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Comment by jordanb | Hacker News Reader

I have family who are Union pipe-fitters.

Times have been good for the past few years due to fracking and (here in the Midwest) refurbishment of many nuclear powerplants.

The fracking boom is probably over though and I believe most of the nuclear powerplant work came as plants built in the 70s reached EOL.

I don't see any sort of blossoming of welding in this country. Production welding is robots or offshore and has been for a long time. Same with shipbuilding. There's always architectural work but that's been pretty moribund for some time now. Industrial work is highly cyclical.

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On top of what you mentioned, if dollar remains strong or appreciates more, then that will make US exports less competitive and could take some steam away from industries demanding these trades. Especially when it comes to manufacturing.

Additionally, I read articles like this and see that entry-level wages for a welder are $16.50. If businesses are experiencing an actual shortage and want to draw new people into a trade, they are going to have to show that with more attractive wages or other perks such as paying to train people.

There's welding and there's welding. Structural stick welding, I can train you on in a few hours. That's not going much higher than $16.50 per hour.

Speciality welding -- of the level of precision needed to make lightweight parts (aerospace, bicycle), some types of artwork, underwater, etc. -- that's a much more skilled job.

It'd be like grouping basic IT and kernel hacking as the same thing.

I agree with your assessment, at least in the Midwest these jobs left with manufacturing. Perhaps now that they have dismantled the unions they are planning on bringing some of these jobs back. In the late 90's they were training a lot of people for bottom end drafting jobs so they could work cleaning up the architects drawings during the housing boom. I sure hope its not in preparation for a future conflict, my welding teacher said they were training welders before WW2.

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