The Great Electrician Shortage
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
First, you have pretty high barriers to entry in the form of apprenticeships and per-state licensing requirements. Then you have the shit hours and shit customers that expect those shit hours. My brother got angry calls from customers because he dared to say no when they wanted him to ditch his daughter's birthday party on a Saturday to go fix their AC immediately. Then you have the actual pay which just isn't that great unless you're an established business owner with a good clientele - as others have pointed out (and the article itself points out), the real pay after you sort through all the outlier stories is pretty low.
So, option A is you go to college, immediately get a job with zero hurdles up front, sit behind a desk from 9-5, and collect a solid paycheck. Option B is you go to trade school, then make next to nothing apprenticing for years, then you make somewhere around median income while driving a truck all over the place working in shitty conditions and getting chewed out by people who expect you to be available 24/7.
It's pretty broken on the other side of things too, presumably because the work sucks so much and is so variable that they are incentivized to milk every penny from those who appear like they can afford it.
As a busy professional homeowner that is well-paid, I would gladly pay 50% more than the current going rate in town to know that a decent, workmanlike job would be done.
The quality of the work is completely decoupled from the rates charged though, which kind of makes sense, as there are plenty of people in town who need HVAC/plumbing/electrical &c. work done who can't afford to pay over the going rate.
It took me a decade to find a plumber that is honest (luckily they do decent work as well, but honest was hard enough of a bar to reach).
People do their own electrical work all the time, and the insurance company doesn't know (and probably doesn't care).
The reason they don't care is: unless you have a > 100 year old house with knob and tube wiring, you have to go to _great_ lengths to set it on fire with electricity. Like, you have to be deliberately trying to burn your house down (we're talking connecting a hot and a neutral wire next to a gasoline soaked piece of wood and turning on the breaker).
For the most part, the biggest risk to doing your own electrical work is getting electrocuted, and 120V usually won't kill you (but it does hurt).
I did my own upgrade to Lutron smart switches, and…it was easy (just turn the fuse off first!) but…I will probably have them redone when I rewire my kitchen someday.
Without forcing consolidation, how would one do this? (Preferably, something which can be enacted at the state level.)
Reviews don't work. Optional, high-barrier certifications? Competitions?
Use the wildly popular technique that has taken over the assessment of everything else too big to measure: the random sample. Every registered technician will enter each job performed into a lottery, which will be reviewed by a qualified analyst. A single bad finding shouldn't ruin anyone, but a good record keeping methodology with appropriate sampling and a suitable penalty for failing to register a job — registration will likely be demanded by consumers anyway — should effectively weed out any laggards.
I am not aware of this being implemented for any home maintenance, but this is how hospital accreditation is done. Every now and then The Joint Commission shows up and inspects stuff.
One difference between trades and medicine is paperwork. I have hired for jobs without contracts being signed or receipts produced.
Why not make it optional? Registered work gets randomly inspected. Unregistered work is not. The customer pays up for the privilege. Perhaps include an adjudication framework if the inspected work is found lacking.
They know good subcontractors.
A good friend of mine in HS did one semester of college, said "nope. not for me" and became an electrician. Fast forward ~30 years, he planning on retiring in a few years (could retire now if he wanted to).
He's smart, worked hard, learned and taught himself as much as possible. Took & passed all tests asap, got his contractor's license asap, etc. Branched out to learn industrial controls and electrical too.
I think pursuing a trade can be a really good way to go... but you need to go into it planning to learn & teach yourself and push the excel.
I know welders who make >200k USD a year working 4-6 months a year. They are crazy skilled and know their craft inside and out... they know more metallurgical science than me (and way more practical knowledge about metal alloys) and I was chemical and materials engineering major.
I know a master carpenter/craftsman who makea >500k a year, profit, doing high end cabinets, woodworking, furniture, building, kitchen remodels, etc.
Edit: the big difference in software engineering compared to trades work specifically is liability. I know construction workers who have lost their license, driven a 16D nail through their kneecap, cut off fingers, etc and have no pay or anything to show for it. And can’t work as a result - this is more bodily stuff but they’re also on the hook for damages/accidents caused by subs etc. Software eng is amazing because there is really no liability compared to construction. My dad is a civil engineer and even though he’s almost a decade retired he still maintains insurance and stuff for past projects because of “statute of limitations” type liability stuff.
There’s a ton of money to be made in trades/construction but the stakes are much higher
Huh. I know a doctor and a civil engineer who both, on retirement, divorced their spouses and basically gifted them everything. Zero clue how this works, legally. For what it's worth, they're both in Florida.
I have a very close family member who is a master carpenter who does finish carpentry (like cabinets) for billionaire's homes and other large projects in LA. He has never made more than 120k, though he works union so possibly that's what limits him.
How does your friend make that much?
My father came from a poor family and went to college on a scholarship, but after graduating and finding that he couldn't afford to complete graduate school, he went into carpentry. He started with basically nothing, but ended up making a decent living after years of busting his ass. Ultimately he was pulling in six figures before retirement.
I can think of two ways the parent's statement might be true-ish:
1) The "master carpenter" is some kind of artisan, doing bespoke pieces (essentially, artwork) for incredibly wealthy individuals. Perhaps they come from wealth and already had connections.
2) The carpenter is not a carpenter, but a business owner. This is eventually what my father did - he used his own labor exclusively at first, working for other people. Once his network expanded he started taking on small jobs on his own. Once that expanded he started hiring people to help. Once that expanded he was able to save enough money, and eventually he got his general contractor's license.
At some point along the line, although he retained and sometimes still utilized his own carpentry skills, a vast majority of his earnings were generated by the fact that he owned a business and employed other people to do the labor. And yet, he still made maybe 1/4 of what the parent post's acquaintance does (adjusted for inflation).
For 1), you would need to be both incredibly talented and incredibly good at marketing. For 2), you need to be good at "business" more than you need to be good at carpentry.
This isn't a straightforward path. For everybody like my father, I knew people in his orbit who never made the leap to ownership. They worked doing manual labor for other people, and the toll it took on their bodies was immediately evident. The kind of physical work that you can do in your 20s and 30s starts to grind you down quickly in your 40s or 50s. He knew plenty of peers and colleagues whose pain became unmanageable, and drug addiction was the result. Others who ended up on disability being unable to work at all.
"Rich tradesman" is a low percentage play. I suspect that the extent that it's possible to be a $500k/yr carpenter (for somebody really starting out in the trades - not somebody coming from wealth/privilege and starting off with a business or art connections), you may as well be trying to become a professional athlete.
I've never heard of a union that mandates upper bounds in wages. They may very well exist, but I've never heard of one.
From my exposure to craftsman and trades, I think being truly successful in trade is about 'really applying yourself' and developing real expertise and gradually expanding that expertise over time, and then making intelligent business decisions. It is really very similar to most technical disciplines: software engineering, electrical engineering, etc.
I worked construction and home remodels for a while in college and then as an electricians 'helper'... also worked in cabinet shop and doing basic finish carpentry. Most people on job sites in the 90's had no drive to improve themselves. Many of them clocked off the job, drove home, picked up a 6 or 12-pack on the way, and drank the rest of night. Rinse, repeat the next day. These folks are probably the majority and thus pull down the mean/median.
But capable people can make a lot of money in the trades. If you are smart enough, and hard working enough, to get a BS in CS. You were probably also capable of starting in a trade at 18-20yrs old and building a >250K profit (income for yourself) per year business. You could tell the dudes on the sites who were going places...
Option B means you're getting paid while learning instead of shelling out $50k+ for a 4 year degree.
"Shitty condtions" is subjective. A lot of people would call staring at a screen in a cube, under harsh fluorescent lights while breathing in your coworkers farts and getting obese from zero movement shitty.
Also, you're severely underestimating what kinda money a tradesman can bring in. It's on par/better than a lot of 4 year degree holders without the debt part.
Try working as a plumber for a month, and "shitty" takes on a new, more literal meaning.
"Subjective" often just means "relative to their experience". If someone never did work in a physically exhausting, dirty or dangerous job, they tend to have a different view of "shitty conditions" than those who did.
You should write Amazon Job ads!
I don't think it is. I worked as an electrician's apprentice for 3 years in school. Trade work absolutely destroys your body. Every day you are up and down ladders, squeezing through filthy nail-studded crawlspaces or 130 degree also nail-studded attics, construction sites with dubious safety, power tools operated by people who are drunk and high while breathing in wood/concrete/glass fiber/and whatever else kind of particulates. At the end of the day your body hurts (and only hurts more with time), so you drink several beers, pass out in front of the TV, then do it again. Go to a construction site, guess someone's age, then ask and be surprised to learn the person who looks like a rough 55 is really 42.
There are really only 2 ways to be a tradesperson without killing your body before you are 60: 1) become staff tradesperson for something like a hospital or a university. This is open to you once you have some experience, the pay is not great but it's usually a fairly cushy job as the demands are not high or 2) start a business. I won't go into it, but it's really hard to do this and be successful. Most people who try can't make it for one reason or another.
Sitting your but in a chair all day staring at a screen is far worse for you than using your body daily. Office workers regularly end up obese and almost wheel chair bound shortly after they retire.
It is my understanding that machinists have a similar economic system. Selling your tools means retiring from the industry. I remember some complaints by the Wall Street Journal (back in the 90s) where they were lamenting the shortage of "swiss style machinists" - who make tiny, precise things, and your entire day's production could fit inside an expresso cup. Upon further investigation, that type of machinist had a 10 year long apprenticeship. Only European countries subsidized such apprenticeship programs as no American company could afford to hire workers who needed 10 years of on-the-job-training before they could be productive. They had mentioned that almost every American "swiss style machinist" got laid off when the Cold War ended and every one sold off their tools to make ends meet.
As a country, we go through these silly boom/bust fads. The slavish devotion to cost-cutting has damaged our country's ability to survive change.
It is not biased, it is common sense. The barrier to entry to being an electrician is sufficiently low in the sense that many people have the natural ability to learn and physically do the work.
That must mean the pay to quality of life ratio is insufficient to attract enough workers (including excessively low pay to quality of life ratio during training).
Not saying this is your brother’s situation - but pretty much all of the HVAC companies I’ve dealt with tout their emergency repair services (if not 24/7 availability), and many of them include that when you buy a new HVAC system - so it seems pretty rational to expect those service providers to honor their claims
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/08...
https://data.census.gov/table?t=Marital+Status+and+Marital+H...
I’ve worked in an environment where there was a mix of grads from certificate, diploma and degree programs.
There were certain “profiles” of people that you would come to expect from each “bin” and 8/10 times your hunches were right.
Sure, maybe that one girl passed on you in your 20s because you didn’t have the right credentials, but there are plenty of other people out there.
It's not about the money, it's about the class, and also the pedigree. Blue-collar people are simply in a very different class than white-collar college-educated people. Their life experiences are completely different, and in the last few decades, with political polarization, their political views are 180 degrees different too.
Your brother’s story can also be applied to the shortage of nurses/allied health staff in Canada.
My appliance repair guy works every day with his father who is in his early 70s, and the younger guy does all the hard physical labor of lifting and dragging dishwashers, refrigerators, etc. and you can tell the old guy would rather be working every day with his son than sitting on the couch twiddling his thumbs. The other version story is my uncle who built a local landscaping company. He did backbreaking work every day sunrise to sunset when he was young, and then by middle age he was hiring crews to do the labor. In his 60s he is fully retired with money for a second vacation home in Mexico and lots of toys.
This is actually true for many professions. I can say the same about my job as a teacher, my wife's work as a doctor etc. It's not that all these jobs suck. What sucks in general all over the world is people's attitude towards people doing work for them.
With residential, you have angry families calling you because they're hot.
With commercial refrigeration, you have an angry company calling you because their fridge filled with millions of dollars worth of product is broken. It's very difficult for him to say no to things like that, and he's on call often.
I feel like people often look down on trades because in their experience they can do it themselves. This is mostly true, but that's because people are usually doing things with their own home.
Once you get into commercial stuff, thats when things get really hectic and stressful. You have to be certified for a myriad of things, especially since commercial equipment uses materials that you may never find in a residential home.
Ask the cohort of 2008-2011 how well that worked out for them.
And in case it isn't obvious for someone - that's been the largest labor participation rate drop in modern history. On top of that, many people with college degrees from that period never actually landed a well-paying job and are still stuck in service and low-wage manual labor jobs.
I bet many of them would have loved to have a trade job instead.
Meanwhile, HVAC guys near me charge $700 to run a thermostat wire 5 feet.
I mean maybe it sucks to work trades in a low COL area, but the tradesmen where I live make bank and have no trouble charging $80+/hr
Yes, in many areas that’s what it costs for a worker and helper to not be able to work on another more profitable job to do the job for you that only takes fifteen minutes. He still has to spend 30 minutes driving and maintain the same liability insurance and van lease and helper pay.
Part of the problem people don’t want to go into the direct to consumer trades is that the jobs are physically demanding, intellectually demanding (keep up on code changes, lots of esoteric knowledge about situations rarely encountered, and then there’s the customer service angle with homeowners that insist “it shouldn’t cost that much to run a wire five feet.”
Think about this premise. If something about it doesn't quite make sense, that's because it's untrue. You might as well encourage people to try out for the NBA because you "know a guy" who makes millions playing basketball.
If we remove the fiction and get to the truth, it is this: most jobs in the trades suck, and that's why people don't want them. It is the simplest answer, and it's staring everyone in the face, but they tenaciously deny it because they have romanticized the trades in their head, usually based on a few weekend experiences where they got out of the office and got their hands dirty for a few hours and loved it. They do not understand the physical toll that years of repetitive motion takes, or the financial risk involved.
The trades often have a low barrier to entry, which means they are competitive, which means for a lot of tradespeople out there, jobs are done at razor-thin margins or at a loss. To improve revenue, deadlines are sped up, safety regs are ignored, the cheapest labor is hired, and it becomes a grueling shitshow. There is nothing romantic about it. It sucks. I used to do it, and I'm way better off physically and financially now that I've left.
My neighbor just paid $100 an hour to have his fence painted.
Actual tradesmen earn a lot more. I've talked to more than one plumber who has a really nice house, better than anything I can afford as a software engineer, unless I get lucky with stock options at some point.
They also know the contractors who won't rip them off.
A house down the block from me has taken nearly a year to have siding put on and painted, in less time than that has taken, another house by me was torn down and a completely new one built in its place.
It all depends on who you know.
But if we're talking peak season for HVAC (e.g. May through September) then they have no problem working literally as much as they want at their full rate. Everyone is booked 4-5 days out during this period.
I mean, yes, if there's a blocker in your wall, no crawl space / attic, it can be bitchy pretty fast
How much of that is supply and demand and how much of that is regulatory capture making the industry a misshapen pyramid where the few license holders at the top can just rake in the money?
Their rates for other stuff (e.g. refill refrigerant, service AC, replace compressor) were much more reasonable.
They actually connected all the wiring after I ran it for 1/10th of the cost of running it, despite taking the same amount of time as I did to run it.
But I also don't doubt that many people (high COL area) will just end up paying the price.
Somewhat cautiously optimistically I think this sort of behavior will slowly disappear, one funeral at a time, as the Boomer generation finds the urn. I do not know or know of a single millennial in my first or second order groups that would ever dare to treat any service/blue collar person with anything but the utmost respect and deference.
To the GP's point about screaming at HVAC folks to come fix their equipment right now? Currently I'm waiting for a service guy to come look at my swamp cooler, when I reached out he was 10 days out thanks to being quite busy this time of year. To be expected, certainly. Sure, maybe I'll spend a day or two a little more uncomfortable than I might otherwise be since the cooler is not in service and its forecast to get warmer in the coming days, but what of it? Short term uncomfort is no big deal, maybe I'll sweat a little. I can always turn a fan on and take a cold shower. My grandparents didn't even have the luxury of a swamp cooler.
I spend enough of my day under the gun of project managers, lawyers, owner's reps and schedulers all breathing down my neck to gain a day or two on a schedule, to make up for a delay that ate into float. That stress just isn't cool, I won't turn around and pass it on to anyone else, especially if they're going to be doing something good for me.
Key words being, "_I_ do not know". Do you work with the public?
I’m picking up sarcasm here, maybe mistakenly. The person being yelled at to leave his daughter’s birthday party was not the Boomer here. The Boomer was the person making unreasonable and hostile demands that the person leave his daughter’s birthday party.
I finished my 900 sqft basement including electrical. Everything was perfect, and the inspector was kind of blown away. The reason was because I took 2 years to do the whole basement, and if I spent a weekend doing just one circuit, that was fine. A pro would never be able to spend that much time.
The quality of the work though… it's not that I could do better, it's that I've done better at specific tasks e.g. when they R&R'd a ceiling fixture I'd installed. We would've parted ways a long time ago if they'd done things right the first time. Instead I'm slowly going over their work to make sure I don't get screwed even more.
If you had a rough start in life, bad grades, no applicable skills, no money to go to college, no family support, etc. but are willing to show up and get your balls busted for a while while you learn, you could do a hell of a lot worse than the average journeyman's wage, and you stand a chance to make a hell of a lot more.
But you go on Reddit, and the poor schlubs in the rest of the country are making <$20 an hour to start. You can make more at McDonalds.
I talked to a friend of mine who runs a big corp electrician unit for a utility. He cannot hire anyone at the rates he wants to pay, and says he cannot pay them market because then he'd "have to reset the comp for his entire 100 man crew." The journeymen coming in are asking for more than supervisor pay (and they should be getting it!)
I predict we are in for more inflation as this works its way through the system.
> But you go on Reddit, and the poor schlubs in the rest of the country are making <$20 an hour to start.
These are not inconsistent at all. The poor schlubs in New England might also be making under $20 per hour. The contractor is taking the rest (and paying quite a bit of it in insurance costs). Some of it is justified, in that the "lowliest apprentice" will have to have her work checked, and possibly re-done. A risk premium. Also, that "lowliest apprentice" is getting her $20 even when not on billable work. She might only be doing paying jobs half of her time.
> He cannot hire anyone at the rates he wants to pay, and says he cannot pay them market because then he'd "have to reset the comp for his entire 100 man crew."
A buyer not being able to afford what they want to buy is not market failure. Your friend cannot pay market rate either because the business they are in is no longer viable, or the business is inefficient (paying extra for someone or something it could be paying less).
But everything else is fair game. It's really straightforward. The part I hate the most is fixing the drywall if I have to damage it running some new wire.
I'm not an electrician and would definitely encourage folks to learn to do this work themselves, but be careful and if you encounter something that is not familiar, pause and learn until you understand what you're looking at, even if that means putting it back the way it was for a bit and doing some research.
I've done a few small home repairs myself (changing faucets, putting in hard wired smoke detectors, swapping a garbage disposal, putting in a new toilet, and others) I watch a few Youtube videos, and if I'm confident I can do it myself without flooding my house or electrocuting myself, I will. Sometimes it takes an extra trip to the hardware store, because I'm missing a part or tool.
Each one of these repairs would be $300 or $400 minimum in this area. Actually, probably more, since I'm basing that on pre-pandemic prices when I had other things done. I'd guess more like $500 minimum today.
Are you actually sure about this? Everywhere I've ever checked, it's been legal for a person to work on the wiring in their own home, without needing to be licensed.
In the coastal big cities where I've lived, you cannot pull electrical permits without a license. And you cannot do electrical work without a permit.
Same for plumbing, which is even less justifiable, I think.
And I don't need to do these repairs and maintenance at a frequency which would make learnings 'stick'.
Furthermore, I am afraid (or 'excessively cautious') of electricity, although that might stem from ignorance
In contrast, I've learned to be my own accountant, of sorts, because I have to deal with it frequently enough, and have never heard of a person dying or becoming gravely injured from dealing with a spreadsheet in error
Will the government give a bunch of money away to their mates in dodgy covid contracts? Yes. Will they let bankers get away with tanking the entire economy? Yes. Will they do anything and everything they possibly can to support landlords who don't offer anything productive to the economy? Yes.
In the words of the Joker, you get what you fucking deserve.
I know someone who did that, and totally illegally. Told his customers he was a licensed electrician but it was actually one of his employees' licenses he was giving. Got away with it while he earned his way into his own license. More risk than my personal tolerance would allow.
This is clearly ridiculous. Electricity isn't hard. This is precisely the sort of thing that standardized tests, both knowledge and practical, can effectively fix.
No one wants to fix it though.
I agree that we absolutely need to make regulation here more efficient, but I think this attitude is not effective. Electricity is hard, and getting it wrong ruins lives. It's OK to say that something is both hard but also perfectly learnable by most people. They aren't mutually exclusive. As soon as we learn something, we tend to say "it's not hard, really" to people starting that same journey. I think a lot of people unjustly reserve the word "hard" for only the highest degrees of complexity. But it's a useful word - we don't want to discourage anybody, but we also want to maintain a healthy respect for how much work you need to do to properly learn some things.
A lot of it is market capture by established trade folks.
A lot of it is market capture by established trade folks.
If anything I'd say that there's regulatory capture from the manufacturers, take a look at the price of a breaker with an arc fault interrupter (now required by code on most circuits) and the litany of complaints about nuisance tripping and power draw.
Yeah but receptacles protect the user of the circuit, not the circuit itself / someone working on it. Plus you’re not protected on all the circuits where it’s not required by code. One RCD at the main is a lot smarter and more cost effective. Not to mention easier to mandate retrofits for, whereas somehow we’ve accepted in the US that tons of kids live in houses where there’s both no GFCI in the outlets in their room and no tamper resistant devices, it’s ridiculous.
> The cost is dramatically lower for wire nuts and GFCI receptacles than for GFCI/RCD breakers and lever nuts. I just picked up a ten pack of Wago lever nuts at Home Depot for $7 – Grainger/Zoro recently stopped carrying Wagos
Yeah you’re saving 0.2-0.3$ a pop (they cost around 0.4$ a pop if you buy them online by the 50s, I assume supply houses are cheaper) at the cost of much more time spent twisting, time troubleshooting later and worse health from having to twist those wire nuts for your entire career.
> If anything I'd say that there's regulatory capture from the manufacturers, take a look at the price of a breaker with an arc fault interrupter
Main breaker RCD is obviously the cost effective option :)
I went through and replaced every receptacle in the circuit (everything in the house is nasty stuff from the 1950s). Still tripped constantly.
Opened up every box going back to the breaker, took everything apart, but a test outlet with a test load on each junction and it was "fine" until I put it all back together and started tripping again (replaced the wire nuts, pull tested each junction).
Opened up every junction again, replaced every junction with wagos, and no more "nuisance" trips (they were clearly not nuisance trips, though every electrician said "they all do that I just replace the AFCI breaker when the inspector finishes, I'd do that here if you wanted me to fix the nuisance trips here")
But of course, I don't pay (money) for my own time... and fixing this wasn't fast.
No it's not hard. You can learn to run the majority of residential electricity (outlets, switches, lights) in a week. Another week or 2 and you can install panels.
It's commercial and especially industrial electricity that is hard. But we insist on training electricians to do all of it, when we mostly need the easier stuff.
And it's pretty hard to ruin someone's life with incorrectly installed electricity. Incorrectly meaning: "I didn't realize I needed to do this", rather than "I'm doing garbage work, like not tightening screws".
But without much experience it's hard to know when you're out of your depth, and nearly everyone has the same attitude: "how hard can it be? I'll just go ahead."
The regulations are there at the behest of the insurance industry, after much costly, hard-learned history. Many people lost their lives, in fires mainly. I'd call that ruined.
perhaps it would be better to say that a lot of electrical work is well within the skillset of a general contractor, and doesn't require a multi-year apprenticeship to learn. something like installing fixtures is a task that anybody is capable of, but instead the contractor has to call the electrician back in after the finishes are installed to do it, because we don't trust the general to do it safely. that's a waste of everybody's time and resources.
There is quite many ways to make eventually dangerous stuff. And this isn't just your program crashing, but potential fire inside a wall or socket. Or electrocution of person. And that is why it must be gotten right everytime.
For reference, it’s not uncommon for contractors to send out apprentices with a year or two of experience to do jobs solo (it’s illegal, but that never stopped anybody). I appreciate the need for experienced workers to do jobs to a high standard, but it seems clear to me the currents regulations are too onerous.
It’s not surprising a there’s a shortage, when the apprenticeship pays like shit, the actual job is not paid especially well, and the work sucks. The only people who make money are the contractors with a team under them.
Can you send mains power over coax? By code no, but an engineer can do the calculations and sign off and it is legal. Of course if it isn't actually safe the professional engineer is also legally liable in court for deaths.
Apparently you can pay ~$12K to an RTO (the 'pay to get qualified' type) and get it done in a year, but you still require a sparkie to sign off, as well as photo/video evidence along with written and practical tests.
I feel like Electrical/HVAC are among the most gate-kept trades in Australia.
Which is absurd because of course it's essentially the worst possible outcome: people either can't afford necessary work and so never do it, or figure it out and get it done to varying levels of quality which they then never talk about or show anyone because there's no way to get stuff approved.
It's wild to me that you have American DIY channels where people want to put a new circuit into their switch panel box, and just call up the local code office to check what they need to show to get it signed off - then go and do that (also, American switch panel boxes look like such a better system then what we do in residential Australia).
It’s not a particularly clean or neat job to run new wire in a lot of cases, which is the bulk of the work for a domestic electrician, I think.
As the average age of Nurses, Police, etc over the years crept up, there was no movement to increase the capacity of training replacements, as the senior people liked the wages they got.
Maybe, like with the other trades, something should be done to make the job more appealing, so more people try to enter the pipeline.
This is a issue for small police departments which can't afford to pay a non-productive trainee for years. Realistically some of them aren't going to be viable going forward and will either have to merge with departments in neighboring cities, or dissolve and rely on a county sheriff's department.
Generally, the state police have their own academies/training facilities. Only the largest police departments (like Los Angeles) can afford to support their own schools.
States where any kid (like I was!) can enroll before getting hired will have too many trained/educated prospective police officers chasing too few jobs, while your state has too many jobs chasing insufficient workers.
I don't know. To me it isn't. I'm now a software developer and I don't find it hard. Back when I was a car mechanic (and also electronic technician), part of Florida started requiring exams & licenses for people working on cars. The ASE exams were the basic entry-level requirements. We had people working for us who had 10+ years of experience installing car radios yet they were unable to pass the electrical ASE exam (A-6). I tried teaching these guys, but they still could not pass the test. Even after leaving that company, they used my certification & license to stay legal.
After getting run over by a car, I don't bend too well in the middle. There's no way that I could be an electrician (or any other trade worker).
Famous last words. Maybe the real issue is that it's treated as a "trade", ie, something you can get accredited with in 2 years of vocational school or community college. But as we know from all the actual regulations about it, the reality is much different.
Learning how to do your own household wiring as a homeowner is not hard.
Worse than that. You have to tiptoe around any criticism of it or "the usual type of people" will come out of the woodwork to make low effort quips about safety, house fires and whatnot because regulatory requirements in and of themselves are a virtuous thing to many and it doesn't matter if they're terribly implemented because they are holy.
Now you need to work for four years under a licensed contractor to get a license.
If I hadn't been young and stupid I'd have a contractors license and be able to legally pull permits.
GM was willing and able to pay more than a single consumer? That’s not a surprise. Their factory couldn’t run without it.
That requires a four to five year apprenticeship and the prospects for electricians in the near future is considered "very limited" in the province I live in (BC), which is among the nicest places to live and also the most expensive.[3] (And pays electricians lower than the national median.)
So IMO that hourly wage standard needs to go WAY up before it's considered tempting. Most electricians here work on new projects and there is great reluctance to increase the cost of construction projects (e.g. worker pay) any more than it has already jumped in the last few years.
[1] https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/wages-occupation/2068...
[2] https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/outlookreport/occupation/20684
Assuming 1880 hours per year (52 weeks * 40 hours - 120 vacation hours - 80 stat day hours), that would imply the median wage in BC is $99414
Levels reports a median pay in Vancouver (where I assume at least 60% of the software engineers in BC are) of $156K, and $130K in Victoria. While Levels may be off, I think real wages are somewhere in the middle.
I was clearing $80k CAD as a mid level dev pre-covid, and that was considered on the higher end for a mid level dev. I switched to working for a US company during covid since no one in Vancouver could match the pay.
The data here is completely survey-based, not based on tax filing.
The primary source is Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey.
This survey is conducted using a sample of respondents and data may be suppressed for reasons of confidentiality or data quality, but it is the most inclusive, timely and unbiased source of wage data by occupational group.
When the Labour Force Survey data is not available, other sources are considered, including:
Employment and Social Development Canada program data such as Employment Insurance program survey data
The Census
Provincial and territorial surveys and administrative data
Other organizations administrative data, such as the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Canadian Medical Association
Other sources when applicable
First published in November 2022, Small Area Estimations developed by Statistics Canada were added as a new data source.From 5 years of experience though, the stats can money seems right on, while the levels.io data seems VERY high.
Vancouver has little in terms of venture capital but a lot of SWE thanks to offshoring and lax immigration policy. Canadian politicians even pitched Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location to Amazon since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]
[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...
Electricians: maybe pay us more.
I: It's a complete mystery. We can't figure it out.
E: pay us more
I: Maybe we should try to use AI to figure out how to install wire more efficiently.
E: or you could pay us more.
I: we should create a billion dollar fund to pay for graduate students to research why we don't have enough electricians.
E: or you could pay electricians more.
I: SHUT UP, PEASANT!
I absolutely agree that unions are not negotiating rates to keep up with inflation.
Worse, many jurisdictions are creating new positions that are assistant helpers, with compensation typically a quarter of journeyman rate, NO BENEFITS, and really isn't intended to lead into apprenticeships. This is NOT the CW/CE program, which was already controversially rolled out early 2000's... it is basically a burn-through-help and then don't even give them healthcare.
I just cannot imagine how skilled trades are going to be affected when most LUs negotiate 3-year contracts, and the past three years won't be anything like the next three years (i.e. it's only going to get exponentially worse)!
Also, I am not yet forty and am looking for another career as a partially disabled dude.
All while working from home, or in a nice office.
Software, assuming one doesn't go into management, seem to have a more linear comp structure. You start much higher, but it doesn't ramp as dramatically as most trade/licensed professions as you go up. Probably because there's less regulation/capture so even entry-level people keep more of what they produce, vs the almost-feudal nature of many trades/professions.
Just what I've seen, anyway.
Good luck with this strategy after decades of declining and still to decline fertility rates.
Anyways, the funny thing is that if you’re college educated and willing to take things step by step, and buy a good set of tools, and read your local municipalities code (the most recent copy of electrical code in nyc is something like 180 dollars instead of being freely available, dunno if its like that elsewhere), you can probably do your own repairs, arrange a schedule to have anyone who needs to jackhammer and run a connection somewhere on your property, have the electric company run whatevers needed wherever and have an inspector look over the work to either certify it or tell you whats wrong.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/buildings/codes/electrical-code.pag...
> 27-3025 The New York city amendments to the 2008 National Electrical Code. The following New York City amendments to the 2008 National Electrical Code are hereby adopted as set forth in this section. In the event of conflicts between technical provisions, the more restrictive shall apply: 2008 NEC New York City Amendment
https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and-stand...
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/buildings/pdf/ll39of2011_electric...
Most older tradies I know have a lot of pain and work-related chronic injuries.
I did meet an older plumber, though. I asked him about it and he said his trick was that he only did new construction, no repair. Much easier work. On the occasion he had to do any re-work, his son did it.
I used to be a car mechanic (and electronic technician). That ended when I got run over by a car. I no longer bend too well in the middle - not enough to crawl under a dashboard or car. While I was recovering, my company needed some stuff done that I felt needed to be computerized: one customer was stealing $18k-30k per year because our shipping/receiving system was terribly flawed. Of course it was my fault for pointing that out.
That is not to say it's the persons' fault. But if you can tolerate these jobs only like that, it tells you something about the work.
Wow. $45k/year…
They might be charging that much, but how many hours/day are they charging that much, and what are their costs?
Per hour rates might be high, but question is how easy it is to sell all those hours.
I almost forgot the craziest part. The Christmas bonus at his company was funded by all the copper they were able to take from jobs and sell
In my area of Canada, demand for this work is so high you can work as much or little as you want, independently, for $50+ an hour. Nothing to sneeze at. Just need that entrepreneurial itch.
I know many white collar workers who also lost their jobs to sudden layoffs a little over 10 years ago...
Have you heard of the term toxic masculinity, weaponized incompetence, patriarchal, misogyny used? Are women discussed the same way? Are women ever misandrist?
I couldn't imagine working these jobs when I was older - that was enough to steer me away from any construction.
There's just not enough people to do all the work that needs doing, and not enough money available to pay all of them.
For any individual trade you can "solve it" by paying more - but how do you solve it for all the work that needs doing?
We need to dramatically simplify how much work it takes to do something, or make things last longer, or both.
Or lower expectations of quality of life.
But I do not buy this:
>There's just not enough people to do all the work that needs doing
Example #1 of wasting society’s labor resources: the TSA, 65k employees.
You will need on-the-job experience. Better if you're formally trained, but if you're willing to work in subzero winter Canada and start by sweeping the shop floor, you can get in!
I'm jealous of anyone who can leave something built and better at the end of the day, whereas I stare a glowing box pushing electrons around. I'm not jealous of the toll it takes on the body. The mechanical and construction trades are definitely riskier than office work in injuries, both chronic and episodic.
What makes good money is specialized workers in high-demand areas. My dad was an electrical and A/C automotive mechanic, and most mechanics hate electrical problems.
My consolation prizes are an EE/CS degree and can restore a VW, run plenum wiring, recycle desk IoT lamps into Alexa-controlled wall lamps, and shop for SBCs from global suppliers.
There's dignity in whatever is useful and customers are willing to pay for. Title is often narcissistic and résumé pomposity. Usually what pays best is what requires specialized skills, is least sexy, and what most others find excruciatingly painful or impossible to do themselves.
I know a guy who has a niche business doing all things related to large flat screen TV installs. That's the kind of ingenuity and market awareness that paves the way for success.
> It’s hard, because the formally decent paying apprentice programs pay has stayed about the same while working, fast food or whatever has gone up a lot. Working at Taco Bell for $18 an hour is less physically demanding than being a grunt laborer for 15.
> Our local IBEW apprentices start at $19/hr with another 9.50/hr in benefits. First raise is an extra $2 on the check and another $2 in benefits after 1000 hours or roughly 6 months.
> I almost accepted a plumbing apprenticeship when I was 26 but the starting wage was so low I just wouldn’t have been able to live. If I could go back in time though I’d try getting into a trade or automotive work by 18.
> I tried becoming an electrician after the military. No where had any interest in taking on an apprentice.
> One friend of mine saved and left her corporate job to become an electrician, only to find boomer electricians wouldn’t apprentice a woman. Just one anecdote, of course.
> I got out of the Army, and tried to join the local union as an apprentice. It was a 6-8 months selection process before I could even start. It took longer and was more challenging to try and get into a trade then the military.
> The trades pay shite. I’m a third term apprentice and it’s hard work for not much more than McDonald’s.
Maybe the whole journeyman/apprentice system needs to be dismantled.
The journeyman/apprentice system, for all its problems, is probably a net bonus to the lifetime wages, since it prevents a huge surge of new entrants in a short time. Also, although it may not be all we would want, it does probably prevent the worst safety/incompetence concerns that we would have if it were left to the market (since people hiring electricians often don't have the knowledge to tell if they are competent or not).
https://www.epi.org/blog/growing-inequalities-reflecting-gro...
You know, "market efficiency".
Manager bonuses, business travel expenses and taxes are part of those expenses.
If a nickel can be squeezed out of the working class and diverted to the wealthy, it surely will.
I know a whole lot of people who will never earn $54 an hour in their lives would love to know the answer to that question.
While the pay is decent, it is hard, physical work.
Or window restoration. Lots of money and few guys that do it.
In essence there’s good money and a lot of demand in trades that are craftsman like.
Would definitely be better to own/work with at least one other person however so you don't need to try and find subs constantly if you land a job that needs a little extra manpower. If you don't need the second person, you both can be off working on separate jobs.
There are a good deal of old homes that are worth good money and have owners with the means to replace or repair their old, squeaky stairs. Or renovations going on in old homes that require new stairs. And any new custom hone is going to need custom stairs.
No idea on liability insurance but I’d imagine similar to other trades. The stairs guy would only be responsible for gathering the space specs and design. They then build the stairs in their workshop and deliver them to the site. Carpenters install them. Then the stairs guy comes back and installs the railing, etc. which can take a lot of custom work (rail fittings, bending rains, etc) and balusters. Real craft stuff there.
They design and shop build production run and custom stairs, dismantle, ship, and fit or oversee fitting on site.
Seems like a good business: Over 50 Years of Custom Staircase Design and Construction
People just adore telling people to do something they themselves wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. It’s like giving out stock tips without buying the stock yourself.
If it’s so obvious that being an electrician is the ticket to a great paying stable job, why’s there a shortage? Maybe it is that (from the article), “the job was too wet, too messy, too cold, too dirty, too hot.”
I remember when I graduated college the “shortage” was library science professionals and that ended up going over like a lead balloon. Then it was a nursing shortage and now nobody wants to be a nurse because it’s obvious the job really sucks.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson to learn here is that people love giving out advice and that most advice is awful.
Nowadays, most houses should move to use power over Ethernet/USBC for all the lights, cameras, vacuums , toasters(with a small battery), and most of the sockets.
That way only big appliances (washer, stove, heater, etc) still need a real electrician to come help with.
- How high outlets and switches must be off the floor
- How close to plumbing / ducting wires can be and where you can run them
- Which areas need GFCI
- How to hammer in a wire staple securely without damaging the insulation (harder than it sounds)
- How to divvy up circuits and pick appropriate gauge wire
- How to wire n-way switches
This stuff is not idiot-proof, even at low voltages. If you get it wrong, your house burns down and insurance won't pay out. In my experience it's better to have a master electrician lay out the circuits and give advice while you do the grunt work of routing and pulling runs. Let them handle the panels, wiring switches, outlets and lights, and listen to their stories (most electricians have some good ones)
What I don't like the idea of is needing to bring in a network engineer to troubleshoot my lights though (and I say that as someone who occasionally works on a variety of network gear as part of my job). I suppose unmanaged PoE switches need not be too complicated though.
My vacuum is cordless anyways. Batteries solve a lot of these problems, and are typically more ergonomic anyways.
> What I don't like the idea of is needing to bring in a network engineer to troubleshoot my lights though
lol, yes. The hope is that you don't need a certification, and as such more people would be able to DIY or contract the job. If its MORE work/skill, then I agree that is not helpful.