Reading Craft land by James Fox, there are many skills we need but we can't seem to fund to maintain.
But even the full-time job doesn't pay that well: $60K/year, after bonuses. And the company recently had layoffs and moved the plant an hour west, from North Adams, Mass., to Albany, New York. And you have to stand eight hours a day, and half of people drop out of the apprenticeship for whatever reason.
The fact is that an artistically skilled person in the Northeast could find better-paying, less physically taxing, and probably more stable work.
As someone in the trades, it sure seems to me that 99.9% of people harping on about trades and needing trade workers and such have never worked in the trades, know nothing about the work environment most trade workers are in, and continuously and falsely claim how great their pay is as they take a single ghost job posting about a plumber in the center of Manhattan and pretend that represents the average plumber.
If trades are so great, why aren't all the people harping on about trade jobs and how great they are working in trades themselves? Trades are boom-bust cycle, over worked, under paid, and take a straight 20 years off your lifespan. How much money would you expect someone to give you in order to take a decade or two off your lifespan and lower your quality of life for your last decade? Certainly not the .50 cent raise you get over working in at a fast food place.
metalman•3w ago
true_religion•3w ago