
The Myth of the Wealthy Welder - IfOnlyYouKnew
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/welding-doesnt-pay-as-well-as-republicans-think/597733/
======
oblib
My first career was welding. MIG welding to be specific. I learned shortly
after MIG welding machines were first being produced back in the mid-1970s.

I made good money doing it, but the work was hit or miss and it wasn't really
the welding I was getting paid for, it was knowing how to cut up vans and
modify them for severely handicapped people and I'd learned how to do that by
building "custom cars" with my father who was a "bodyman" by trade and went on
to become a "custom car builder".

By the time I quit customizing vans for the handicapped the State of
California required you be a "certified welder" to do the work I did on the
vans and cars they purchased for people who were in wheelchairs so you had to
pay to go to a "welding school" to get a certification.

But none of those welders I met who did that actually knew how to weld. How to
lay down a bead that penetrated the steel. They all did what those I learned
from called "bird shit" welds. A cold weld that laid on top of the metal and
didn't penetrate all the way through, and were thus prone to fail. And none of
them started those jobs for much more than $5-$7 an hour.

That's when I decided to learn how to code. It was only a few years after that
when the Internet started taking off, so I learned HTML and Perl by buying
books written by the likes of Steven Brenner, "Selena Sol", Lincoln Stein and
Randal Schwartz and there were no college level classes that taught it. I got
invited to teach some after hour classes at SMS because they didn't have any
at the time.

Now, more than 20 years later companies want to hire someone with a CS degree,
and really they often don't know any more about it than those guys who took
those welding classes did about laying down a bead that stuck.

But in both cases those who sold the classes lobbied their State Reps to make
them mandatory and raked in the cash afterwards.

~~~
nimbius
You realize $7 an hour is $95,000 a year in 2019 cash? If i were offered that
for hangover quality work burning rods at a good union job i would not think
twice. id be able to afford the median home price in 1970 which was $23,000.
These numbers seem to support the idea of the wealthy welder. Its entirely
possible fossilized republicans are thinking in 1970 dollars.

Fast forward to 2019. auto mechanics START at just shy of 22,000 a year and
thats assuming you keep track of your time and work for a shop that doesnt
engage in the rampant practice of wage theft. master mechanic? depends, maybe
$28 an hour in 2019? but nowhere near the $46 an hour a twice convicted
tombstone welder made back when the Love Boat sailed.

The problem is not trade, or college, its the seemingly endless wealth gap
between people who do work, and people who just seem to collect mansions and
yachts.

~~~
hangonhn
The last sentence really hits the nail on the head. Just to add to that,
during the 2008 recession I saw my portfolio swing pretty wildly going
negative one day and positive another but the amount was more than I made that
day or maybe even that week. It was then it dawned on me, American capitalism
rewards ownership, not labor nor time devoted to a task. Those changes in my
net worth would have happened regardless of if I worked or took the day off.
Time and labor can get you to ownership but that's not guaranteed nor probable
in some fields. I don't want our country to discourage property ownership and
accumulation of wealth but the paths leading to that from working hard seems
increasingly fewer and narrower.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
This comment shouldn’t have been downvoted because it’s completely accurate,
and provably so: tax rates for earnings on capital are by and large less than
earnings on labor. Warren Buffett has complained for years that he is taxed at
a lower rate than his secretary. The system we have rewards trust fund babies,
and punishes hard working people.

~~~
ridgeguy
See also Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

TLDR: RoI (capital) > RoI (labor), with the expected consequences.

~~~
ChrisLomont
Plenty of good subsequent research has shown this to be not supported. Go to
google scholar and start looking through Econ papers citing Piketty.

~~~
ridgeguy
Would you give me a link or two to start?

I get that Piketty's work isn't without controversy or criticism. Summers and
others have criticized it, but their critiques haven't seemed very strong.

One article [1] (which discusses Piketty's shortcomings) claims the biggest
reaction to Piketty is silence:

    
    
      "But perhaps the greatest rebuke of Piketty to be found among academic economics is not contained in any of these overt or veiled attacks on his scholarship and interpretation, but rather in the deafening silence that greets it, as well as inequality in general, in broad swathes of the field—even to this day."
    

...

    
    
      "The economics elite, it seems, answered by stonewalling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so it would not have the impact on economics research agendas that it merits."
    

Anyway, it's not clear to me that Piketty's fundamental thesis is wrong. Happy
to follow a link or two, thank you.

[1] [http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-
steinbaum-...](http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/marshall-steinbaum-
why-are-economists-giving-piketty-cold-shoulder)

edited for a typo

~~~
lotsofpulp
Even if it wasn’t wrong in the past, it can certainly be wrong going forward.
With all the governments printing money to cause asset prices to inflate, of
course ROI of capital will be > ROI of labor, since price increases for labor
will always lag price increases of capital.

~~~
spinchange
Piketty looked at like ~200 years of econ data (wages, asset values, rents)
and allowed for inflation and even depreciation.

His thesis is actually that r > g, wherein r = ROI of capital and g = _the
rate of economic growth_ (gdp).

This _has_ to be true, because rich people exist and we can measure that they
get richer and richer faster than others. You can gauge faith in the
likelihood that it will continue to work that way given that funds like Y
Combinator exist and are successful, and because activities like buying and
maintaining rental properties "works" in terms of creating personal wealth
faster than the rate of economic growth.

~~~
ChrisLomont
The research has shown multiple other ways to reach the current results
without r>g (housing stock is one method, if I recall) and authors have shown
r>g leads to results we do not see.

Thus it’s not true to claim existence of rich people implies r>g. If it were
that simple people before Piketty would have reached that conclusion earlier.

The papers linked in this thread show the flaws.

It’s also the case the rich don’t get richer, if you mean a rich person gets
richer. For any dataset where you can track rich individuals over time, pick a
level you call rich, track everyone meeting that definition, and you find they
get poorer, reverting to mean. That is why most millionaires are first gen.
It’s why the Forbes 400 is mostly first gen; the rich that were top 400 lose
wealth. It’s why St. Louis Fed has papers showing the majority of the top
quintile or the top 1% are not there 10 years later, or from generation to
generation.

Sure some rich keep wealth. But for any level called rich, if you track all
those in it, that group mostly falls out.

~~~
spinchange
>If it were that simple people before Piketty would have reached that
conclusion earlier.

Perhaps you've heard the expression, "The rich get richer while the poor get
poorer"

What Piketty did was put extensive data and a pretty rigorous methodology to
work to explain why. I've not read a critique that undermines his main
conclusions in a meaningful way.

It's no secret that if you already have a pile of money or capital assets you
can put those to work for you which will also generate income and you will
come out ahead and faster than someone without the same pile of money.

Cf [https://boingboing.net/2016/08/23/bill-gates-net-worth-
hits-...](https://boingboing.net/2016/08/23/bill-gates-net-worth-hits-9.html)

------
war1025
First, to quote the Drive By Truckers:

"If you want to feel old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding
the gears"

My dad did blue collar labor his whole life and his body _hurt_. He would take
something like 6 ibuprofen every morning with breakfast. To do that kind of
work requires you putting your family above yourself, which is a noble thing.
I think what people miss in the old "you could support a family doing this"
was that it was very much you actively harming yourself so that your family
could be better off.

It's the same thing with coal miners. They get all sorts of terrible health
consequences from the work, but it is a noble sacrifice to them.

My dad was adamant that we were going to college and living a more comfortable
life than he did. So here I am, a software engineer with plenty of worries in
the world, but at least a job that won't leave me broken and in pain after I
do it for twenty years.

I didn't read this article word for word, but it seemed to have a bit of an
agenda to it. The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if
you're working class is how driven you are. If you are lazy, you'll struggle
your whole life. There isn't any family safety net to keep you ignorant of
that.

It's important to give people access to opportunity, but it's up to the
individual to be self-motivated enough to take it. Education isn't some
magical panacea.

~~~
WalterBright
> The number one determining factor of how far you will make it if you're
> working class is how driven you are.

In my experience it's much more about how you manage the money you make, i.e.:

1\. live below your means

2\. invest the difference - put your money to work for you

For example, in the last week there was a bank that accidentally deposited
$120,000 in the account of a couple. The couple immediately went on a spending
spree, buying all kinds of very expensive items. By the time the police got
involved, the money was gone.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-
acc...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/08/bank-accidentally-
deposited-couples-account-they-spent-most-it-then-got-charged-with-theft/)

Criminality aside, the "gee I have some extra money, let's go shopping!" is
how one remains poor for life.

~~~
dmix
This is underrated.

Not to mention people are encouraged to do zero planning for the student debts
and get pressured by family to buy new cars.

There’s so much of wealth that comes down to lifestyle and educating people on
personal finance which would go way farther than just telling people to get a
$100k degree and ‘study hard (for rote testing)’. Here in Canada where I live
the debt levels are still insane and didn’t decline like the US did, even
without the healthcare bills excuse.

Politicians love blaming external factors and rich people/big corporations for
all our upward mobility issues, which obviously play a roles but it’s hardly
the full story, I’m curious how far we could improve things through culture
and how we teach our kids to spend money. This was a personal finance culture
that was far more popular in the west in the recent past eras which we people
constantly romanticize about and point to different single things to explain
it all away (ie unions).

My girlfriend is amazing with money and saves everything, both her parents do
the same, which is the opposite of me in my early 20s before I read into it
and my parents growing up too. I’m convinced parenting combined with culture
(she’s Han Chinese and they tend to be thrifty similar Scottish people and
Jugaad in India[1], among others) has a significant impact on these
trajectories.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad)

~~~
alvah
"thrifty/crafty like Scottish people" This stereotype hasn't been true for at
least a generation.

~~~
Symbiote
It could be "Scots have lowest debt in the UK": [https://www.pwc.co.uk/who-we-
are/regional-sites/scotland/pre...](https://www.pwc.co.uk/who-we-are/regional-
sites/scotland/press-releases/scotland-debt-figures.html)

I've inherited not spending money from my (not Scottish) parents. It's taken
an effort to spend money in social situations, so I'm not seen as miserly.

------
bobloblaw45
I work at a company that does heavy manufacturing. They're begging for
welders. They only accept something like 30% of applicants, I hear drugs is a
big problem with applicants. They thing is that you don't even need to know
how to weld, they'll train you. They put you through their training program
and eventually you'll be welding for them. And the type of welding they do
isn't small scale thing but really heavy duty thick sheets of steel. And
here's the kicker, their pay is terrible. Which is why they're constantly
begging for more people to train.They totally know that they're basically the
guys that train all the welders in the area. People come in to learn the ropes
then about 2 years later or so they get a job down the street making a lot
more. I'm not a business guy but I guess it works for the company because
they've been going for a very long time and still growing. I guess it's
cheaper for them to constantly be training than it is to retain their welders.

~~~
marcosdumay
If you can deal with the variance, training people is a very good way to get
cheap talent. I have no idea why it isn't very common.

~~~
Kalium
I think the business case for it depends on training time, training costs, the
odds of a person being useful after training, and how expensive it is to get
someone already trained.

Training a batch of people for six months who will mostly be useful after
completion and are mostly likely to complete training might be a good
proposition. If training time is four years, 50% of entrants complete
training, and 50% of those trained are useful... the case might be weaker.

~~~
jseliger
I believe the biggest issue is people leaving.

Invest _x_ months of training at _y_ cost.

Then the person leaves right after training for a higher-paying job.

That dis-incentivizes training.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
Or, increase psychological incentives by saying "raises for people who make it
a year" or "signing on bonuses only for people who make it six months."

Those help a lot.

------
scottlocklin
This is a glorified anecdote by a smug Atlantic writer yutz; dripping with
condescension "There is no doubt that Orry would benefit from high-quality
face-to-face instruction from a caring and conscientious English professor.."
It's also a red-herring. Nobody believes an average welder makes $150k a year.
In fact, we know what they make: a lower middle class salary (admittedly
linked in the column):

[https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-
solderers...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-
and-brazers.htm)

The guys who actually do well, and who do make $150k a year were not enrolled
in some shitty associates degree program (this article should really be on the
failure of the US higher education scam); they're highly skilled former Navy
machinists.

And of course, the reason working class jobs like welder don't make more is
simple: we keep importing new low skilled laborers, driving the price of low-
skilled labor down. Mercantilism and labor laws could fix this. Instead we get
dimwits from the Atlantic suggesting welders go to English class.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I object to the labeling of Associates Degree programs as 'shitty'. In my
experience, AS programs are just far more practicality oriented than academic
BSs.

You want to learn how the math behind Dijkstra's algorithm works, get a BS.
You want to learn how to build a network, get an AS.

~~~
scottlocklin
You might be right regarding computer associates: but getting a degree in
something like welding is just increasing the number of firey hoops someone
has to jump through to do a job he can be trained on the job for, or in a
union apprenticeship program.

I myself learned welding on the job: at a muffler company, and again later in
a government lab. The answer to social problems is not always "more school."

~~~
wcunning
This is in fact quite common in the welding world. Several other comments
mention companies that hire anyone and train them to weld. I've also read
articles from the oil field companies that they do the same. So does the
military, if you pass the aptitude test at least. That said, my community
college will teach you to run a CNC laser welding machine, a CNC plasma table,
a robotic arm MIG, etc. Getting into all of that off the street is rare.

------
anm89
I'm not a welder but I have friends who are and it seems like this is painting
the most difficult, least lucrative way to go about this as the norm(ie the
whole thing is a strawman) and then crapping on it.

My friends who got into welding mostly did so through aprenticeships with
unions or on the job non union apprenticeships.

They will probably not become millionaires selling their time as welders but
they are solidly middle if not upper middle class. They go on international
vacations and eat at fancy restraunts. They are fairing on average far better
than my friends with "soft" liberal arts degrees.

Yeah it's not a total panacea easy road to riches but learning a trade like
welding seems like a super high EV move for a lot of people who want a stable
career right now.

~~~
hardtke
Although unions have their flaws, they do help to keep wages high for skilled
workers, both in terms of the prevailing wage but also in enforcing overtime
rules (double time for Sunday work, for instance). They also prevent out-of-
area workers from coming into an area when times are good. Skilled union
workers in the Bay Area can work 168 hours per week right now if they want to.

~~~
Consultant32452
The primary mechanism unions use to keep wages high for union members is to
limit supply by lobbying to keep "un-certified" or "non-union" members out of
the market. This provides a nice buffer, keeping the poorer class poor and
protecting the middle class.

~~~
journalctl
Do you have a source for this?

~~~
Consultant32452
Nobel Economist Milton Friedman, for one.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzYgiOC9cj4)
If you watch to the end he fully explains how the net effect of unions is to
raise the pay of high paid workers and lower the pay of low paid workers.

You might also like "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell which talks about this
phenomenon also.

------
hn_throwaway_99
This article was horrible. Describing the costs/benefits of forgoing college
for a trade would be the kind of discussion that I think Hacker News is made
for, but not with this poor quality article.

First, it cherry picks a single example of someone who obviously had a ton of
other shit going on (got fired for missing too much work) and then seems to
draw from that the conclusion that "Welding won't make you rich". Then it
complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but so
what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that much
money? I think most of us understand that your average developer isn't making
400k a year at Google, either, but that doesn't mean that's an invalid data
point.

The reason people should be interested about the trades are:

1\. They are immune from offshoring, which has had a huge impact on other blue
collar jobs like manufacturing. 2\. If they are a viable, and secure, path to
the middle class, they should be supported.

There are lots of valid issues to discuss (the toll it takes on your body is a
big one), but would be better to see it from an article with better data and
less out-of-the-gate bias.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> it complains that the 150k salaries for welders bandied about are rare, but
> so what? Did anyone think a welder right out of the gate would make that
> much money?

If you read it, they say the 90th percentile welder gets paid $60k a year.
That is, the average 15+ year experience welder gets paid way less than 50% of
the original $150k claim.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Your response is exactly why I think the article is horrible - why not lets
look at the source data and then discuss that:
[https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-
solderers...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-
and-brazers.htm#tab-5)

What this says is that the 90th percentile for this entire group of "Welders,
Cutters, Solderers and Brazers" was $63,740.

But the small table there also says that there is a big difference in the
average between "specialty trade contractors" and "manufacturing", which isn't
that surprising. It also says nothing about the age range (I don't know where
you got your 15+ year experience data from), so when looking at percentiles,
it wouldn't be surprising that the field has a ton of junior folks that brings
down the average.

It _would_ be very interesting to see what the distribution looks like for
master welders with at least 10 years experience, but the article has none of
that data.

Furthermore, if you dig into the 150k claim, you'll see that that is almost
always for welders in high demand areas, like oil and gas during the fracking
boom. That doesn't make it apocryphal, just constrained to a specific
industry.

~~~
Avshalom
A specific industry for a short period of time.

------
bt848
You shouldn't need to make $150k to get by as a welder. In any sensible
society a person who knows how to do something useful like weld should be able
to muddle along. Some of my friends from high school in Oklahoma became oil
field welders in the 90s. They made good money, bought houses and raised
children early in life. It seems like a square deal to me. Of course, that was
possible because houses in Oklahoma were plentiful and cheap and the public
schools were good and so forth. You know, the way civil society is supposed to
work.

~~~
hinkley
There's a piece of specialty equipment I just learned about recently while
pulling on a thread regarding one of my hobbies. It's pretty expensive and I'd
probably only need it four times in as many years so I was looking around for
other options like rentals or tool libraries. Found nothing.

Then I end up in the DIY section, and for about ten seconds I think I hit
paydirt. Then I realize that every. single. video. is by some guy who knows
his way around an arc welder. And not like "This video is for people who know
how to weld," just, "okay cut these pieces and then you weld em together and
then you're done." Like everyone or their brother knows how to weld.

Now I bring this up because clearly there is some subset of people who are
saving a great deal of money by making specialty tools out of stock or scrap
instead of buying it. I know a bunch of amateur carpenters and a few
woodworkers, but didn't think I know any amateur welders.

~~~
jsmith45
Small time farmers seem to be a lot more likely to know these sorts of skills,
because it allows them to save an obscene amount of money on specialty
equipment by modifying something inexpensive to do the job.

When the commercial offerings are $100,000+ but you can make something good
enough yourself for $20,000 or less, well, yeah, it is well worth it to take
the time to learn welding, since you will more than make up for it with just
one such project.

~~~
bluGill
Small time farmers are not trying to save money so much as time. When you are
in the middle of nowhere with a broken part no amount of money can get you
back in the field in 20 minutes (if the welder is sitting by the phone waiting
for your call he can just barely get there in that time, but he hasn't looked
at the part yet). 1 minute with your own welder and you have a repair that
will let you limp to the end of the busy season where you can decide if it is
good enough or you need to repair it right.

------
aazaa
I can't help but consider the wider background of this story.

Across the country, high schools have been cutting shop classes.
Administrators push 4-year college as the only viable option. Anything else is
increasingly viewed as irresponsible advice.

At the same time, 4-year college costs have been skyrocketing. Students are
taking on levels of debt that the previous generation would have thought
obscene.

Meanwhile, the breadth of degrees that can reasonably be expected to service
the debt of a 4-year college stint, let alone earn a living afterwards,
appears to be shrinking.

Just because some degrees are currently in high demand doesn't mean that will
be the case in 1, 2, or 5 years. Tech recessions can be brutal given how
leveraged the booms are.

At the center of all of this is automation in numerous forms. The changes
we've seen so far will only accelerate. There's little evidence to suggest
that today's economies will be up to the challenge of providing economically
viable pathways for young people starting out.

The myth of higher education as the pathway to a middle class lifestyle has
all the hallmarks of an idea that will die a slow, agonizing death. We're
utterly unprepared for what comes next.

~~~
ryandrake
> Administrators push 4-year college as the only viable option. Anything else
> is increasingly viewed as irresponsible advice. At the same time, 4-year
> college costs have been skyrocketing.

Something tells me these things are related...

My old man taught wood shop in a high school. Year after year, there was less
and less demand/attendance. To stay securely employed, as he was getting
closer to retirement he pivoted over to teaching drafting and then CAD which
had tons of interest and were supported by administration. By the time he
retired the wood and metal shop classes were gone for good. Pretty sad and
worrying to think that since then an entire generation has gone through that
school with no opportunity to learn how to actually make a physical good with
their hands. We have YouTube now if we want to learn, and it’s a great
resource, but it’s hard not to think something has been lost.

~~~
vkou
> Pretty sad and worrying to think that since then an entire generation has
> gone through that school with no opportunity to learn how to actually make a
> physical good with their hands.

Welcome to globalism? 98% of the physical goods you buy are made in the
developing world, there's not much point in acquiring these skills here.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
A crappy assemble-at-home Target organizer costs like $20 and probably cost a
fraction of that to manufacture, but a fancy artisanal lacquered organizer
made by the hobbyists across town can be sold for several times the cost of
supplies and labor.

But a lot of folks feel the squeeze so they buy the crappy Target one instead.

~~~
toastermoster
This reminds me of my neighbor who had recently retired and began a side
business making furniture in his garage. He was just looking to make a little
beer money, but his business grew quickly just through word of mouth and he
was complaining to me that now it was more of a job than he had before he
retired. He was thinking about shutting the whole thing down.

------
olivermarks
This article seems to imply 'welding' is a single level skill after you have
jumped through X number of academic hoops. this is like saying 'IT' is
basically one skill set that can be learnt. There are welders earning vast
amounts flying all over the world working on mission critical projects with
huge economic and safety dependencies at the top, large numbers of highly
talented entrepreneurial artisan welders (who often have many other skills)
and people trying to learn a skill at the bottom. The article is like saying
someone going to junior college to learn python is discouraged because they
aren't immediately thought of as a senior engineer once they get a few
qualifications.

~~~
bagacrap
> The article is like saying someone going to junior college to learn python
> is discouraged because they aren't immediately thought of as a senior
> engineer once they get a few qualifications.

"Welders at the 90th percentile of income for the profession, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn $63,000 a year before taxes. Those are,
statistically, the top earners, and they are usually expert welders with
decades of experience."

~~~
Miner49er
This just seems wrong? Welding varies a ton by state. The Bureau of Labor
statistics also says that welders in Alaska earn an average of $65k a year.
They aren't all expert welders, it just varies heavily by location.

~~~
jmull
It says “usually”. That allows for exceptions like Alaska. (I just looked at
the stats, and it looks like there is data on 510 welders in Alaska out of
389,190 total, so it’s a tiny exception.)

~~~
Robotbeat
And probably skewed towards remote oil extraction jobs, with high cost of
living (everything has to be flown in) and a difficult overall existence.

------
tengbretson
The person in the anecdote was second to last in their high school class and
got fired for missing too much work. No one thinks such a person should be
sleeping in the gutter, but let's not beat ourselves up over the fact that
they're not making 6 figures here.

~~~
llampx
They could well come to the same conclusion if they followed a similar person
learning "coding"..

Cherry-picked example. Although I do think the Conservative opinion of skilled
trades is not really rooted in reality. Most of the better-off tradesmen are
sole proprietors.

~~~
refurb
Is it really a "conservative opinion"? I've heard positive stories about the
trades from people across the political spectrum.

And of course, the trades aren't a panacea. Demand ebbs and flows and
sometimes work can be hard to come by. But I see nothing wrong with suggesting
it as an option to a college degree (and the debt that goes along with it).
Even if the salary isn't that high, it still beats being unemployed with $20K
in student debt.

------
defertoreptar
A career with similar average salary would be teaching. Four year tuition is
an average of 25k in state and 41k out of state.[0]

Welding school is typically 5k to 15k [1] and takes two years or less. Despite
how things played out for the particular case covered by this author, there is
a good argument for welding. It may not make you rich. However, if you don't
like the traditional college route, then welding and similar trades offer
comparatively good pay/training trade-off.

* [https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...](https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-college)

* [https://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html](https://education.costhelper.com/welding-school.html)

~~~
cr0sh
One of the other nice things about welding - while it may not make you rich -
is that you can do it to some degree almost your entire life. It's the same
with a lot of trade skills.

I'm a software engineer - that is what I know, and what I do. But I'm already
above the "age ceiling" that we all know exists - but somehow (maybe due to
the fact that I keep my skills current?) I have stayed employed and haven't
been subjected (to my knowledge) to not being hired because of my age. I'm
also not in SV or any other "high earning" area, and I like small "mom-n-pop"
vs large established companies (with all the politics and other junk) - so
I've never earned 6 figs - nor will I likely ever. But what I do earn pays my
bills and keeps a roof over my head, and allows for entertainment for me and
my family.

For now.

But someday that won't be there. Then what? Well - I intend to work until I
die - that is, code forever. I know there are plenty of software engineers out
there much older than I am who are still employed. So maybe it isn't as bleak
as I think. But I do know this: When I am not employed, I can't just "go
around the neighborhood" or "advertise on craigslist" or "hang out a shingle"
that says "Got a broken fence? I can weld it for ya! Call me @ xxx..."

Which is something tradespeople can almost always do. In their "retirement
years" they can become handypersons, do side-jobs welding or carpentry, or
maybe simple auto repairs (or even more complex ones if they have the tools
and strength left). Plumbing and electrical isn't out of the question either.
They may not make bank, but they likely won't starve, either.

For myself? I'm not sure what I could do. One thing I do know I can do - just
not well enough to be employed at it - is weld. I can also use a hammer, saw,
plane, whatever - I do have some wood and metal shop skills. I also work on my
own automobiles. Whether I could convince someone else to let me fix their
issues - well, that's just some marketing and hopefully doing it right for
them (just hand me that grinder and paint - I'm no tig stacked-dimes artist).

So there's that to be said about the trades - that it is something that can be
done to keep some form of food on the table, even if it's just helping out
neighbors for a few dollars. Nobody wants to hire an aging software engineer
to code up a simple website or something like that any longer it seems. Those
older SWEs typically find their gigs maintaining aging and creaking software
in a language nobody uses any longer (and fortunately for me, I do have skills
in Perl, VB3 thru 6, classic ASP, some COBOL - and it seems PHP may be headed
that way too).

~~~
owenversteeg
That is an interesting take on it I haven't seen elsewhere in this thread!

And I'm with ya, "grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't"

~~~
contingencies
Added to
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

------
readams
The unspoken claim here is that if he'd gone to college and pursued a liberal
arts degree that he'd be better off now. The evidence in the article however
says the opposite. He'd have even more debt and even lower prospects after
failing to complete that degree.

~~~
Medicalidiot
Maybe I missed that part of the article where it was a direct comparison of
welding to a liberal arts degree outside of the politician comparing
philosophy to welding. Philosophers make more money than biochemists, FYI.
What are your sources about the opposite occurring? If one goes to an instate
school s/he can do fairly well with a liberal arts degree.

~~~
readams
It's clear he doesn't do well in traditional liberal arts subjects. The
question here isn't really liberal arts vs welding. It's that the narrative
for a long time had been that college for everyone is a solution. For those
students who will do well there, it is a solution. But it's not a good idea
for everyone.

While it's true welders aren't rich, the question is actually how to provide
education resources to allow everyone to see succeed to their ability, without
making your parents' wealth the biggest factor. I think it's clear that
vocational education is a part of this, and that college for all is not.

~~~
Medicalidiot
Oh, that's a completely different discussion altogether! I agree with you
though.

------
astura
People think welders regularly make six figures? Uhhh... I've been looking
extensively at manufacturing positions lately because I'm helping a friend in
his job search. All the welding ones I've seen in my area that have a salary
listed pay around $28k-$38k (IIRC). Those jobs typically have benefits.

So much misinformation around anything to do with pay, don't believe anything
you hear, I've heard some really outlandish numbers quoted from a variety of
places. The BLS ([https://www.bls.gov/ooh/](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/)) is
probably the most accurate source of information you'll get. (Quoted in TFA)

>Its premise was that in rural Ohio, there was such a shortage of skilled
tradespeople that employers were regularly hiring welders at salaries of
$150,000 a year and up.

So because In-And-Out pays managers $160,000 a year [1] we should conclude
that fast food is (in general) a highly paid occupation?

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-
now/2018/01/25/n...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-
now/2018/01/25/n-out-mangers-make-160-000-per-year-reports-show/1065434001/)

~~~
bluGill
Some welders make good money. If you can weld the I-Beams of a 80 story sky
scrapper you will make good money. (I'm told most construction workers hit a
wall at about the 30th floor and will not work on anything higher). If you can
weld while wearing scuba gear you make good money- you also get a full pension
at 40 when you are forced to retire because of the wear it does on the body.
There are a few other areas where welding pays good money - but they pay good
money because so few welders can do them.

------
skadamou
The salaries of welders does seem a bit over-hyped. That said, there are
people out there working in the trades making decent money. I have a couple of
friends that went to school to be electrical lineman and both are making close
to 6 figures now with minimal student loans. I think it just requires a little
bit of research and perhaps the help of a decent high school career counselor.

Average salary of electrical lineman:
[https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/lineman-
sal...](https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/lineman-salary)

~~~
Whatarethese
Linemen in PHX make upwards of 95k plus shit loads of overtime.

~~~
TKWasRight
Yeah, but you'd have to work for APS or SRP...That's a hard pass for me.

------
ivanhoe
Looking at these official stats, median for plumbers is $54K per year, which
is not such a bad money for a job that requires no school, just on-job
training. Little bit less for carpenters, floor installers and masonry and
construction workers, etc. But we need to take into account that none of them
requires any special education, it's on-job training only, so you start your
life with no debts which gives you a big head start and a lot of freedom.
Unlike welders they also, with a bit of entrepreneurship, can expect one day
to run their own businesses and earn more. Also, these days very important
thing to think of, AI and robots will not replace plumbers or tile layers
anytime soon. People working in maintenance will probably be the last to be
replaced, if ever.

~~~
smileysteve
> median for plumbers is $54K per year, which is not such a bad money for a
> job that requires no school, just on-job training.

Not only is it not bad, it's higher than the median salary of many college
graduates, even of highly accredited known public schools.

~~~
lotsofpulp
There are other opportunity costs of trades, such as increased risk of
morbidity and mortality due to all the driving/type of work/materials worked
with, and working away from home. If one can land a well paying desk job, then
currently it still has a greater value proposition, and who wants to be real
and tell their child that they probably won't make it into the ranks of a well
paying desk job?

~~~
smileysteve
> who wants to be real and tell their child that they probably won't make it
> into the ranks of a well paying desk job?

Likely the successful tradesmen who has instilled a sense of worth in "dirty
jobs" and working final product.

Anecdotally, I have some college educated friends that describe the majority
of their desk jobs as tedious, repetitive, and duplicative data entry; A
plumber or welder's job certainly has comparatively longer term viability.

------
AlexTWithBeard
_After a year and a half, Orry was fired for missing too many days of work..._

 _Orry had been working hard for five years..._

Isn't there some contradiction in these two statements?

~~~
smush
Not necessarily. I worked at a company where if you missed two days of work
without calling in to let them know, you were fired. You could stretch that to
about 5 days if you always called in.

I'm not making a judgement as to whether those are reasonable terms, only
pointing out that such jobs exist, and could be similar where this individual
worked there.

------
wcunning
I've been taking welding classes at my local community college (Washtenaw CC,
just down the road from University of Michigan) around my day job as a
controls engineer in the auto industry. This program produces people who win
national welding competitions on a regular basis, but they're very open that
you don't have to complete the entire thing. The instructor for my summer
blueprint welding class kept talking about open jobs in the region and how to
get into it -- what certs you needed and what skills to practice. Crappy jobs
that didn't require certs paid $20/hr starting + benefits. A couple of years
in and with several certs under your belt in a union -- pipefitters or
ironworkers -- you could be making north of $40/hr. That doesn't sound high-
paying, but many of the people at that level are nomadic, coming into a plant
being built and working 12 hrs/day 6 or 7 days a week. Which brings me to my
main point -- the statistics on this are heavily skewed. The guy that does
that nomadic thing spends some number of months on until he quits and takes 3
months off. Other guys with no certs make money welding art or fixing simple
things (a much, much larger category). The BLS numbers aren't a question of
what you _can_ make, they're a question of what the distribution looks like.

------
eire1130
Most people who go on about "the trades", I find, it's unlikely they ever
personally worked them. Maybe their Father's. I doubt Marco Rubio has ever
touched a hammer, let alone worked as a real laborer.

As for me, going to college was absolutley the thing that really changed my
life course.

I grew up on a dairy farm in northern New York. Milked cows until I was 18 and
then my dad sold the farm. So I joined the Navy. I did that for 6 years and
then when I was about to get out in 2002, I can still remember an officer (you
know, a guy with a degree) explaining to me that I was making this huge
mistake getting out. Because I was successful in the Navy. Already an E6/FC1.
My career was made.

So I asked him, if I'm successful on the inside, what makes you think I cant
be successful on the outside? So I got a lot of reasons. It was a good pitch.
He even talked to me about getting an associate's at the local college. I was
almost there anyway, just a couple classes and I'd be done. At the end, he
questioned if Bard, a private liberal arts school I was accepted to, was even
accredited.

That's when I knew, not only did he not care, but he would seek to harm my
potential future growth just for some metric.

Anyway, so I did go to Bard college. Graduated with a degree in economics, now
I'm the CTO / CPO of a middle market company (7 or so years after graduating
college).

Had I of stayed, I could have done other blue jobs on the outside someday. I
know a guy who works on powerlines in Texas. Says he likes his job. Takes
advil like its candy. It pays the bills.

My wife and I have saved a lot, even with two kids. Last year, after our
company consummated its sale to a PE company, we've been able to buy our own
house in Brooklyn.

If I became a truck driver like my dad did after the sale of the farm, I'm not
sure I'd be in the same place today - but it's possible I suppose.

My brother is in the trades. Hes a master plumber and runs his own plumbing
company. He's also been successful. His back is also totally shot.

------
Apreche
Only someone doing dangerous and rare types of welding, such as underwater
welding, will make a ton of money. The trade-off is that it is extremely
dangerous, and life expectancy is well below average.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I suspect a civilian contractor on site in places Afghanistan and other high
risk countries make a lot more.

During IRAQ II I saw a local add (Uk) offering £40K tax free for a basic car
mechanic going out to Iraq to presumably work for the Military or PMC

~~~
joncrane
Like a £40K sign on bonus to relocate to Iraq? Or £40K per annum? Because the
latter seems low.

~~~
heavenlyblue
www.totaljobs.com says an average car mechanic gets about 32K in the UK.
That's about 24K take home. 40K vs 24K is a 53% increase in salary.

That's against 52K on glassdoor for being a military officer. But I am pretty
sure that 52K is taxable itself so the actual different is smaller.

~~~
mruts
Not an apples to apples comparison, but my uncle got paid 250k/year USD to
drive a big rig in Iraq for the US military. He knows Arabic and can "fit in",
though. You can get paid a lot more for taking on a lot more risk, even if you
don't have particularly unique or exceptional skills.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Yes this wasn't an experienced time served mechanic job this was basic shop
skills.

------
helpPeople
I've seen a few people I've grown up with try doing skilled trades.

First, they seem to ignore that there is still education needed. And most
people who claimed they were going skilled trades ended up doing low skilled
manual labor.

And second, they overvalue their education. I've had people claim their skills
were good enough to call them an engineer. (But if you give them a real world
engineering question, they don't make an attempt)

Third, I've seen fantastic technicians, able to solder a board-mount LED by
hand saved us literally thousands of dollars. There is value here, but this
person was physically talented from decades of experience.

~~~
bryanlarsen
For a couple of semesters I roomed with a guy taking an electrical engineering
technician course at a college while I was taking an electrical engineering
degree at a university.

We were both surprised at how similar many of our courses were. The big
difference was that the standards for pass/fail were lower at his, and that he
didn't have any of the 300 or 400 level courses where all the interesting
stuff was IMO. And I didn't have any of the hands on courses that was the
interesting stuff in his opinion. He had an advanced soldering course. I had
an "optional" 3 hour tutorial in it -- it was optional in the sense that you
didn't have to attend, but you'd fail your labs if you couldn't solder...

~~~
cr0sh
And that's where you have this divide of people who have an EE degree but
can't assemble their own designs to save their lives, and those with just a
technical background who may struggle to design and understand their own
circuits, but who can build them to expert level standards.

There are plenty in the middle who can do both - and more than a few of them
with such knowledge have never take a college or university course in their
life.

You see the same thing with software engineering sometimes - the CompSci
graduate who can't code their way out of a wet paper bag even if given a
github of fizzbuzz, versus the person who never went to college yet makes
6-figs in SV hacking on code (yet doesn't have the "book understanding" of
data structures or algorithms).

...and tons of people in between those who can combine both.

Slap 'em together with similar people in the trades - well, you'll find
yourself a myriad of people at all levels and understanding of "mechatronics"
and/or robotics and such.

It is quite likely that your roommate could learn what you learned - and you
could (or have) learned what he knew. It ultimately all depends on having the
motivation and desire to pursue it.

Where you might have the advantage is that you could probably pick up his
skills from online resources and simple practice projects or whatnot. He would
probably struggle to do the same, without actually going into debt and
attending some kind of university course(s). Some of it can be approximated
with self-study and some online MOOC training, but not all of it,
unfortunately - and he wouldn't have the "piece of paper" at the end.

------
Unklejoe
> Welders at the 90th percentile of income for the profession, according to
> the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn $63,000 a year before taxes. Those are,
> statistically, the top earners, and they are usually expert welders with
> decades of experience.

I know one anecdote doesn't mean much, but I have two friends who are making
around $100k/year as stick welders (boiler type work) in the New Jersey area.
They do more than just weld though - I'd say that 50% of their job is actually
welding and the other 50% is miscellaneous boiler repair work.

One of them has only been doing it for about 4 years, after going to a two
year school.

My other friend is making around $80k/year as a "burner mechanic" with
absolutely no schooling at all. His only prior experience was that he was a
DirecTV installer. He is very mechanically inclined though.

The key is getting into one of those companies that does work at state
locations - I'm not sure exactly how this all works, but it's something like
"if you're working on a state site, you have to get paid the prevailing wage",
which is usually very high. Couple that with overtime and you'll see welders
making $80+ an hour.

I'm sure there are welders who make far less, but that's probably the case
with any industry. My friends are probably at a gig equivalent to FAANG in the
software world.

------
bilbo0s
In fairness, where I live in flyover country, people are pretty realistic
about how much money you can get as a welder. Or carpenter. Or plumber. Or
what have you. They are relatively good jobs, _for around here_. But everyone
knows you're not gonna make six figures being a welder. Not even close. (Maybe
if you're working on a pipeline, that's underwater, but even that's
temporary.)

------
dsfyu404ed
The way you make money as a welder is the same as every other trade

a) Be willing to do it in conditions nobody else wants to.

b) own a business and employ other people who do it.

------
blackflame7000
Just today the AC unit at our house sprung a leak. Due to California's laws
you have to replace old ACs with more efficient ones. In the middle of the
summer installation costs run 3-10k. Instead I did it my self and just paid a
welder to connect the copper tubes. He worked about an hour and I paid him
$500.

------
kerkeslager
It's actually even worse than this. I'm on the fringes of a community that
does a lot of metal art, so I know a few welders who make good (but not great)
money doing welding. But they all are artists, and they all have college
degrees, and couldn't attract the art contracts they do without their college
pedigree. It's disingenuous to say "Welding makes good money" and "Welding
doesn't require a college degree" in the same breath, because many of the
higher-income welders actually _do_ have college degrees which increase their
income, which skews the statistics.

There are three people I know who weld but don't make much money. One makes
most of her money on banking software, and the other two don't have degrees.

------
693471
I was hearing this back around 2004-2005 that welders could make $150k if they
take this remote oil pipeline jobs and "all your expenses are paid for while
you're out in the field".

I heard a lot of people talk about taking these jobs but they never seemed to
exist.

------
contingencies
Does anyone with deep experience within welding have any pro tips on fixture
design? Even willing to do some consulting? We are tackling this at the moment
and getting some grossly conflicting inputs from manual welders, automated
welding equipment suppliers, and other sources. Basically we want to produce
precise and repeatable assemblies mainly out of 304 beam stock, but with a
view toward validating precision before investing in automation we've become
aware that fixture design will be critical, yet lack experience. Our initial
prototype fixture already functions successfully with pneumatic work holding,
but has numerous design flaws.

------
paulcole
White collar people LOVE recommending blue collar jobs. It's very similar to
the FB execs who cash out and then suddenly say talk about how bad FB is.

"Don't do what I did to get rich, it's not a good idea."

~~~
rpmisms
Probably because many of us dream about blue collar work at our desks.

~~~
mruts
Just like how many of them dream of white collar work at their
mine/construction site/shop. The difference being is that when they find some
white collar work, they no longer dream of blue collar work (because it sucks
and kills you a day at a time).

~~~
TKWasRight
It depends on what blue collar work you're talking about...I went blue collar
(power plant operator)...obtained CS degree and got a job as a
programmer...then after a year went back to blue collar...operations is more
interesting to me, plus I get to be on my feet, moving around all shift...it
suits me much more...plus the pay for an operator is >$140k in a rural area

------
loeg
If not college, though, your options are kind of limited.

Other (used-to-)pay-pretty-ok blue collar jobs are things like plumbers,
electricians, and union telco work, if you can get it. Plumbing isn't too hard
to pick up; I don't know if you need licensing for that (or why), other than a
professional liability insurance policy of some kind. AFAIK there's still
pretty good demand for plumbers and electricians, although I haven't done any
kind of research on the market and expect it varies a lot by locale.

------
plughs
Another frequently overlooked problem with the 'trade school' mantra is that
women need jobs too - and I'm willing to wager that the prejudice women are
going to face in a welding shop is going to be a lot higher the frequently
cited problem of women in engineering.

Never mind if they try to hang out their shingle as a plumber or electrician.
It'd be an interesting study to compare the number of calls that Charlie vs
Charlene would get in that field, but I think we all know the answer.

~~~
itbeho
My aunt owned and managed a welding shop for over 50 years. She'd disagree
with most of what you wrote. The opportunity is there for people that want to
work hard and learn. There is in fact a fairly good tradition supporting women
in the trades, (in the US at least) especially during and after WWII. See
"Rosie the Riveter" for example, which is where my aunt got her start.

~~~
saq7
This harkens to some of the points some other commenters have made in this
thread. Earning $7/hour in 1970 for a welding job is equivalent of $95k/year
in 2019 money.

Similarly, getting a start and sticking it out is just as difficult for women
today as it was in the pre-war era. The post war period has been ingrained as
the normal baseline in our collective imaginations, though it is anything but
normal.

I am willing to wager that Rosie the Riveter isn't the norm for the US and if
she or your aunt was trying to make it as a welder, they both will not find
the supportive environment that existed post-war

------
speeder
This article surprised me by how biased and bad it is.

And although it claims the "myth" started in 2015, I started to hear about
this (and I am from Brazil, not US even) around 2005 or so.

I finished college around 2009, and know from personal experience, that the
"politicians" the article is against, are saying the truth, I ended college
with huge debts, didn't got any decent jobs, and right now I work in a field
not related to what I learned in college, I finished paying the loans only
last year, and will finally marry this year, and will live in a tiny cramped
apartment with my wife, with no vehicle.

The friends I had at high school, the ones that went to college, are in
similar situations... But the ones that went to trade school, all of them own
their own house, are married with kids, own multiple vehicles...

So I have no idea where the idea that this stuff is a "myth" came from.

And I am sorry of how much I belittled a friend in high school, when he said
he would not go to college, and go learn welding and how to operate CNC
machines... Back then all "adults" convinced me he was going to be low class
and poor, and that I should aim to enter a pretigious university. That guy
while I was still in college, had bought the motorcycle of his dreams. When I
finished college, he was paying for his house. When I was strugglign to find
jobs, in part because everyone wanted experience instead of education, and
thus I was 5 years older with zero experience compared to my competitors
(either 18 year old guys with lots of energy, or people same age as me, that
skipped college but had 5 years of experience on the job), he was complaining
of how many job offers he had to turn down...

------
plants
This is so true. Every comment I see on HN regarding welding paints it as the
counterpoint example to a college education/getting a white-collar job. I have
a brother who gets worked to the bone welding for about $15 an hour. He can
get pretty good incentive for producing more than the hourly "expected" rate,
but it's hard work! He welds I-beams and lifts between 20-60 pounds per beam,
depending on the specs of the specific beams, all day every day that he works.
He does somewhere on the order of 40-60 beams per hour. Between his job as a
welder and my cushy job as a software developer (making twice as much) I would
choose the cushy software developer job every time. Not sure I would be saying
the same thing if I had gotten a liberal art degree, but I certainly wouldn't
use welding as the prime example of a trade-school "easy way out" from going
to college.

------
kisna72
There is nothing wrong with vocational education. But the reality is that, on
average, how well you do with college education largely depends on what degree
you pursued and same is true with vocational education as well. If there is a
lot of demand for your vocation, salaries will be higher regardless of whether
it requires college degrees or not.

------
jacquesm
I know of two wealthy welders. The one lives in Northern Ontario, is
technically pensioned but both the local steelmill (Sault Ste. Marie) and a
large mining operation kept asking him to solve their 'unsolvable' problem,
which he would do without much ado or noise. He would fix stuff _while it was
running_ because shutting down a smelter is very expensive, either through
remote control (pantographs) or other trickery to get close to the welding
spot.

The other is here in the Netherlands, works in off-shore and has gradually
transited from welding to safety officer. He made a ton of money doing welding
though (diver / welder) and has a lot of property that he rents out. He could
retire anytime he wants (and is still < 40).

------
posterboy
I suppose what's called welder is not "Schweißer" in German, but a
"Schlosser", which would be subdivided by application, and had a lot in common
with a mechanic (a wrench is a "Schlüssel", literally a key, compare French
"cle anglaise" \- monkey wrench).

Welding would just be learned as part of the job, whether as plumber or
mechanic, once upon a time even as electrician (who now doesn't even learn to
solder).

I say "had", because the mechanic nowadays is taught mostly as a
"Mechatroniker", since electronics have become ubiquitious in machines.

The secondary education systems differ from the US, I hear. Nevertheless, most
training happens on the job, with one school day per week over 3 odd years in
case of these jobs--which ammounts to 6 month of schooling. Pay starts at ca.
15 Eur after graduation (and is miserable, below minimum wage, for the
apprenticeship). Several possibilities to diversify afterwards exist, but many
slug along without going for e.g. technician or master studies. The exams can
be taken out of school under certain limited conditions. etc. p. p.

"Schweißer" is not a registered apprenticeship, but qualification is offered
and eventually necessary; job opportunities exist, almost solely through temp
agencies, starting at ca 12 Eur; no publically indexed opportunity in Berlin.
One adverisement mentions that up to 100 different welding techniques exist
(need to be known, as they say) from once a mere five.

I'd imagine kinds of certificates in welding can be optained in crash courses.
In contrast, professional-welder does not strike me as an entry level
position, nor as a common job. I haven't met any, to say the least.

I do remember a special note about the welding jobs done on the Wendelstein-X
project, mentioned in a podcast with the leader of the programm. That was
followed by a note about a Swiss specialists detecting defects in custom
coils, who was described like the master of an arcane art in the best
tradition of swiss watchmakers. (check alternativlos.de if you understand .de)

------
Havoc
1st world to 1st world - doubtful.

3rd world to 1st - that gets more interesting. I recall a story about EU
tunnel boring machines where the drilling head was welded together by a team
flown in from south africa. Thought that was weird - that's a country with
zero tunnel boring experience.

Bit more thinking later I realised...that's actually not a bad strategy. Throw
some Euros down and get the top 0.1% of the skillset of a 3rd world country.
Welding is welding and top 0.1% is pretty grand.

~~~
saq7
I suspect the top 0.1% would realize that they are the cream of the crop and
wouldn't be so easy or cheap to fly out by "throwing some Euros".

If there was any price differential between the best welders in these two
countries, it would be rendered nil by the cost of flying and housing a team.

------
conjectures
Skilled trades are still a good idea in the UK. I estimated that experienced
self employed electricians could probably pull in $80-120k per year excluding
office costs at 80% utilisation.

It's not _huge_ money, but once you start factoring in that tax is much better
for the self employed, costs of living, commute time etc it does look like a
good deal. Even if you discount the estimate by 1/3 it still compares very
favourably to most white collar careers.

------
rossdavidh
My take: the college-educated class (of which I am one) is feeling nervous,
and started to spew negativity at the idea of trades or apprenticeship. The
college (loan) industry is in for a decline, and is feeling defensive.

I don't recall ever hearing that welders were "wealthy", I heard (and continue
to hear) that they can be middle-class. Which is something that some who took
out big college loans to get a journalism degree, struggle to do.

------
briandear
> it absolves us of our shared responsibility to address the reality of his
> limited economic prospects.

Why do I have a responsibility for someone else’s economic prospects? The man
profiled in the story didn’t sound like he was a victim of anything I’m
responsible for: I didn’t make him late for work so much he got fired. I
didn’t ask him to get married and have two kids at age 21. There is a whole
bunch of “not my problem” going on there.

I’m also not convinced _only_ $30-40 per hour in a pretty cheap cost of living
area is a bad wage. That’s much more than many degreed people working in the
city make. Also the potential with welding is that he could start his own shop
and be making some serious money. The national demand is huge. My dad is a
retired precision machinist and his “side business” in his garage makes him
more money than his job working with physics Nobel laureates at a major
university ever did. Most of his business is contract work for universities
and oil field tooling companies and he hires welders almost continually. Most
welders he works with are at full capacity and can’t hire people fast enough.
The problem is that many people that go into the trades are like the guy
profiled in the story: unreliable, often losers, who don’t stick around very
long. The good ones, the sky is pretty much the limit. The economy is flying —
there is a lot of work. Same thing in the construction trades as well,
especially plumbing.

------
Glyptodon
A relative a mine works for an engineering firm that hires a lot of pipe
fitters and welders for jobs they bid (beverage industry). The hourly and
(frequently) overtime wages they pay welders often sound good, but the work is
also somewhat intermittent and almost always involves significant travel. The
welders they hire have pretty significant wage variability year to year.

------
ranDOMscripts
What the title of article should be: "The Myth of the Freelance Wealthy Welder
in Nowheresville, Anystate USA".

Welding, and trades in general, pay big money in the big cities along the
coasts. I bet the union welders putting up sky scrapers and fixing public
works are making six figures, minimum.

------
peteretep
> If we are able to persuade ourselves that there are plenty of lucrative
> opportunities available for young people like Orry who didn’t much like high
> school, it absolves us of our shared responsibility to address the reality
> of his limited economic prospects

Mic drop

------
brandonmenc
Every welder and tradesman I know back home where the median home value is
$75k is doing pretty good.

No student loans, dual-income with a CRN, and you're living pretty high in the
rust belt.

------
welder
Despite my handle, I'm not a welder.

In all seriousness, it sucks people were duped into a welding career not all
it's cracked up to be.

------
zelon88
> One of the many odd things about the rhetoric that posits welding as the
> antithesis of college is that in order to become a welder, you actually have
> to go to college. You can learn the basics in a high-school shop class, as
> Orry did, but to do it well, you not only have to master multiple precise
> manual skills; you also need a pretty deep scientific understanding of the
> metal you’re working with and the electrical and chemical processes you’re
> using to manipulate that metal. To earn an associate’s degree, Orry would
> need to pass 12 separate welding courses, plus basic courses in math and
> English, as well as more conceptual courses in welding metallurgy.

This right here. Says it all.

I've worked in machine shops all my life, and while it is true that welding
was one of the highest paid occupations in that environment; it's also true
that it's not something that anyone can do with a week of on-the-job training.

Most welding jobs are sticking wrought iron railings together, or playground
equipment, or repairing mufflers. It's easy. It's cheap. It is, quite
literally, something for a disposable employee to do. It doesn't take skill or
experience to replace a muffler. It takes a hack-saw and a MIG welder. There's
no reason anyone would or should pay a Jiffy-lube muffler installer
$150k/year. It's not a job that warrants that kind of pay. But most "welders"
go into the trade thinking that's what they're working towards. It's not
comparable in any way to the work performed by a professional welder. They
really shouldn't even be called the same thing. It's like labeling a script
kiddie a programmer. Misrepresenting the script kiddie takes more away from
the actual programmer than it gives to the fake one.

That being said, "real" welding is where the money is. It's being certified by
some authoritative body to perform your job, whatever that may be. Aerospace,
architectural, nuclear, underwater, ect. It's being able to read a complex
blueprint and create assemblies that are conforming to a long list of
criteria. Criteria that come from a) the government, b) the customer, c) your
own quality department, d) your engineering department, e) your own
experience. I bet you that if you took most bicycles from Wal-Mart and had the
welds x-ray'd that 100% would fail standard NDT testing like X-Ray, FPI
(fluorescent particle inspection), MPI (magnetic particle inspection). It
requires a _very_ low-level understanding of the science behind welding. On a
molecular/chemical level.

The welders who take their job seriously, climb to the top, take their time,
can read a blueprint, and are professional in their appearance, work ethic,
mannerisms, and products do well. They will reach $150k by working on mission-
critical components that people's lives depend on. You can't substitute an
actual welder for "a welder." They need to be responsible, talented, and
intelligent.

Sadly the people being pushed/drawn into welding careers aren't any of those
things. They are simple people looking for an easy way out of poverty. As a
result, there are now hundreds of thousands of under-qualified people trying
to get into a career with mere thousands of openings. The ones that do get in
hover close to the bottom because they need the same skills to be good at
welding that they needed all along. The bar for welding is just as high as for
being a doctor, or a programmer, or any other _profession_.

So in the end, you can be a wealthy welder or a poor welder. You can be a
wealthy programmer, or a poor programmer. It all comes down to the word
"professional". If you're professional chances are good you're intelligent and
will do well no matter what field you go into.

My last shop was NADCAP certified (for aerospace with 5 x-ray certified full-
time welders. We had one who only made it about 9 months or so. His welds were
_GORGEOUS_. This guy should have been working in a motorcycle shop. His work
was just so neat and tidy! But he couldn't pass X-ray or FPI to save his life.
He would wait nervously for his parts to return from NDT vendors to count the
parts he would have to rework.

After he porked 400 or so inconel rings for tungsten inclusion we had to let
him go. He was a _good_ welder, but he wasn't good _enough_ to be working on
airplane parts.

~~~
kevlawrence
I don't think I will look at welds on an airplane the same after reading this.
Very interesting, thanks for posting!

------
rwmurrayVT
Skilled trade demand varies across the United States. Welding is not a major
trade in the western North Carolina. You can jump right on over to the eastern
portion of Virginia and find a large number of welding opportunities. The temp
agency I work for as opportunities from 13 to 21 and beyond for 5XXX and CuNi
in South Carolina, Norfolk, Knoxville, Tampa, and Columbus. Several of these
go so far as to offer per diem.. When I got hired I was in initial OSHA
training with a guy from VT Halter in Mississippi who came up here on per diem
and was being paid 29 + per diem. The skilled trades have a good amount of
opportunity if you're available and able to reside where industry is located.

This guy was fired twice for missing work. So that's just a bad sign off the
rip. I think welding is being pushed too hard. Every one needs to do their
research and see what trades are in demand where they reside.

12 -18

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/26693cff-8967-4b2c-a62...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/26693cff-8967-4b2c-a629-1e645d269310#.XXu3-IvwkBQ.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/e30dd4d1-fe81-4f71-825...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/e30dd4d1-fe81-4f71-8253-4f2690024c5b#.XXu30bUUz18.link)

20 - 23

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/2541dfe5-4f21-41fa-
aef...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/2541dfe5-4f21-41fa-
aef4-553e819da88a#.XXu3-A8LKmg.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/59ec0ea9-e975-4ff8-931...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/59ec0ea9-e975-4ff8-9312-3e8336b14d4e#.XXu3-JCMfwk.link)

Unlisted, but based on reading 20+. Mostly 5XXX, CuNi, etc.

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/cf1967b7-0e04-4a5f-9ff...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/cf1967b7-0e04-4a5f-9ff3-98934b40ad5a#.XXu3-JP29Jg.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/b3482924-7abe-44bd-b76...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/b3482924-7abe-44bd-b76d-b415c960830a#.XXu3-EVTmZM.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/29c1474d-a58c-4299-aba...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/29c1474d-a58c-4299-aba5-091afa5e08c7#.XXu3-Ev5w7c.link)

[https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/d5ff023f-c22e-4ad9-95d...](https://gmn.avionte.com/basic/posting/d5ff023f-c22e-4ad9-95d5-61be36e1e0dc#.XXu3-DmUnvg.link)

------
samstave
Not unless your this guy:

[https://www.nboler.com/](https://www.nboler.com/)

------
aphextim
>To earn an associate’s degree, Orry would need to pass 12 separate welding
courses, plus basic courses in math and English, as well as more conceptual
courses in welding metallurgy.

>His first year at CVCC went well, mostly. It wasn’t completely smooth—he
failed his required English course, which was offered only online. But in his
welding classes, he earned nothing but A’s and B’s. After that first year
ended, he ran into some bureaucratic trouble with his financial aid, he told
me, and he took both the summer and the fall of 2017 off from school. For a
while, I wondered whether he might just be finished with college. But then he
started up again as a full-time student in January 2018.

Why would anyone pay to go to college for welding? Unless it is some
specialized area (Underwater welding), you can join the Iron Worker's 4 year
apprenticeship program.

4 years of work/classes once a month. Start at 60% scale (16-18$ depending on
state) in year one. 10% pump in pay each year so by the end of your program
when you have your journeyman's card you get (26-32$) depending on the state.

You have to pay like a $400 sign up fee to get in the union (way cheaper than
college) and continue to pay your union dues, however that gets you the
benefit of getting on a list to be called when contractors need to man a job.

A lot of times it just takes one job with a contractor where you do well, and
they will call you direct anytime they need a job.

There are lots of Iron Workers in my area at least who only work 9 months out
of the year and make $100,000 + by working shutdowns (emergency repair jobs)
through the union hall.

You can get all your welding certificates without going to college which is
what any job requires. Experience and certs proving your welds are up to par.

Also FTA

> It was hard work, loud and dirty and repetitive, but it paid $13.90 an hour,
> more than Snappy Lube. After a year and a half, Orry was fired for missing
> too many days of work, but he soon managed to land a job at another steel-
> wire factory. Then he got fired from that job as well.

> It was by that point the spring of 2016, and Orry was 24, separated, and
> unemployed. He was raising two children with his ex-wife, Katie, and he was
> living with a new girlfriend named Crystal. Orry had been working hard for
> five years, and yet he was broke, with nothing saved.

It doesn't explain why he was fired other than 'missed too many days' \- and
doesn't say any reason for the 2nd. This sounds to me like it's more about the
personal work ethic of Orry and budgeting skills vs being a welder you will be
poor.

Anecdotal I know, but a friend of mine right out of high school got into the
trades with the above mentioned path. By 24 (2 years into his journeyman
work), he had a modest two bedroom house, wife, two kids and had no issues
with money or bankruptcy. He also only worked shutdowns where he may work 28
days in a row, 12 hours a day, and then have an entire month off until the
next job. This life isn't for everyone but hey for some it works some it
doesn't.

------
biohax2015
I just don't get it. Education is everything! How is the United States placing
such a low priority on it!? It is really only a matter of time until we are
blown out of the water by Asian countries, who seem to understand its
importance.

~~~
jimmaswell
There's an image problem with college in the US, largely the fault of some of
the students/student organizations. Like that protest that took over a whole
unrelated building, barring an innocent professor from accessing his research,
and resulted in the professor being fired for trying to get it back. I hope we
can return to respectable academia at one point. Where universities put
furthering the body of human knowledge before bending over for their
'customers' who are more concerned with using the place as a playground to
push their political views. I wouldn't be surprised if some medical university
research program was on the verge of curing cancer but let their program be
delayed because the students wanted to do a walk-in over something or other.

~~~
jimmaswell
Wish the downvoters would give some explanation. I left my college with a
vague sense of shame over the frivolous protests the student body participated
in and the admin/professors allowed to disrupt class/activities/common-use
areas. I'd have paid more togo somewhere protests had to be done off-campus or
in a designated zone. At least in theory you're supposed to be there to learn.

