<p>I am late to this thread- all I know is for the first time in 15 years I cannot get anyone to plow my driveway in the winter. Never had trouble before. Even our town ,who hires contract snow plow companies cannot find enough people to plow as the town no longer hires full time maintenance people to do it. Part of the state budget cuts. They have taken to advertising for snow plow contractors! Imagine that! Now I am sorry we sold our 4 wheel drive vehicle.</p>
<p>If this keeps up when I retire in 7 years I have an idea where I am going to earn extra retirement income!</p>
<p>moderators note</p>
<p>Please use old threads for informational purposes only and refrain from posting to those threads. There was recently a thread revived about the lack of blue collar workers. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/68910-why-so-fashionable-look-down-blue-collar-trades-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/68910-why-so-fashionable-look-down-blue-collar-trades-4.html</a>
That thread (from 2009) has been closed and the recent posts have been moved to this thread.</p>
<p>thx</p>
<p>Interesting topic. I tore off some cracked bathroom tile in order to replace it only to find water damage underneath on a small pony wall. I have been looking for someone to rebuild the wall for several weeks now and no one is remotely interested. My husband works for our County and mentioned they can’t find any tile setters for their maintenance dept. My son works for a contractor in Denver (we are in So. Calif.) said they have a huge amount of tile work on one of their jobs and are behind schedule because they can’t find tile setters. A few years ago I had them fighting over a small job. Guess I will learn to build a wall.</p>
<p>A childhood friend of mine was a tile setter in Northern CA and opened his own business. He made his millions and retired in 2006 at 42.</p>
<p>The problem with building trades is the cyclical nature of the work for the laborers. A couple years of overtime can be followed by years of unemployment or minimum wage scut work. A friend’s son is back in engineering school. He dropped out to make $28/hour doing finish work, but hasn’t had a steady income in years.</p>
<p>My dad was a plumber before an accident left him unable to work. He gave up a high-paying job as a computer tech to do it. </p>
<p>Were we rich? No, but we were middle class for a while while I was growing up. He was never without a job. He owned his own company and we’d probably would have been solidly middle class if he hadn’t become disabled at all of 40. He told me from a young age to learn a trade. Computers, business, etc changes but people are ALWAYS going to need someone to fix their toilet. You can’t outsource a toilet fixer. (I have been a certified journey plumber since I was 18… it’s always an interesting tidbit on my resume 
)</p>
<p>Same here, romani. Beauty school for me out of high school. Harvard Business School later. Beauty school was more fun, more worthwhile.</p>
<p>Looking down on blue collar work, even well paid blue collar work, is not a new thing. Vance Packard mentioned in his 1959 book The Status Seekers that low paid white collar workers tended to be unwilling to take better paying blue collar jobs, apparently for social status reasons.</p>
<p>My plumber friend had to switch careers after 25 years when his unemployment ran out and he had kids to feed. I know it gets held up as this great money-making career, but the reality is that the top 10% do great and the rest have their struggles.</p>
<p>Just about any career path is appealing if we bias our analysis to the top 10%.</p>
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<p>True. But the N in the “top N% that do well enough to make a career out of it” can vary considerably between different career paths. For example, N is probably a lot lower for career paths in academic fields where PhDs are not recruited by non-academic jobs, entrants into the film industry, or lawyers from non-elite law schools than it is for nurses.</p>
<p>Of course, many of the fields where N is high have barriers to entry at the education level, such as the elite-level selection process for medical school admission to become a physician, or the rigorous curriculum to complete an engineering degree to become an engineer. The blue collar jobs that are the topic of this thread have barriers to entry in people’s mindsets regarding physical labor and social status.</p>
<p>Also, N varies over time due to economic and industry cycles. The recent downturn driven by a real estate and construction crash made N much smaller for civil engineers, architects, and construction workers.</p>
<p>Magnetron, was he an apprentice, journeyman, or master-level? It makes a huge difference. </p>
<p>I didn’t know anyone held up plumbing as some big money-maker (besides a poster who used to post on here that held the belief that anyone NOT making millions as a plumber was lazy). </p>
<p>One of the nice things about being a masters-level tradesman is that it’s easier to work for yourself than in many other fields.</p>
<p>All of the above at various times, but never made it to “shop steward” or whatever it is called, the one who works permanently in-house for one of the contractors and gets to decide who works and who stays home on the contracts. Those are the plush jobs with steady work.</p>
<p>His union local had about 250 active plumbers, but 215 were “on the bench” when he was laid off. Six months later he was still number 203, probably at least a year away from a paying job. He applied to transfer to other locals but they all had the same issues. He was reduced to doing side jobs for $10/hour when he could get them. </p>
<p>In 2001 (Seattle area) a plumber could name his price. It cost me $1000 back then to get a sink plumbed. Those days are long gone. My plumber neighbor sold his house and opened a small engine repair shop out in the sticks two years ago. I hear similar stories from electricians.</p>
<p>ETA: I met a nice young architect at Jim Whitaker’s mountain climbing shop last summer, unable to find even an unpaid internship. This did not happen with my mid-80s college contemporaries - we all found jobs in our fields.</p>