My cousin's baby-daddy was a painter, but he couldn't make enough money to pay child support doing that so he does some sort of overhead-door service thing now. He was pretty thrilled to get health insurance as well since he'd never had a job that provided that before.
What data do you have that shows that painters are currently highly paid? It's entry-level construction work; AKA a shit job (maybe just a bit better than roofing), so I'm skeptical.
> It's entry-level construction work; AKA a shit job
This was historically true for construction [1]. Yet their wages are on a smooth curve upwards [2]. The entire cohort of construction workers is currently seeing high real wages, and their data almost completely hide Covid.
I’d also argue that commodity and skilled painting are different. The 50-year old commodity painter who honed his craft can charge a premium because he can smooth my drywall and put on a finish someone with zero training cannot.
That paper that you're citing is from 2022; hardly what I'd call historic. And is 2 in real dollars? Because it doesn't look like it and I wonder if it would be just a flat line if it was.
I'll say that I've worked along side my cousin's baby-daddy (I think in future I'll just call him "T" as that's less unwieldy), and he's a fine painter, but ultimately there just isn't that much to the job. I remember the first time I used a paint sprayer on a new construction job myself; basically you just need to learn where the trigger is and in a minute you can paint a wall that would take an hour with a roller.
I'll just say that my on-the-ground experience (limited such as it is to the markets/trades that my friends and family work in) doesn't express that construction is all of a sudden a good job. I could perhaps be convinced that it has upgraded from a shit job to merely a crap one, perhaps because so many people have escaped it that they have to at least pay slightly better these days. If I had any kids, I'd still be inclined give them the same advice that my blue-collar parents gave me - go to school to do just about anything else.
