Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
If you want my anecdotal opinion...if a young person wants a trade right now, become an Electrician.
Our society wants to electrify everything at the moment, those guys are going to be in work for years.
My son-in-law is a Sparky, in 6 months he went from being laid-off from Apprentice to Journeyman due to wages to now being run off his feet in work.
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I tell high schoolers that if they don't have an idea what to do, business degree or trades are both good paths while they figure it out. Business degree if you're relatively comfortable with using your head, trades if you're more comfortable with your hands. Both have retainable skills right off the bat that are still useful even if they change their minds and go with a different career path. Even if you can't make money with that initial training, it gives you useful skills to save money for your own personal day to day. It's not like other paths that are significantly more feast, full or famine. It's a bit more stable/useful in situations other than job.
Someone I know swallowed his pride, resigned from his meh white collar job, and polished off his journeyman's ticket to work up north to do construction work. He's hoping to make $300-400K+ gross per year including living allowances if he can make it to foreman level. He hates being gone from family, but immediately doubling to tripling his current white collar job wages to address a need for the family, it was a no brainer for him.
I think AI and 3D printing might affect some of the framer guys and whatnot, but only a little bit. I think the vast majority of the trades guys will be fine. The only guy I know that's sorta struggling (ie: Making sub $100K vs over $200K previously) are dudes that decided they're refusing to travel for work. They're still making decent money, but limited to half or more of what they could truly make if they would be willing to leave their families for a few weeks per month at a time to work in other locations in Canada.