Colleagues,
Very noteworthy read entitled “”As tech jobs melt, the trades beckon”. We thank retired colleague & friend Bill Blake for forwarding this to us.
David
As tech jobs melt, the trades beckon. This Tacoma plumber makes $140K+.
As tech jobs melt, the trades beckon. This Tacoma plumber makes $140K+. | The Seattle Times
Feb. 17, 2023 — By Erik Lacitis Pacific NW magazine writer–
Journeyman plumber Will Lane, right, talks about a job with apprentices Ricky Bui, left, and Tonya Miller in a Des Moines home. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
MEET WILL LANE, 31, of Tacoma, who never went to college.
He’s a journeyman plumber. He figures he earns $140,000 to $160,000 a year. He has plenty of work.
It turns out that you don’t need a four-year degree and massive college debt to make a very comfortable living.
High school students: The skilled trades — plumbing, electrical, carpentry, ironworking, and numerous others — are beckoning.
THE BACKSTORY
If you reach ‘journey level’ in the trades, you deserve an ego trip
There is another world out there besides sitting in a cubicle, staring at a screen. Especially now, the trades are a nice alternative to the shock undergoing the knowledge economy.
There were 200,000 tech company firings at some 1,000 firms last year and into February, according to the tracking site layoffs.fyi.
“Silicon Valley as we know it — with its radically transparent company cultures, empowered employees, flat hierarchies and rarefied perks like nap pods and free food — is quickly disappearing. And it’s unlikely to return,” wrote Nadia Rawlinson, the former chief people officer at Slack, the chat room used by companies in place of email, in a Jan. 19 New York Times essay. But in the trades, it’s a different story.
ANGIE HICKS IS the co-founder of Angie’s List — now Angi — which pairs homeowners and contractors.
Speaking by phone from her home in Indianapolis, she says, “The trades have always been insulated from the economy a bit. For most people, their individual home is their largest investment. They want to protect it. I always remind people that the housing market and home improvement market are two different things. Whether you’re buying or selling a home doesn’t mean we’re not taking care of them.”
The plumbing industry is a particularly strong example of the shortage of people in that trade, as workers are aging out.
According to DataUSA, which compiles U.S. government data, there were more than 500,000 plumbers, pipe fitters and steamfitters in the United States in 2020.
Nearly a third of them — 28% — were over age 50. At indeed.com, the job listing site, there were more than 300 recent listings for Washington state plumbing jobs, some offering up to $10,000 as a sign-up bonus.
1 of 2 | Tonya Miller, left, an apprentice plumber with Harts Services, holds a vacuum while journeyman plumber Will Lane cuts out a piece of Sheetrock in a Des Moines home. Miller had been a nurse and teacher… (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
Lane works for Harts Services, a Tacoma company that covers from Olympia to Everett.
For Lane and his wife, who works for a nonprofit, his plumbing salary has “given me the opportunity to do well in life, be able to afford to buy a new home, travel, do things we enjoy,” he says.
He’s from Australia. In high school there, says Lane, “They definitely push for the trades if you’re not interested in studying in college. There are a lot of options for work experiences, and if you don’t have contacts in the trades, they can set you up.”
IT’S A DIFFERENT story in Seattle Public Schools, although that’s changing.
In 2020, there were nearly 15,000 high school students in the district. Only 220 were enrolled at its Skills Center trades program, which includes maritime vessel operation, auto technology, medical office assistant, construction, and video game design.
That’s 1.5%. One problem is that the classes are spread around various Seattle locations. That means students spend half a day at their regular school and have to make their way to the trades classes by bus or Rideshare.
Dan Golosman, the enthusiastic principal of the program, hopes the Skills Center eventually can be sited in one central location. For right now, he simply wants kids to know the trades opportunities are there. OK; here you go: skillscenter.seattleschools.org.
WE’RE PAYING THE price for pushing high school kids to go to college, writes Matt B. Crawford in his best-seller, “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.”
In a May 21, 2009, New York Times essay adapted from the book, he writes: “High school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become ‘knowledge workers.’ The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass.”
Matt B. Crawford is the author of the 2009 best-seller “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.” At his San Francisco Bay Area home, he spends hours modifying a VW bug with parts from various years. (Courtesy Matt B. Crawford)
Crawford, 57, floats between the trades and the knowledge economy. He earned a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and is a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He also once owned a motorcycle repair shop and says that for the past 10 years, he’s spent half of the day modifying an old VW bug made up of parts from various years.
In a phone interview, Crawford, who lives in the San Francisco area, says that in the trades, “There’s no ambiguity that you’re doing something useful.”
But in the knowledge economy, says Crawford, “You’re trafficking in abstractions. The standards are more amorphous. You’re never quite sure where you stand. In an office environment, it’s like walking on eggshells.”
David J. Ferreira
MAVA Communications Coordinator