
A labor market conundrum: Skilled and high-paying blue-collar jobs go unfilled - fern12
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-27/want-a-1-million-paycheck-skip-college-and-go-work-in-a-lumberyard
======
micaksica
While this is a clickbait article, it's probably worth many high schoolers
recognizing that compensation is simply unevenly distributed. There's an
increasing realization that going to college does not give you a fast track to
FTE status in many industries anymore, and there needs to be a better
understanding of the fact that the job market is, well, a market, and salaries
will adjust based upon the supply of that market.

I think a lot of current CS hopefuls coming in as freshmen are going to see a
shocking market adjustment when there are tens of thousands of juniors
competing for the same jobs, just as we saw with law degrees after the last
recession. There are way more JDs than there are good attorney jobs, and even
fewer partner positions that really bring in the money.

Market dynamics affect one's well being less when you are not shooting simply
for compensation, but also job satisfaction. Of course, in our society, highly
indebted students are forced to be all about the money and not about the
satisfaction. This doesn't lead to successful careers. It leads to burnout,
disillusionment, and ennui.

~~~
trendia
I'm not sure the comparison between CS and law is totally appropriate. Law
protects existing wealth, while CS can create new wealth.

That implies that there is not some "fixed" number of CS jobs for which
everyone is competing; some CS grads will start companies that will employ 5
or 10 other CS grads.

------
Animats
Construction jobs come and go with housing starts. Construction work is high-
paying but intermittent.

Other problems: if you work at the only factory in town, the factory has total
power over you. You can't quit and get another job. If the factory closes, the
town dies. Or goes into zombie mode - no jobs, young people leave, population
ages, buildings are abandoned. Too many US towns and small cities are like
that. Relocating to a one-factory town is risky. You can be trapped there,
especially if you buy a house. 84 Lumber HQ is in a town with 700 people.

Companies in bigger cities tend to have less trouble recruiting. The labor
pool is bigger. They can raise wages if they need more workers, which tends to
push wages up in urban areas.

------
RealityNow
> 84 Lumber’s owner, Maggie Hardy Magerko, has something in common with the
> president. Both inherited businesses from their fathers that have made them
> fabulously rich. Magerko owns almost all of closely held 84 Lumber, whose
> stores cater primarily to residential builders and contractors. She is worth
> $2.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

> Magerko, 51, is not afraid to flaunt her wealth, sending a message to her
> workers that they too can get rich working construction. Wearing a diamond
> cross necklace, a Gucci belt, and a white shirt emblazoned with the company
> logo, she visited a rural Pennsylvania store recently in a white Mercedes.
> “I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own
> boats,” she says.

So essentially, the best way to achieve the American Dream is to inherit a
successful business from your parents.

Capitalism is sort of like a pyramid scheme - The owner(s) at the top reaping
all the benefits, while everyone else is plumbing away in hope of the
"American Dream".

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_“I want people who work for me to retire in their 50s and own their own
boats,” she says._

God that sounds terrible anyway. Do that many people want to retire -
literally have nothing greater than themselves that requires their input on a
daily basis - and go sit on a boat? What a waste.

~~~
ImSkeptical
Both of my parents are retired. My father spends his time with his amateur
radio, writes magazine articles for niche publications (about amateur radio),
works around the house, and sometimes consults with startups from his former
field. My mother spends her time reading novels, taking care of grandchildren,
visiting family members, and volunteering.

Retirement seems like a good deal to me. It's not an inability to do things
greater than yourself, it's the freedom to choose your pursuits without
economic constraints (ideally).

Owning a boat, and sailing for pleasure sounds like a lovely hobby. I don't
see anything wrong with aspiring to spend time that way.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_I don 't see anything wrong with aspiring to spend time that way._

At the end of the day it's just indulgence, not actually using your potential
to the fullest. Going through life simply for pleasure is the sure fire way to
have no lasting impact.

If that's what you want to do, then great, but I get annoyed when mediocrity
is touted as the greatest good.

~~~
ImSkeptical
If life were nothing but an unending challenge, where every action had to
challenge the actor to their full potential, I think it would be hard to
tolerate.

What's the point of working hard to make the world better, if the only thing
you're working hard for is to enable more hard work?

I want my children to work hard, to challenge themselves, and to do something
valuable. I also want them to have a good time, and not become worker robots.

There's a place for everything. Retirement is the place for entertaining your
own hobbies and interests, even if that means working on your boat and going
out on the lake.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_If life were nothing but an unending challenge, where every action had to
challenge the actor to their full potential, I think it would be hard to
tolerate._

Fully agreed:

"But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself" \- Camus

------
zucchini_head
I have a little story about this kind of thing, where doing something rather
simple and low-skill can make an absolute fortune.

One night I was talking to an older friend of a friend, 50+, around a year ago
now. We were talking about what we did for a living and what we got paid. We
started off with what he did: He's a bricklayer, nothing more, and told me
that they get paid per brick they lay. It's something like £4 per brick. What
shocked me was an experienced bricklayer like him usually lays enough bricks
to make around £400/day.

"That's almost £150,000/year!" I said, trying to not sound too envious or
anything (spoiler: I failed). And this doesn't include the one-off jobs they
get every weekend from rich foreigners who have extravagant houses built in
the UK all the time. All in all it can amount to some very large amounts of
zeros in your bank. In a few years he became a millionaire from bricklaying. I
have since then talked to a few others who are in that trade and it all
(anecdotally) corroborates, approximately (the older you are the more you get
picked for "specialist" properties that involve very rich Chinese and Arabians
apparently, which can make you ~£1,000 in one weekend).

I asked, as any sane person would, something along the lines of "why isn't
everyone and his dog laying bricks?". And the reply was very intriguing. He
said essentially that younger people these days (my age) don't want to lay
bricks every day now, or don't have the stamina. They want to go on their
phones and become world-famous and important and work on new gizmos and apps
every day and be looked at by everyone and be payed attention to, etc, etc.

Since then I've not really been able to get my head around it all. It seems
like although we talk about automation stealing jobs and everybody will have
to be a "techie" to make any sort of decent living, there is definitely a
small "elite" minority doing these very old-fashioned jobs that no-one wants
or can do anymore. I fear sometimes that we (the younger generation) are
slowly going mad with technology, and forgetting about the practical skills.
What our own two hands were made to do so to speak.

We never got on to what I do in the end funnily enough.

Anyway, more relevantly, this lumberyard article is just a (slightly
Americanised) theme of the above. It's these jobs that were done for a
pittance in the past (sometimes even by slaves and prisoners), and now are
these trades that sometimes are paying exorbitant salaries, just simply
because nobody wants to do it, because no-one can be bothered anymore.

Apologies if this was long and off-topic, but I hope it's left some kind of
thought somewhere.

~~~
afuchs
> I asked, as any sane person would, something along the lines of "why isn't
> everyone and his dog laying bricks?". And the reply was very intriguing. He
> said essentially that younger people these days (my age) don't want to lay
> bricks every day now, or don't have the stamina. They want to go on their
> phones and become world-famous and important and work on new gizmos and apps
> every day and be looked at by everyone and be payed attention to, etc, etc.

This sounds too familiar, like an employer talking about how they can't find
anyone while plenty of unemployed or underemployed workers are willing to do
the job.

There are plenty of people out there willing to this type of work, especially
if the pay is that good.

Where are these jobs, and how does one get them?

~~~
zucchini_head
It's about willing to do the job good, and not just for the money I think.

But anyway, I think that maybe my above story is all just gobblewash.
Overnight, I was thinking about how all these jobs that pay a lot for rather
low-skill labour are all related to real-estate. Wood and bricks are what
makes houses. I wonder if the good pay comes from that, rather than not many
people wanting to do it.

Regardless, it's the opinion now quite a few of these labourers hold now -
that the younger generation aren't able to do what they do. Maybe that's a
little short-sighted, maybe it's on to something wrong with the future
generations, maybe it's just wrong. Who knows.

------
bsder
These kinds of clickbait headlines actually are a disservice to trade jobs.

Trade jobs are _good jobs_. However, my experience shows that the trades in
the US are actually not that unfilled, actually.

Trade salaries aren't _going up_ \--the classic sign of unmet demand.

------
southphillyman
Betting on any kind of physical retail profession seems pretty risky to me now
days.

------
fuzzybeard
> “You can go to college and learn the theology of the Roman Empire,” says
> Kleis, who just completed a three-day training program at 84 Lumber’s rural
> Pennsylvania headquarters. “You learn all this ridiculous nonsense, and when
> you get out, what are you applying that to? I know how to frame a house.”

This is so incredibly vapid and such a poor argument to make in favor of what
is otherwise a valid case being made by the author. I can't believe Bloomberg
used that quote.

~~~
StevePerkins
Ehh, I don't know. It is sharply worded, but "vapid and poor"?

I have a graduate degree. The CS portions of that have indeed been useful in
my career as a programmer. However, the rest of my liberal arts education have
been helpful in... well... conversing with other liberal arts grads. I sound
fairly well-spoken, I suppose, when writing up documentation that no one
usually reads. I can reasonably frame a critical argument, except that I live
in a world now where most discussion takes place in social echo chambers
anyway.

I am pleased with my life outcome, and do not envy the person being quoted,
primarily because I lucked into a hot market at the ideal time. But if I were
starting out today, I'm not so sure of how smug I would be in comparing my
career prospects, core values, and likelihood of happiness and self-
actualization to this person's.

Frankly, I think that "blue collar" work would have to pay twice as much as
"white collar" work before society would start to re-align itself accordingly.
Because quite frankly, we're going on 3 or 4 generations now of the mindset
that white collar work is something to aspire to, while blue collar work is a
sign of failure and low social status.

Our entrenched cultural bias lags behind the cold economic reality for most
young people coming up today.

~~~
jaclaz
I refuse to believe that a regional manager of _any_ company can be classified
as "blue collar".

And of course there is nothing bad in choosing to study and get a degree (or
however some higher education) or in choosing to start working and make a
different career, but being proud of one's own ignorance?

Knowing how to frame a house does not automatically exclude some knowledge
about Roman Theology.

------
barnaclejive
> The company pays manager trainees about $40,000 a year, and that’s just the
> beginning. Those in charge of top-grossing stores can earn $200,000, and in
> a few cases more than $1 million, including bonuses.

~~~
alttab
So, don't go to college and become a regional manager of a lumber company.

I feel like the only reason they can even joke with a headline like this is
technically the entry level positions don't require college degrees.

My second guess is the current regional managers making over $1m a year have
some type of extended formal education. I could be wrong here, but probably
not.

A casual search for "84 lumber manager" on LinkedIn produced 6 relevant
listings on the front page - 5 of which had university degrees.

~~~
Merad
According to Wikipedia, 84 Lumber has about 250 store. I would hazard a guess
that there is one manager and perhaps three assistant managers per store -
about 1000 "well paying" jobs. I'd also bet that only a very small portion of
their store managers, maybe 10-15%, make $200k+.

------
dang
We have replaced the article's title with a representative phrase from its
body in the hope of saving this thread from the dreaded title fever.

~~~
fern12
Thanks, this is my first case of title fever. Hoping to develop some immunity.

~~~
dang
Heh. It's actually fun to find just the right phrase embedded in the text,
that can be swapped in as an HN title—it's like mushroom hunting. There almost
always is something suitable, but this time it was a perfect specimen, down to
punctuation.

Of course we only need to do this when the original title is baity or
misleading
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
but we've learned that when it is necessary, it's far better to take language
from the article itself than to make up one's own. If you find the right
phrase, ideally you don't even to change a word. The only thing I did after
pasting the above was s/a/A/.

