in their way, or the sheetrock having been hung by Uncle Joe instead of a professional. . This general contractor might also hire their competition if they don’t do a good job. So what’s left for homeowners is a bunch of small scale, bottom feeding operators, a few of which might be good, but which have a large percentage of incompetent flakes.
And yeah, kids thinking only coding will save them from a lifetime of flipping burgers and unions providing high barriers to entry to keep wages up are things.
I don’t think this is true.
Firstly, it’s obviously true that it’s a lot easier to work on new construction than on pre-existing construction, for reasons you list and others, but the prices reflect that. People who work on new construction aren’t being paid nearly the same rate for the same nominal job as people who work for homeowners, and the reasons you list are part of that reason.
Further, as mentioned in an earlier post, the GCs have enormous leverage over the sub-contractors, while the playing field is much more even - or even tilted toward the tradesmen - in the case of homeowners. Plus, inspectors are a much bigger factor in new construction.
Lastly, many GCs’ overriding priority is paying rock-bottom price and will knowingly hire shoddy sub-contractors knowing that as long as things look OK and pass inspection they can get away with paying less, and hope things don’t fall apart until they’re long gone, while homeowners are more personally invested in having a quality job done.
Theories aside, IME it’s simply untrue that new construction generally has higher quality tradesmen than the ones who work for homeowners. There are both types in both fields.
True enough. Sometimes you have to be part magician to make renovation work look like something you’d want to live with.
I haven’t read the thread, so forgive me if this has been said. I agree with this theme generally, but wanted to point out another big shift has been towards overseas manufacture of cheap, cheap products such as upholstered furniture. Upholstery might have been a normal thing 1950s middle class people did, but it sure isn’t now, because why would you? It would cost me much more to re-upholster my hideous couch than to just buy a new one and throw the old one out. The market for upholsterers nowadays must be extremely niche.
Same is of course true for small-appliance repairmen, and for that matter, big appliance repairmen. The maintenance of household items is much less of a going economic proposition than used to be, and that has nothing to do with training in the trades or false promises about college degrees.
We bought a 70’s Ekorne couch on Etsy for $600 and had it reupholstered for $2350. It’s awesome. Super sturdy and comfy. Replacement would have been $5-20000 (no shit).
A lot of people “fall into” trades, me for one. I went to Wesleyan with the predictable double major in philosophy and psychology. I got work in Denver as a paralegal (sort of) after college, but what I really wanted to do was live in the mountains and ski and MTB. So…carpentry. My dad was an architect and sometimes GC so I had a background and actually apprenticed with a crew back East. Trades earn good (really good) money in ski towns, but it’s a means to an end. Some people become passionate about it and real craftsmen, others are stoned and just getting a paycheck.
And some just don’t give a damn. I taught myself how to lay in wiring in a panel box so that anybody could take the cover off and instantly trace the wiring. Another electrician and I were wiring identical breaker boxes next to each other at one job. He looked over at what I was doing and said “You do some beautiful work, alright, but you can’t make money that way.” I finished before he did and he ended up asking me to teach him.
https://blog.moonlighting.com/2021/05/learn-reupholstery-and-tap-into-huge-demand-for-this-well-paying-craft/
https://www.catawbacareers.com/demand-for-upholsterers-drives-cvcc-furniture-academy/
You’re not going to become a millionaire tycoon doing upholstery but there is certainly a demand, particularly with the recent interest in retro and antique furniture. It can also serve as a segue into custom furniture building and repair, which can be quire lucrative, but unlike carpentry upholstering requires pretty minimal tool investment beyond a heavy duty sewing machine, large worktable, and some basic hand tools. Sure, most people roll down to Ikea or buy some overpriced Crate & Barrel sofa online but there are certainly enough people looking to rework classic furniture that upholsterers often have months-long waiting lists even for simple jobs.
Stranger