Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe offers scholarships to aspiring trade workers

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Mmmm - only if there is a large over abundance of them. You could say that about literally any job out there. Any job.

But I don’t hear anyone suggesting you don’t push people to learn to be programmers or nurses or medical techs or what ever job. Lawyers. I have heard people say to pump the brakes on the number of lawyers out there, but other than that.

We will always need skilled craftsman and technicians and the like, until we get self fixing machines out there, but that is a few generations down the line.

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What is a “large overabundance?” Seems really vague, and doesn’t accord with the fact that the math is continuous. A proportionality does not have to be based on any kind of criticality. And yes, it does apply to all jobs, which is what I said. Are you arguing with me for the sake of arguing?

Who are overworked and underpaid as is, in part because they have no access to the medical means of production, and are part of a tight regulatory regime that devalues their skillset and their scope of practice. (And no, I’m not saying everything a doctor can do, a nurse can do. Don’t start putting arguments in my mouth.)

But again, what’s your point? Mike Rowe is not doing this out of the goodness of his heart, and there is a real pernicious edge to what he’s doing, as evidenced in part by who’s funding him.

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A large overabundance is how ever many workers looking for a job in said skill set that can’t find a job due to all those jobs being filled. But from what I understand, skilled labor is in high demand in most places. If you know how to weld well and show up on time and sober, you can find a good job.

So yeah, basic math says if there is too much supply and not enough demand, then the price goes down. So does that mean we don’t encourage anyone to work in any job because too many of them working in that job might become too many?

They are over worked because they need more people to do their jobs. I don’t know about devaluing their skillset, the nurses I know are very valued. They health care system is completely fucked and hemorrhaging money on insurance and administrative costs vs paying better wages, but that is a whole 'nother discussion. Like my doctor friend literally couldn’t make a living being a general family practitioner on her own. She can’t see enough people per day to meet overhead. So now she is an ER doc for a major medical network.

Anyway.

So what’s YOUR point. I never said Rowe or anyone was doing anything out of the goodness of their heart. But he isn’t alone in people promoting the idea of trades vs college. I know several people in trades making better money than me with out the debt I have.

My point is the promotion of learning trades and a skilled craft is a good thing. It fits what many people like to do, can make good money, and is in demand. Your point that if too many people become say plumbers then there will be too many plumbers and their earnings will go down I suppose is valid on paper. But my point it - it is an odd thing to say when that works out for ANY job out there. So if promotion of skilled trades is the wrong course of action, what is the correct one?

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I literally made my point again in that very sentence, as well as the first sentence of my original comment. If you’re not going to pay attention, then I have to assume that you are arguing for the sake of arguing, or for the sake of the fact that you find something I’m saying vaguely ideologically threatening. Which is good. Discomfort is the first step in changing your mind.

No, math says it goes down according to some proportion or rate which may vary according to a number of factors. It’s not basic, but it does mean that for every addition of supply to the market for labor, that is registered by the market, there is a contraction of wages. The sensitivity of that dynamic varies with profession, but it is a curve.

That would be an absurd argument, which is I why I never made it. Again, read the first sentence of my original comment. I would love to elaborate on my point, but I’m not going to fucking do it, if you refuse to acknowledge what my point is, whether or not you agree. Focus on what I am saying and don’t get lost in the weeds of basic ideas of supply-demand economics that we don’t disagree on (beyond the weird hitch that you seem to think it “kicks in” at a specific tipping point… maybe…? Again, “large overabundance” is meaningless.)

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Yeah, not defending Mike Rowe, nor whether or not he is a “working class hero”. So if you think that is what I am arguing against, maybe you should pay closer attention.

The part I take issue with is this worry that if there are too many skilled tradespeople, their value will go down, and thus their pay. Which I acknowledged could be an issue - just like it could be an issue for any other job out there. But at the same time we DO need skilled trades people. Welders, contractors, carpenters, electricians, HVAC techs, medical machine techs, etc etc, they keep our world running and building it.

Oh great, so you acknowledge it’s a complex issue with many external factors, supply being one of them.

OK - then what was supposed to be our take away with this statement:

Again, haven’t disputed or argued against your first statement.

Bent over backward to acknowledge that too many trades people may result in lower wages. My point is that isn’t really something to worry about at this point, and if it is, then one could literally say the same thing about any job.

You said “The reality is that if there are more welders, welders make less.” That isn’t true if there is still many more welders needed than available. It is true if there are too many good welders than needed.

But I ask again: if I am not to encourage someone to become a welder because then my pay as a welder might go down, what do I tell them? Learn to code? Then won’t the pay for programmers go down? What is your advice for someone looking to enter the work force?

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I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time. (…) I live in America.

sigh

…

/r/shitamericanssay

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Well speaking as some one with two grandfathers who were skilled Craftsmen/technicians, fixing machines.

An auto body mechanic/welder and a HIGHLY trained general mechanic with the skills to work on racing engines and rare cars.

They really never made shit money wise on those skills, and generally speaking struggled to make a living or a life. Until the one became a teacher at a state run trade school. And the other joined the Airforce to work on airplane and jet engines.

So two points there. These sorts of jobs are in no way inherently good, reliable ones in their own right.

And for a good long while the major pathway into the middle class and stability for most Americans hasn’t been trades, or manufacturing, or a college education.

It’s been public sector jobs.

Well that’s what we’re told.

But from what I understand that impression is crafted by rolling different skill levels and specialty industries together. So you can present the entire skill set as making a good salary. And the skills being in wide demand.

But a generalized welder is gonna make a lot less than an underwater welder for the oil industry or an aluminum welder specialized for aerospace. It’s the latter that are most in demand, and those jobs are only at a handful of places, with a handful of companies. Being a welder in a rust belt city doesn’t help you much. Because while welders might be “always in demand” nation wide. It’s the collapse of exactly that sort of trade work that defines the rust belt.

So my brother’s brother-in-law is a plumber. And come on everywhere always needs plumbers right? And there’s supposedly a plumber shortage nation wide. But it took this kid 5 years to find an apprenticeship he needs to get the next set of licenses and training. He works 3 days a week. Because there are so many fucking plumbers in our area.

Now he’s in a position where could move to a place that needs plumbers. Because his college educated wife (accountant) makes a healthy income. But when you’re looking at people who have been unemployed or struggling for a long time. That’s usually not the case. It doesn’t help those coal miners we keep hearing about that their highly specialized, high paying skills, could be applicable elsewhere. Cause they can’t get there. Just as none of the attempts to train them for other fields really help, cause they can’t get to those jobs either.

Plus the actual numbers I’ve seen on most of these purportedly in demand and high paying trade jobs are surprisingly low for things that are supposed to save us. I think the specialized welding jobs was something like 50k nation wide. But don’t quote me on that, I’m probably crossing it up with something else.

Then why are Americans across the board over worked? And often under compensated, working more hours then they actually get paid for? These issues seem to plague us regardless of job catagory, demand, or supposed quality of job.

More over right now there’s a serious labor shortage in the US in almost every industry. And yet wages still stagnate, benefits still erode. Household debt is on the rise again.

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I think your points are overall good ones. My point wasn’t necessarily that this or that job is in high demand, nor that too many of them can stagnate wages. But this can happen with any job. The comments about too many welders will reduce wages can be applied to any job. So if we are to discourage welders, what are to we encourage? I was out of work for a couple years during the recession and I have a college degree. Clearly there were too many people looking for the type of work I was. So am I stupid for getting a college degree (well, I was stupid for getting a BFA, but let’s move on).

The reality is - college isn’t for everyone because either they don’t like the structure, they prefer work that isn’t typically taught at colleges, they have different aptitudes, or they can’t afford it. Mike Rowe aside, having a career path for these people, one that isn’t looked down on, I think is a good thing.

Also, as a side note, I know some people who I worked with who later went on to the “real” union based job they were after. Like the most recent one went to work for the rail road. In this case the unions and professional orgs are the gate keepers, which who gets higher, who gets certified, etc. He had to wait his turn to be cycled in.

I agree. All of those things are issues that need to be looked at and solve. Sort of tangential of this topic, but one that I don’t have the answers for, per se. I suppose some would propose more organized labor and that may indeed be what is needed.

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Well there’s the central strawman.

Noone is really discouraging welders, or saying everyone must or should go to college. It isn’t an either or position. And counter to the narrative we’re given most states have trade schools as part of their educational systems. Many colleges (especially community colleges) provide this sort of training as well, along with the sort of base education you need to get the most out of it.

My college had an entire craft/trade division, with an agricultural school and two separate carpentry programs (one trade, one as part of a set design specialization in theater/film).

This entire concept comes out of the right wing alternative pitch on how to solve mass unemployment among recent college grads during the ecconolypse, the student debt Crisis, and the ecconomic troubles experienced by younger Americans across the board.

The left has been talking about minimum wage, lowering the price of college, improvements in labor rights, etc. And the right made the welder arguement. That doesn’t address any of those problems.

They presented a false college vs trades dichotomy, and offered a solution based on a fantasy derived from an ecconomy and labor market that doesn’t exist anymore (if it ever did). A time when men were men, and you could work 8 hour days for the local plant for 30 years and retire with a comfortable pension.

Which is often a public sector job. To underline my earlier point.

And yet this idea is intended to be a solution to the former. Yes there are trade jobs out there, and in some places a basic level, non specialized trade job will pay better and provide more reliable jobs than other options.

But on the whole manual trades and manufacturing job numbers are falling. Not that there are less people pursuing those jobs. That there are less of those jobs.

And in large part those people who can’t, won’t, or don’t want to go to college are ending in in service, retail, and low skill white collar jobs (think telemarketing). Where pay is low, exploitation is high, and advancement is nil. “Hey look at welders” doesn’t address those conditions. And it doesn’t present an alternative.

Some articles Google’s throwing claim 30m unfilled trade jobs. Around 14 million people work in the restaurant business alone right now. 16 million work in retail. Amazon alone employs half a million people in the US, the bulk of them in warehouses, call centers and other low skill positions.

We’ve just started, and you can already see. Even if every unfilled trade job is a good one (and most of them aren’t) we’ve already filled them all. So “be a welder” isn’t a suitable solution for the problems in those other sectors. Because someone’s gonna end up working in the kitchens and Walmarts and warehouses. And they’re still fucked. Plus these sectors are growing while traditional trade and manufacturing work continue to shrink.

Meanwhile in the real world. Most of those people working in the trades are being pressed in the same ways, most of those unfilled jobs have the same problems. As do most of the teaching jobs, especially in higher education. And most other white collar jobs requiring a college degree. We’re not facing down a generational ecconomic back slide because we failed to train people for one particular class of work. It’s happening because across the board jobs have gotten worse and less stable.

Unfilled trade jobs are a problem in their own right. But it doesn’t present a solution to any particular problem. It’s just playing on people’s nostalgia to avoid fixing other problems.

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Is it? Because if someone encouraging more welders is bad because too many welders drives down welder wages, then what is supposed to be the take away?

No, but there is a stigma still, though it has been changing some. Yes you’re right, community colleges often have trade related classes. I was referring to 4 year schools, which may have changed, but I don’t recall focus in those areas. Engineering would be a related field with overlap.

I don’t really disagree with the rest of your comments. I had specific umbrage to a few lines which seems to have gotten lost in the weeds.

It did when post war productivity was up, the labor force was low, and automation had yet to replace much of the manufacturing jobs.

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I’m pretty sure he’s just arguing with you on innernets, rather than formally proposing policy.

But he’s not wrong. The general position as it exists now is not “discourage the trades”, but instead to promote higher education. And with good reason. Even with our assorted other problems educational attainment is still closely correlated with ecconomic success. Regardless of field or anything else.

So for example college degree welder, generally does much better that GED welder. Because it’s much easier for her to become boss welder.

That’s what I was getting at above with all the nonsense about highly specialized and colleges. A lot of the best paying versions of trade jobs still require college. And some trades the trade school is college. Culinary schools as an example, are almost always accredited schools built in the college model or parts of colleges themselves. And Cooks with culinary degrees generally do better, and have access to better jobs than those who learn on the job. Though for some reason we don’t consider cooking a manual trade.

So it doesn’t make sense from a societal, policy level to promote trade training as the primary thing. Just like it doesn’t make sense to discourage trade training across the board either (and we generally don’t). Its just broad swaths it’s better to make higher education the priority.

And that’s where the staw man comes in. No one is actually arguing that this an either or option, or that there should be a policy attempt to discourage trade jobs. But Mike Rowe’s schtick is predicated on that being the case.

Are mostly 4 year schools these days. Most state schools have some level of trade curriculum as well. And many states, mine included, have a separate trade specific system. Tied to high schools and community colleges. That’s the sort of program my grandfather worked for. They’ll teach you everything from aviation management to how to give a straight razor shave. And it’s quite cheap.

My college was a “Commonwealth University” it’s a sort of hybrid public private school that exists in certain states, and the agricultural and trade programs came from the state side. Private and for profit schools generally don’t go in for that sort of thing. And practically there would be no way to make them.

If you were white and male.

Or for my grandfather’s case if you kept your mouth shut and didn’t try to start a union.

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Peter Galbraith explains this very well in Predator State. There’s no causal link between increased vocational training and improved living conditions. Basically politicians/PIGS trot that shit out as virtue signaling.

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In the episode of Crooked Conversations on Mike Rowe (linked to be someone else earlier in these comments) they said that a study found that what happened was that in many cases when the economy was bad the employers actually used it as an opportunity to be much more selective in hiring. So they had job openings but they wanted someone who was very skilled not just someone with basic skills. I don’t know if this is true or not so take it with a grain of salt.

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That’s one of the few areas where Trump has actually said something sensible.

He doesn’t appear to have actually done anything about it of course but then I suppose that’s not something he sees as his role.

His role is stopping people from other countries moving to the US to get jobs.

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I wouldn’t count on Trump to understand why people don’t do that.

But lack of mobility is the unsung root cause to a lot of these woes. Sure there are some genuinely, really good unfilled trade jobs. Just like there are good jobs in media, the brewing business, tech, and a ton of other industries.

But there are chunks of this country where the only employment available is retail, or a single factory that’s going under. And while a programmer from an upper middle class family can afford to move cross country for a good job. Some one who has been financially struggling for a decade, with out that sort of outside support. Just can’t, even if they really, really want to.

I’ve gone through a fair bit of that myself. I hate where I’m at, and the job market is extremely limited. Unless you’re the sort of professional who can hang out a shingle (doctors, accountants etc), or have a public sector job. It’s pretty much restaurants/tourism or construction. And cobbling enough together to really figure out how to leave has taken me years.

And it’s the third time I’ve done this.

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Oh, he understands. He just doesn’t, you know, understand.

And I’m going to start explaining to people when you have an area that just isn’t working – like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt – and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t – you can’t get people, I’m going to explain you can leave, it’s OK, don’t worry about your house.

You know, a lot of them don’t leave because of their house. Because they say, gee, my house, I thought it was worth 70,000 (dollars) and now it’s worth nothing. It’s OK. Go, cut your losses, right?

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Cue the “why not both” girl. There are a lot of people who don’t have the aptitude or want of a formal higher education. But they can still do jobs that require skills and pay well. I have several contractor friends who didn’t do college doing quite well for themselves. My brother got some education through the Navy Nuke School, but that would be more like a degree in a trade, with out the other liberal arts stuff usually taken in college. He does quite well as a technician servicing UPS systems for large server farms and the like. I have a friend who drives trucks for a living and doing well.

Meanwhile, we keep reading about millennials coming out of college with huge debts and either not finding jobs in their fields, or if they do, they are poor starting wages. Though I believe this is better than it was in recession. But I personally had trouble finding work with my college degree and I still have debt from.

I don’t disagree with your point, but going the college route is not only not for everyone, but SHOULDN’T be a requirement for success. They will NEED to become the boss welder to pay back their loans. And not everyone wants to be the boss welder. And again, aptitude.

It appears to me, the average boingboinger is “smarter than your average bear”. But let’s not forget that society is full of “average” and even “below average” people. I think they deserve the opportunity to live well. In Caddyshack, that dick judge character was like, “The world needs ditch diggers.” Ironically, if you have skills to run heavy machinery, they can make a good living today.

I mean look, everyone everywhere wants and probably should be making more money. From the ditch diggers and welders to the office drones fucking around on BB instead of working. But I don’t think the “class” of job should mean you can’t afford to live your life.

Yeah, well, we could add that caveat to many topics.

Related to this topic, even if it is tangental:
An interesting point Killer Mike made about one of the negative side effects of desegregation was that it ended up killing a lot of black owned businesses. Due to segregation, especially where he was from in the South, there was a smaller niche economy servicing black people owned and run by black people. With desegregation they couldn’t compete against the larger white owned companies and either were sold out or just went out of business. (To be clear, he said desegregation was a good thing. His point was promotion of black owned businesses and how investing into the poorest areas and giving people employment and opportunity were the long term solutions to reducing poverty.)

Yes, I agree this happens. My point is it isn’t just skilled labor that this happens in. The same issues people are giving examples of for why skilled jobs isn’t the way to go, is the same stuff I see in white collar jobs.

~2008 it was really bad. In my example they wanted Bachelors degree and minimum 4 years experience for starting salary jobs in web design. I had a programmer friend with the same issue, they wanted you to be a code wizard and have experience in 3 language, and then pay you like it’s your first year programming.

I hear it is better out there, but I haven’t been looking around.

The opening line of that article says it all. Easier said than done. Especially if you are tied down to a house. If you own a home and there is a migration out of the city, who the hell is going to buy your house? I suppose one could just stop paying on it and ruin their credit, but still. And combine that with family ties, friends, etc.

Although these reasons is one reason why I find it hard to condemn illegal immigrants. I would find it hard to move to another city within the US. I can’t imagine it being so bad that moving to a semi-hostile environment with limited prospects and be branded is illegal sounds like a reasonable move.

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He’s funded by the Koch brothers and predatory trade schools to push an anti-union, anti-regulation, anti-worker agenda. He doesn’t care about “real work” or kids growing up to be plumbers.

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Yeah you seem to have missed all that space I spent describing how we do do both.

Yeah those poor unfortunates who are inherently incapable of dealing with education. But will somehow be capable of excelling at a slightly different type of education, that often involves just as much schooling and book learning.

For some one who is so concerned about the stigma attached to the manual trades. You’re awfully hooked on describing the people who should do them as some how deficient.

And that people who don’t succeed in are educational system are pre determined to do so. In large part much of that boils down to problems of access, funding, and approach. And even in terms of people who just want to take another approach they still run into problems of job quality. We have a huge shortage of farmers at the moment. And it’s not driven by people not wanting to be farmers, it’s driven by how difficult it is to make a living as a farmer.

And an awful lot of jobs that require skills, don’t pay well. And why can’t jobs that supposedly don’t require skills pay well? Why can’t the guy at the supermarket do well for himself?

And there are plenty of people with college educations, in white collar jobs that aren’t being paid well or fairly, skilled job or not. The inadequacies here cut across industries and skill levels.

I think the caveat there is that the tolerances are tighter. Because the number of genuinely good jobs there is smaller than you’d expect, that sector overall is shrinking, and because some of the industries there are mercurial or have poor long term prospects.

So you know some contractors that are doing well, great. How were they doing during the housing crash? And when did they enter the job market? I know a good lot of contractors/construction guys that are straight up wealthy. But all of them started in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s. The people I know who are under 45 have been spinning their wheels for a decade or two. And the guys I know who were in that business in the Carolinas, where the crash hit hard and construction didn’t kick up right after the recession, are all mail men and truck drivers now.

In every analysis you see on the current job market that cuts deeper than unemployment levels. Your gonna see a hard cutoff between people who started out before and after the 80’s or 90’s. I. The same job and the same place those who entered later are paid less, and work more. There’s also a a serious regionalization of work right now. In places where there’s work there’s lots of it and lots of different kinds . In the other places it’s either no work at. Or Walmart.

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I appreciate all the points you’ve been making, but I would like to add to this one that in some areas coal miners have been offered free and/or subsidized training to become nurses and other medical aides and have refused, because it’s not “men’s work”. They wouldn’t have had to move, because medical care is needed in their own communities. So it isn’t always that the new jobs are only available elsewhere.

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