““Taylor and other plumbing apprentices, like Nick Broadbent (pictured above), make $117,000 on average in their first year out of the program. That’s right: plumbers pull in more fixing pipes at Wall Street banks than entry level bankers.””
“Rightfully so, we have more skills than the bankers,” quipped Chris Pancia, another apprentice at Plumbers Local 1.
A native of Hazlet, NJ, Taylor left New York’s St. John’s University with $75,000 in student loan debt. He knew that making ends meet while paying off his mountain of debt wouldn’t be feasible on a job waiting tables. Taylor is now in a 5-year apprentice program at Plumbers Local 1 in Queens, N.Y. Next year, as his skills improve, he will make $42 an hour. Taylor has paid down much of his student loan debt and he bought a house in Hazlet, NJ, last year with his wife, who’s expecting their first child.
What’s the upside? People don’t go into banking for the /hr wage. A plumber would stil be making something close to the starting salary when a banker would be making double or triple that as an associate.
Depends where you are. Guys making $250-300k a year as master tradesmen outside of unions in the oilsands is pretty normal course once OT is factored in. You’ll start around $100k as a qualified tradesman up there. Even now there is demand for skilled trades despite the slow down up there.
^ You people are clowns. If all you needed was half a brain, bad hygiene, and a 14 month trade certificate to earn millions per year; then why are you wasting precious time chasing the CFA and shuffling paper in some financial epicenter of NYC for a mere tens of thousands per year (in itera’s case).
Coupla Issues I have;
Ever hear of survivorship bias and outliers? I would lay a steep bet that plenty of mexicans are on craigslist chompin at the bit to unclog your drains for $8/hr.
If all it took was the ability to pour draino and snake a drain to earn millions/hundres of thousands per year, then everyone would rush in, creating an imbalance of supply and demand, thus driving the equilibrium wage down.
Do you people really believe everything you read, on the internet? Someone could post an article of how meth was so pivital to their weightloss progress while M’n’A’in on the Buyside during the day and smashing supermodel poon all night. Itera would no doubt copy the link and encourage L1ers to give it a shot.
Sometimes I really wonder about the aggregate of ‘analysis’ via AF. Sure feels like a huge lack of due dilly and believing that santa still exists.
This applies in finance too. For every guy sitting on some FO desk, there are hundreds grinding it out in crap positions and even more that couldn’t cut it at all and are working at Starbucks or as a bank teller. It’s way easier to be a top dog in a plumbing than in finance as the plumbing cohort has much weaker business skills.
Nothing wrong with that. But you will bar yourself from certain social circles based on your profession. You’ll also likely bar yourself from certain females as well when it comes to dating, marriage, and family.
Try as you might, plumbing will usually be thought of a dirty blue collar trade full of societal rejects. Finance is usually thought of a white collar career full of intelligent professionals.
You’d be paddling upstream to try and buck either trend.
a friend of mine just quit his white collar job at northrup grumman to start an arguably blue collar job/business with me and some friends. his employer needed him and offered him 15k raise to stay 6 mos. he still threw up the deuces. id share what the industry is, but i wouldnt want it to get saturated. i initially learned it from a buddy who graduated at ucla few years back who got into the trade. hes making close to 200k now. when i first heard about it though, i will admit i misjudged him for the profession and thought that he must have failed at something. but once i heard he was making bank. i was sold. i did my due dili by asking other ppl in the industry and it all points to the same road: opportunity for me. so i would not discount blue collar roles making bank.
I think there will be a revival of blue collar job demand in the next couple years.
People are tired of desk jobs where they sit all day. Plus in many cases, such as above, the office work pays less than the field work.
Unfortunately, office jobs (especially finance) are either being moved overseas as nonUS/Canada countries build better infrastructure/train workers in English and career, or rendered moot by technology advances.