Working as a labourer wrecked my back. I live with the pain every second of my life now. If they want more people to do this, they should pay them more. There is no such thing as a labour shortage - EVER. This is a stupid term. There is a pay shortage instead.
There are specific labor categories that cannot be filled just by paying more. They require more training and experience. So I don’t believe your assertion about “EVER”.
I have been running a tugboat company for a few years now and there is definitely a labor shortage. Licensed tugboat captains are retiring/dying faster than new licenses are being granted. The very fastest we could theoretically turn an unlicensed deckhand into a licensed captain is three years of sea time. We are experiencing a shortage of labor.
> There are specific labor categories that cannot be filled just by paying more. They require more training and experience.
This is not exactly true. It's not at all true when talking about training, because paying people is what motivates them to take the risk of paying for their own training (and if you're training people yourself, you don't require trained people.) Experience is created by paying people enough not to leave the profession.
> Licensed tugboat captains are retiring/dying faster than new licenses are being granted.
Why weren't people trying to become tugboat captains for the past X years? Is it because the job paid too much?
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edit: I think you could say this is a collective action problem; nobody is willing to raise pay because it will make them uncompetitive against those who don't, but if they all raised pay they would all make more money and be more secure in the future. It's the kind of thing where an active government would step in and manage hiring and/or dictate pay. Instead, since our politicians are only concerned with what individuals are willing to pay them to do, they get lobbied to weaken labor regulations and immigration laws.
There are lots of unemployed black people desperate for work if one wants to fill up tugboats and construction sites. Just tell them where to show up.
> It's the kind of thing where an active government would step in and manage hiring and/or dictate pay.
That's where things start to go wrong - because it may be that some industry is in decline because it's being eclipsed by something else entirely, and artificially propping up that industry causes a market distortion that results in lower efficiency. The free market can still sort it out - ultimately as supply goes down, either prices will rise, or we'll find that there is insufficient demand because buyers far away in the supply chain are finding another, more efficient way.
I agree though that "labour shortage" is partly a misnomer. It's more accurately described as a market labour upwards price adjustment in progress!
Obviously, there are strategies to handle the shortage in the long term.
Right now, there is a shortage. If there is a shortage of hammers, one cannot just claim that the shortage does not exist because we can eventually make more hammers.
> Why weren't people trying to become tugboat captains for the past X years? Is it because the job paid too much?
The recent rollout of USCG Subchapter M has created significant demand while not increasing the available supply. I agree that industry and government should have realized this would happen.
I think there is a semantic game being played because increased prices depresses demand. So in some views a shortage is almost always a fiction.
Think of it this way, gold has a high price, so I only use it in valuable ways, I don’t gold plate my house. If gold was significantly cheaper maybe I would, is there a shortage? Clearly there is a shortage at the price I would pay to gold plate my house. But I am fine using it for jewelry, no shortage at that price.
Your hammer example is the same, there are insufficient hammers at a certain price. Raising price will decrease demand and eliminate the shortage. This increase makes its way through the supply chain increasing prices along the way until demand goes down.
Of course this semantic argument is pointless because what people really want is access to the products they are accustomed to at a price they are accustomed to.
At this point, there are insufficient captains/hammers at any price. Lots of projects are blocked on lack of captains. I am selling tugboats because we cannot crew them. This is a direct result of USCG Subchapter M.
edit to add: This whole thread now feels like defense of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. We have an entire industry facing a stricter regulatory framework that increased demand for captains while fewer humans are being born in the U.S. This is a shortage.
I get that one can just increase wages and immediately get more cashiers or burger flippers. Other problems have more complicated dependencies.
edit more to add: I realize now I did not fully appreciating your argument, which is that there is never a shortage of anything?
How much can I expect to earn with you after I successfully spend 3 years training to be a tugboat captain? How much would I make in the meantime while I was an unlicensed deckhand? Asking very seriously.
I don’t know what you would make as a captain three years from now. Note that it would very likely take longer for one to become a captain. Three years is the fastest theoretically, which would require continuous time at sea.
Right now, captains with Master of Towing endorsement are getting $800-$1,200 per day, depending on the region and type of work.
Deckhands on a track to become captains are getting $300-$500 per day. I would pay more for the right candidates.
Most but not all, a half million dollar compensation package will likely bring a few dozen to a few hundred out at least.
Plus offering unlimited, all expenses paid, legal support on top would get hundreds of tugboat captains from other countries to emigrate.
And the same could also apply for other licensed captains to switch to tugboats, the procedures aren't so complicated as to make a determined effort impossible.
I don’t know that we could get immigrants ready in less than three years. Jones Act is the limitation. We would have to find other work for them to do while they become citizens or green card holders.
I never argued that the shortage cannot be fixed. I argued against the claim that there is no shortage. Some shortages require more than just paying more money.
I would hazard a guess that the replacement rate has fallen below the attrition rate precisely because pay has not kept up with inflation, which would fall exactly in line with the parent poster’s argument.
Your guess is partly correct. Jones Act and USCG Subchapter M are bigger parts of the problem.
It is not just pay rate. Where I can match pay rates, I cannot match lifestyle. U.S. citizens and green card holders have more attractive jobs available to them that do not require being away from family for weeks at a time. (e.g., software development)
> It is not just pay rate. Where I can match pay rates, I cannot match lifestyle.
Acceptance of that lifestyle is partially contingent on the pay. I am sure that plenty of people would be willing to spend long stretches away from home at work if they were being paid $1m.
Right, so we agree that fundamentally, this is a pay shortage.
That's exactly the point everyone is trying to make to you. That ultimately most labor shortages, unless caused by extremely rapid change in conditions (such as a law being introduced with only weeks notice that dramatically changes the regulatory landscape with no time to adapt) are usually pay shortages.
Labor shortage has long been used as a weasel phrase to imply that it's the fault of the workers/labor that companies can't fill positions. That's what the pushback is on. If your business can't find enough workers, you or your industry aren't offering enough financial incentive to have people work for you. You need to offer more money. And if you can't because it's not financially viable? Well...seems the free market has spoken and said that your business is not viable anymore. As the kids say these days, 'sucks to suck'.
I fully agree that the industry does not price the labor correctly. This is one reason why I am selling the company and reallocating the capital.
There are many funded projects not executing for lack of captains today. The captains I manage to hire leave other companies wanting. How is that not a shortage?
There are X projects funded right now that need captains. These projects need roughly 2X captains. There are, right now, Y licensed captains. Y < 2X. More pay today does not make Y == 2X today.
I agree that this shortage could have been avoided.
> There are many funded projects not executing for lack of captains today.
Perhaps those projects are just not viable economically, because they can't pay enough to attract the captains. Or, the owners are too rigid to pay (for example) $500k salary to a captain.
Yes, obviously. For example, there is a bridge construction project that is delayed by lack of qualified labor. I am sure they can rebid the project and hire labor currently employed on other construction projects, delaying those projects instead.
That is still a shortage. There is a finite number of licensed captains with Master of Towing endorsement who are legally allowed to work on U.S. flag vessels. You cannot make a new licensed captain with just money. It takes time.
I completely agree that shortages can be fixed with good planning, which industry and the U.S. government did not do.
I also completely agree that when using unskilled labor, one can just apply more money to attract labor. Skilled labor requires more than money to acquire.
> Where I can match pay rates, I cannot match lifestyle.
Pay is short for “pay to quality of life at work ratio”.
If alternatives with better pay to QoL ratios become available, the then either a business can increase the pay to QoL ratio, or it may no longer be viable.
I did not write "quality of life". I wrote "lifestyle". I find that many young candidates do not want to be on a boat for a week or more away from family. Some do. Most do not. I, personally, enjoyed long voyages when I was young. They added quality to my life.
Yeah, I'm with other commenters.. it's about what you're paying them (and other perks).
Pay people at all levels a minimum of $5000 for each week away at sea, then they might do 4 months of work (which includes free board but is essentially a 24hr job) and 8 months of other things they enjoy while still living a near middle-class life.
Still having a hard time finding people? Give them more comfortable beds. Get an on-board chef. Ensure they have starlink access when they're not on active duty. Give them appropriate bonuses, dental, medical, RRSP matching
I'd be very surprised if you don't find a number of people eager to do this if their compensation is good enough.
Sure, if 80% of your workforce is only on deck 3-4 months out of the year then of course you have to hire more people too, but you'll find those people. You'll be flooded with people who want to do this. Maybe my calculus is off? Maybe you need to pay $6000/week? $10000/week? I guarantee you there is a salary incentive where people won't refuse. People will leave software engineering jobs to go work on a boat 3 months out of a year (I would at around $7000/week). Doctors will quit, etc.
When people say better pay won't solve the "shortage", I wonder how they so deeply misunderstood free market economics.
"most young candidates" don't want to be slaving away at a factory for most of their life either. They want to be able to buy a house. Maybe even 4 months of rent relief will massively change their lives. Maybe they want to buy a house one day or be able to responsibly have a kid.
There's not a labor shortage, there are just industries that don't pay enough
>I find that many young candidates do not want to be on a boat for a week or more away from family.
I think it would be helpful to this discussion if you were to add "for the amount that I am paying them" to the end of that sentence. Then, you would be addressing the point.
In my country (Poland), long-haul truckers are paid roughly double what the local truckers (those who get to come home every night) make. This is enough to compensate people for the inconvenience, and there's generally no shortage of workers. So, maybe in your case, there's also some multiplier that would work?
Candidates are definitely attracted to higher pay. The immediate issue is that it takes a long time to get the candidate the seatime, training, and tests to become licensed. We are working on our pipeline. That does not change the shortage today.
The fleet of U.S. flag tugboats as it exists today is running at reduced utilization because there are fewer licensed captains than necessary to operate them. How does increasing pay alone fix that?
Right now, any licensed captain with a Master of Towing endorsement can get whatever schedule he wants. If he wants to work 365 days per year, there are idle tugboats waiting for him.
At the end of the day, industries are principally responsible for the health of their workforce overall. If there is a shortage, it is a failure of leadership.
That is why “labor shortage” is such a mealy-mouthed term. It treats labor as external to the process, something someone else is supposed to “provide”
The failures of industry and government in this case are obvious. That doesn’t change the fact that there is a shortage. I agree the shortage is due to myopia.
Another good example of this is airline captains. There's a big shortage right now, and simply paying more doesn't give a junior pilots 5,000 more hours in their logbook. They actually have to fly those hours first before they can become a captain. Also, pilots have a hard retirement cutoff for obvious reasons, so you can't even lure them back into work with dollars.
Airlines are paying more and more for captains, but it's not solving the shortage. They're just poaching them from each other, the total vacancies stays the same.
Junior pilots also don't come from nowhere. Just to get to flying an airliner, you need many hundreds of hours of training and studying, and that's not cheap either. And from what I recall, when you look at how much your average pilot is paid when they just start out, and the harshness of the schedule, and it's not a very attractive job for people.
So I think with airlines, it is still very much a case of a pay shortage.
I looked into it as a career path a many moons ago; I’d probably just now be making captain at a major if I’d gone that route and did everything right. I was definitely turned off by the pay.
Regional pilots, where you do your time if you didn’t join the military, get paid absolute peanuts. You’re looking at a career that pays well under average for most of your younger years, for very skilled labor, then tops out at about the pay of a mid-level software engineer. And you have a terrible schedule and are on call pretty much all the time, so good luck with a family. Oh and if you screw up, you get a mark on your record you have to justify at every interview for the rest of your career—if you’re lucky and nobody died. Not to mention all the layoffs over the years, where you have to keep current when nobody is hiring.
Airline pilots are a good example of pay shortage. Making newbies have a shit pay to quality of life ratio in the hopes that you get picked up by a big airliner and finally earn decent pay.
Why make that kind of investment and take that risk and spend your 20s with a shit quality of life if you have better options?
This is true on the supply side, but an airline can raise ticket prices until they have the right amount of pilots for the number of tickets they are selling leaving no shortage. These excess profits can be funneled back into to training programs to increase future capacity.
The boom & bust cycles of the airline industry is the fatal problem. Entry level pilots are paid dirt wages while having to self fund massive training expenses. The last time I looked, the training ran far in excess of $100k with entry level jobs at regional airlines paying around $20k/year. Since then, the FAA has required much more hours of flying time before qualifying to fly passengers.
Changing jobs as a pilot sets you back to square one with seniority and pay. There's no way to change companies and get raises - like one can do as a software developer.
Yes, if you force demand levels off a cliff, you can cure a labor shortage. But it's still a labor shortage. I'm not sure why HN is saying there is no such thing as a labor shortage.
If you lower the incentives to the point that nobody wants to do what you are incentivising anymore, that isn't a people shortage its a incentive shortage. That is true even if the thing you want people to do takes years to accomplish.
I'm surprised there's a shortage, I picture being a pilot as a very desirable career that would lead to an oversupply. Is it because learning to fly is too expensive for many of the people who want to do it?
That's part of it. The US airline industry expects pilot candidates to apply when they already have the necessary FAA licenses and flight hours. To reach that point, pilots have to either serve in the military for 7+ years or take on a huge amount of student debt. If the airlines had instead maintained a pipeline by hiring trainees and then paying them to get certified then they wouldn't have such a severe shortage now.
Airlines have also laid off pilots during several industry downturns since 2001. Every time that happens, some switch careers and never return to flying.
Then add in the large amount of away-from-home time, non-trivial danger, and post 9/11 rules, and it's easy to see why a lot of folks are profoundly 'meh' about it.
Know a few former Naval Aviators who hit their 8-10 year commit and decided to get a Masters in something not aviation related -- work-life balance was a definite draw.
Lots of people on HN have range, but you might be the winner. Pretty sure that of millions of Hacker News readers only you can say “I have been running a tugboat company for a number of years..”
This is an accidental outcome. I was doing software work for 30 years. My father was building a tugboat company. He passed away. I have stepped in for now.
My pleasure. Once I sell the tugboat company, I intend to write up some lessons learned about the ways in which building my software consultancy did not prepare me for managing pirates.
I was trained as a unlimited Third Mate (Any Oceans, Any Gross tons), but decided not to sit for license and became an engineer instead. Every so often I wonder if I made the right choice, esp. since some of my classmates now own or are running shipping companies.
WHAT? I can sort of imagine one classmate doing it, but I am fascinated that there seem to be multiple ones? To what do you attribute this amazing incidence of entrepreneurialism?
I worked at Microsoft a few decades ago, and just sort of assumed that virtually everyone was there so that they could do their own start up. I was sorely wrong, and only one other than myself did so.
First, I realized that I'm using "classmates" loosely. Not specifically only the people in my graduating class (although that cohort has had some impressive achievements), but graduates from my school in general.
It may be industry dependent in a similar fashion to how many truckers are (used to be?) often owner-operators. You realize that you can only make so much money working for someone else and after a while the lifestyle gets tiring. Hard to settle down when you're away for 6 months out of the year. Or at some point you realize that your odds of being seriously injured at sea are going to catch up to you and you see an opportunity to buy a couple of harbor tugs or the like while managing them shoreside, and go for it.
I honestly never thought about it until you brought that up, but it could be personality types. When my High School History teacher heard that I was going to nautical school, she thought it would be a good fit for me since I was a loner and sailors were basically "cowboys who went to sea instead" in her words. And she understood me very well.
I really don't know the reason but it certainly merits thinking about. Especially since I've had some kind of side-hustle/consulting/business venture during every job I've ever had.
Owner-operator concept brings it into focus for me. Thanks for sharing a very interesting bio. BTW you HN profile lists skills but somehow leaves sailor out. Update that thang ;)
This is an industry where a combination of tenacity and intelligence goes a long way. Since I had to take over the company I currently run, I have been looking for someone to take over my position. All of the suitable candidates are happily employed by bigger companies and would not consider a smaller company (rightfully so, in my opinion).
> There are specific labor categories that cannot be filled just by paying more.
Maybe, but...
> They require more training and experience.
Well, sure, those have more lag (all market signals in the real, non-ideal, world have some), and to cut through noise and make sure the signal gets to the labor force, you may need to pay for the training and the work that provides the experience, as well as the target job itself.
> Licensed tugboat captains are retiring/dying faster than new licenses are being granted
Dying you can't avoid, but sufficient pay can affect the choice to retire. So, to the extent voluntary retirement is an issue, that suggests pay is also an issue.
Retirement is not very voluntary in this industry, in my experience. The majority of the tugboat captains I have encountered are not in good health and lose their annual USCG medical approval before 65.
You're not really selling the job very well. I often hear about how people used to jump at job opportunities like this or working on pipelines or other infrastructure that required them to work remotely, and I wonder if there's some nostalgia colored glasses there, or if these jobs used to pay a lot better in inflation adjusted terms. Or if maybe there are just better employment options these days.
Tell me I can make 120k a year while training and 200k a year after, with four weeks vacation and top tier health insurance, then tell me where you're located.
Yes. When USCG rolled out Subchapter M and increased demand, one solution would have been for companies to hire three years previously people that they did not need and find a way to get them the necessary seatime. Maybe they could have installed more bunks on the boats.
> Although the Coast Guard released Subchapter M on July 20, 2016, vessels had two years to meet the majority of the requirements — the deadline falling on July 20, 2018. The Coast Guard is trying to work with the tug and towing companies to make for a smooth transition into the new regulations with minimal downtime. The entirety of the law will be phased in over a six-year period.
> The next deadline for obtaining a certificate of inspection (COI) is in 2019. By July 22nd, 25 percent of towing and tugboat companies’ vessels must have a COI onboard. The percentage increases by 25 percent each year after until all vessels in the fleet have their COI onboard.
I wrote that three years is theoretically the fastest one could get enough seatime. This would mean three years constantly at sea. Most take at least double that.
So that means that there should be new captains entering the workforce right around now (7 years post-fact, nevermind that the rules were probably not just sprung on you in 2016 but there was some forewarning even before then.)
Yes, my company could have hired unlicensed deckhands that they did not need then and invested in them in the hopes that they would become captains later. I don’t know what boats they would have found to fit them onto at the time. It is a shame smart people were not around to advise.
I have done quite a lot to entice potential captains to join us over the last 3 years. Very few potential candidates are excited about the lifestyle, especially during the time when ZIRP was funding companies doing nothing.
But you did need them, as evidenced by the fact that now you're having trouble finding captains. You needed them then so they could be trained to be captains now. Yeah, training and growing people is an investment. Yeah, it doesn't always pay off. But you don't get to complain when you didn't invest that you didn't reap the rewards of your nonexistent investment.
> I have done quite a lot to entice potential captains to join us over the last 3 years. Very few potential candidates are excited about the lifestyle, especially during the time when ZIRP was funding companies doing nothing.
And as some others have asked you, what are you offering a starting deckhand? Give us at least a range for pay.
I am not "complaining". I recognize the reality of the situation. This is why I am selling the company and reallocating the capital.
I have been running the company for three years. Yes, my predecessor could have invested more earlier. All of the tugboat companies in our cohort could have invested more earlier. They could have raised prices so that they could attract more people. I agree that the industry and the government made bad choices in the past that lead to a shortage now.
The path from deckhand to licensed captain requires seatime. We have a fleet of four tugs. Even if we had been able to invest in the deckhands, where would we have put them? Each tug has a finite number of men it can carry, limited by physical space, supplies, and regulation.
I answered about pay rate elsewhere in the thread. I will try to add more details about the various labor categories.
Perhaps after you wind down the tugboat thing, you can open a consultancy to explain, based on simple anecdotes about your experience, why people’s dogma is often ridiculously wrong.
No, that will never work. But I bet you will be successful in some field where patience is a virtue.
Interesting, out of curiosity is this a regional thing or a nationwide issue? What were businesses doing for the last X years to buildup qualified people to promote? Has anything changed to speed up the rate of retiring/dying or just a new limit on the rate of granting licenses?
A friend of mine moved from construction to working on a tugboat ~1.5 years ago and I spent a bunch of time talking about it this winter. Some parts of the business sound interesting but I'm not sure it is a good fit due to family health and relationships.
There are a few trends working together. The two biggest are the demographic decline in the U.S. and the rollout of USCG Subchapter M, which increases demand. For example, some boats now require two captains on board for voyages over 12 hours where previously they would have used one captain.
You could pay to license someone, making the cost to you more but the position attractive: even with a 3 year lag. It’s not a labor shortage, it’s a business decision.
We have paid to license captains. It is a shortage and a business decision and a government decision. USCG Subchapter M increased demand for captains while we are producing fewer humans overall.
Just to be clear, we have deckhands in the pipeline to become captains now. We understand the need to invest for the future. That does not make it any less of a shortage today.
Uh, Pay people to train then? That sounds like a "people won't do a free/low paid 'internship' for years" problem... Pay the trainee positions more = more trainees? "Learn x career and get paid decent money" really, really wouldn't work in your mind? I find that very hard to believe
Paying people to train them does work. We do that. We have always done that. That is how we are addressing the shortage. In a few years, we will have more licensed captains.
I am replying to the assertions that there is no such thing as a labor shortage. It takes years of seatime to become a licensed captain. It takes more than money to make one. Our tugboats have berths for 4-6 crew. There are physical and regulatory limits on how many deckhands can be in the pipeline to becoming captains.
Fair enough, you know the field better than me, I just interpreted it as more there's never really a labor shortage due to people not wanting to work, it's pretty much always a lack of good incentives.
The regulations on how many "trainees" can exist at any one time is an interesting point of contention. Honestly, sorry I commented if that's the hold back for you guys.
I still struggle to imagine there is any job a six digit (or local comparative equivalent) salary with a fully paid training won't spur an abundance of candidates for. If your career is one, I'm sorry I so confidently doubted you
No worries. I agree that “nobody wants to work” is a thought-terminating cliche. I think it is a dumb oversimplification, like “there is no such thing as a labor shortage”.
The process is that one generally comes on as an uncredentialed deckhand or mechanic and accrues necessary seatime, then takes courses and passes tests. One must pass an annual physical and be subject to random drug tests. The deckhand must be able to get a TWIC card and a passport if doing anything international. Candidates with previous problems with DUIs, child support, etc. have trouble with this. Then you have to be willing to live in cramped quarters with 3-5 other men 24 hours a day. All of these requirements cut down the pool of likely candidates.
One has to work at this job for a few years to be able to have accrued the seatime and learn on the job and take some courses and then take a test.
So even if I could pay a deckhand $500k per year, that doesn't fix the problem we have today. That deckhand will not be a captain for years.
And most deckhands don't have the aptitude to become captains.
You don't have to take my word for it. You could talk to anybody in the industry.
Have you considered offering non-monetary perks to tip the scale ?
One example : Software engineers often get the "Work From Home" perk. Not sure if the industry offers software to remotely operate a tugboat, similar to a drone operator ? If it didn't exist, what if you developed such software ?
I have considered perks and implemented as many as I can. The biggest lever I have found so far is flexible schedule. We are willing to fly the captains out to the boat and fly them back home on whatever schedule they want. All companies in the industry are doing this now. This has limits, of course, some voyages are simply longer than some crew want to do (and have no stops near an airport).
As for remote control, no, this will be one of the last industries to allow remote control. In port and at many points during the voyage, captain and crew make quick decisions that require situational awareness. The deckhands have to wrangle lines and physically interact with the tow.
Very few labor shortages are real though. There's a lot of feudal toxicity out there and people want to work with someone passive and cheap, not an expert who is 'uppity' and expects their opinions to be objectively evaluated instead of being told to shut up and work (monkey).
There's a shortage of people willing to put up with being treated like shit and not even being paid hazard pay for dealing with management.
And then there's the habit of trying to keep the absolute bare minimum of employees in order to boost quarterly profits, which means there's no float of extra people you can poach if you get a giant project landing in your lap. It's Prisoner's Dilemma and everyone has been defecting since the 1970's.
I agree that in many cases, one can just apply money and get more labor. But I find that a lot of the value created is in the cases where this is not possible.
Yes, that is how companies like mine are addressing the shortage. That does not change the fact that there is a shortage now and that licenses require training, tests, and seatime.
Is there a way someone could avoid wrecking their back in the kind of work you did or is it inevitable? Like it just takes one accident? I'm really sorry that you're in pain constantly. My wife has a bad back from a motorcycle accident and it's always an off-and-on thing for her. :(
I did physical labor on a commercial farm for eight years, and I only left because of a change in management that I disagreed with. After that, I got an office job, and it's honestly a lot harder on my body; I am way more sore and achey all the time now. The job before it was retail (standing all day), and that was better than office work, but still nowhere as good as getting real exercise all day long.
So there are ways to do physical labor that do not harm you, but a lot of these come down to management and are not up to the individual employee. You could definitely hurt yourself very badly if you do it wrong (which you won't generally do naturally -- our bodies give us lots of warnings -- but pressure from above can make you ignore those warnings and drastically shorten your working life).
Fortunately, the company where I did labor really tried to be a healthy place to work, and that made such a huge difference. A lot of my coworkers had been there for 30 years or more, and they were still zipping around like they were 20.
These are some things that really help:
- The work needs to not be too repetitive (you need to switch tasks several times a day, and each task needs to use different parts of your body).
- You need breaks. And not just at set times of day, but also just whenever you need it. If you do something to yourself that feels funny or not quite right (a warning sign that you are on the verge of a sprain or some other injury), you need to be able to stop working immediately until the feeling passes.
- You need to do work that is within your capability. It's OK to work extremely hard, to go home exhausted, and to feel muscle soreness the next day. But if you do something you're not strong enough or quick enough to handle with total control, you are likely to make mistakes that lead to injuries (tripping, dropping something, using poor form, etc.). Such injuries can be severe and lifelong, so you should absolutely never work at the edge of your ability.
- You need to be well-slept and well-hydrated (cold water and electrolytes should be available at all times, with absolutely no delay), and you must have appropriate clothing and a way to temporarily escape from the heat if you suddenly feel faint. You can work extremely hard under surprisingly harsh conditions (I did hard labor in humid, 100-110 F greenhouses day after day and felt great), so long as your body's basic needs are met.
Depends on the job and the ergonomics involved but in general: posture. Most people just have really bad posture in general. Even while standing or sitting.
There are proper postures to do a lot of activities and they are frequently not observed. Maintaining proper posture is a skill that must be trained until you don't have to think about it. Even something "mindlessly simple" like lifting a heavy object off the ground and carrying it somewhere requires proper posture and technique to reduce chance of injuries. Reduce, not eliminate. You can do everything right and still get injured.
When lifting things off the ground, most people will flex and extend the torso instead of using their much stronger leg muscles. The better form is to squat down by flexing the thighs, pick up the object then lift it up by extending the thighs, all while maintaining the spine aligned.
Physical education and conditioning is important in these jobs. In our every day lives.
It's not absolutely inevitable, but if you spend 40 years doing hard manual labor then a disabling fall is quite likely. All it takes is a moment of inattention or a mistake by a sloppy co-worker.
This is one of several root causes behind our national opioid addiction epidemic. While pharmaceutical companies and doctors bear much of the blame, there are millions of people who suffer chronic pain from work injuries that can't be fully repaired.
Sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's repetitive motion. I worked in a shop where people had carpal tunnel from handling parts the same way for years, or bad eyes from welders. It really depends.
Of course, some people take more precautions than others, and that helps, but it's no guarantee of safety.
I think it's the nature of being a labourer, really. Your body is the machine, energy has to move through it by way of forces. Our spines are just not that great at holding up under the forces. Sorry to hear about your wife's situation, too. If she has an office job a nice chair goes such a long way. I got a HM Embody and can say that it improved my ability to work, since there's a lot less pain now.
I know many people who have worked in trades their entire career: roofing, electrical, plumbing, general construction, forestry service, etc. I worked construction and electrical part-time early in my life.
Some have messed up back & knees... others don't. The big difference between the groups is their level of activity outside of the job and their fitness level; the guys who work out, and have worked out for decades, and are active outside their job are all in good health... no back problems, no knee problems, no shoulder problems, etc. Some of these guys are in their 60's now and retired.
I'm not judging... just saying it is possible to work a heavy labor job and not screw up your body.
Bullshit. The arrogance of the idea alone, that somebody after 12h of physical labor should do sports. Shows you how disconnected some princlings are from the world. Your friends own and manage construction company, they oversee and don't perform the work.
Overreact much? I had a friend who was a carpenter and did exactly that. Refused to work on his own house, though, so it looked like a dump. But he had no problems working out after putting in a full day of swinging a hammer.
This rationale doesn't make a ton of sense. Say they had paid you more. You'd still have these back issues. You wouldn't say, "I have these back issues every day of my life now but at least they paid me $2X instead of $X" ...
I majored in construction management in school. I was the only one in my major who didn’t grow up with a father, uncle, or grandfather in the trades.
It is often hard, grueling work. I was a project manager so I didn’t ‘perform’ any of the work, but I was still up scaffolding and down in muddy pits. The laborers are out in the worst weather day and night and make decent money- but totally wreck their bodies.
So it is a combination of people being steered away from labor jobs into college, not knowing an entry point without family ties, and grueling hard work. I’m surprised anything gets built.
One reason why elites tolerate so much illegal immigration is that they will do back breaking labor, often under the table or with illegal papers, and never complain with minimal wages. That labor is needed to keep the system working.
To be clear I am an “open borders” guy but both political parties in the US make a lot of noise but never change anything.
> To be clear I am an “open borders” guy but both political parties in the US make a lot of noise but never change anything.
Significant changes in immigration system were made through law in the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s; the inability to reach a sufficient consensus to pass legislation (both divided government and the weaponization of the filibuster to functionally act as a supermajority requirement for almost any legislation in the Senate have played a role in preventing legislation) has resulted in most changes since then being by executive action, with drastically different approaches between the parties. “Both parties make noise but never change anything” is, well, quite false.
Minimal wages is relative. I imagine that most people do it because those wages let them support their families and build a house / start a business back home. The crossing takes about a year to pay back, and there are living costs, but many work double shift at different jobs, with one paycheque going for living costs in the US and the other for savings/family/setting themselves up for a better life back home. 5-6 years "echando ganas" and you can be set for life. It's a pretty rational thing to do, much like pensioners who retire "down south".
Of course it’s rational - my primary point was that the left pretends to want to make citizenship for undocumented workers easier, and the right to kick them all out, but for the last 30 years we have been at a stalemate and more people come to the US illegally than ever. IMO both sides like the status quo and endlessly hype to their base but never intend to do anything.
I agree with that. It was surprising to me how easy it seems to be in the US to get by as an undocumented worker, compared to in many places in Europe for example. It's also surprising how mandatory eVerify hasn't been rolled out in all states, despite being in existence for more than 20 years.
It is not surprising. Those in leadership positions intentionally look the other way because they and their cohorts benefit from the cheaper labor. They openly issue paltry fines to giant companies found to be violating the law.
If they really wanted to, they could easily make it a jailable felony to not eVerify employment status of immigrants.
I think this is key. If the jobs paid enough for Americans to do the same thing in their hometowns after 5-6 yrs of work then Americans would sign up for these "labor shortage" jobs.
Construction companies do not have the profit margin to do that, and cities and homebuyers can barely afford construction costs as they are. Construction companies cannot charge much more than they are charging now. The market cannot support that and things start to break down.
There's already a huge infrastructure cost issue in the US. Can they afford more? How much more?
Apparently not then. Expectations of quality of life will have to be adjusted downwards (has already been happening).
Of course, society could stop giving healthcare to people 90+, or 80+, and reallocate some resources from there. It all depends on who has the political power in society, but generally, with a stagnant/decreasing younger age population, the fault lines will increasingly show along various age groups.
Of course, society could stop giving tax breaks to huge corporations, and fund the IRS so that tax revenues are effectively generated. We know who has the political power in society, it has little to do with age demographics.
Vertebra damage from lifting too fast or incorrectly.
Falls. These are usually life altering.
Not using PPE because it takes too long or impedes your vision or it causes you to sweat more or you just don't want the rest of the crew to call you a pussy.
Hearing damage (because no PPE).
Cuts and bruises because you didn't wear gloves.
Sunburn every day which means skin cancer is guaranteed eventually.
Long term exposure to stuff like concrete dust, fiberglas insulation, sawdust from treated wood, volatile organics etc which can wreck your lungs.
Poor nutrition because of too-short lunch breaks and unavailability of non-processed food.
Getting ripped apart by heavy powered equipment because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody did something stupid. Again, life altering.
Frequent alcohol use to ease the aches and pains built up during the day.
But mostly just hard damn physical activity in brutal conditions 8-12 hours a day. Do this for 20 years and it ages you fast and wears out your body.
This is not exercise at the indoor gym with safe equipment under the supervision of a coach. This is "get your ass up that ladder with 100 lbs of shingles on your shoulder without a stinking safety rope and fast, or you're fired."
What about OSHA? OSHA on construction sites is not really a thing I've seen, and if anybody mentioned an OSHA violation they would probably be fired. And since much of the labor force is undocumented, they ain't gonna report a violation anyway, lest they get discovered and deported.
Texas just nullified a law which required 10 minute breaks for construction workers every 4 hours[0]. I do not even do back breaking labor in the sun and I take significantly more breaks throughout the day.
I suspect most construction companies will ensure their workers get plenty of water. If only because people who drink enough water on hot days get a lot more done in the day.
This law means nothing in practice. If you are working construction in the Texas heat, you need to drink water every 10-30 minutes, not just once every 4 hours. I can't imagine an employer lasting long if they didn't allow their employees to drink water when needed (and visit the portapotty accordingly). When I worked construction in the summer in a place nowhere near as hot as Texas, I drank 1-2 gallons of water a day, and it wasn't just on a few legally mandated breaks.
Every construction site I've seen has a water cooler and the people are allowed to take a drink every time they walk by. Either that or the people all come to work with their own water which they bring with them all day to drink when they want. Nobody cares about the few seconds lost to someone having a drink.
In healthcare and there's very explicit rules about how one is to approach, lift and transfer or roll patients, who weigh more than the staff attending to them. Even including a count of staff-per-weight ratio. Sadly, I imagine if one took the same precautions in construction, you'd be told to hurry tf up and you're on your own.
And even there workers get hurt and are pressured to do some tasks with less assistance. Unfortunately it isn't hard to do just a little bit too much and get hurt.
I know several healthcare professionals with permanently screwed up backs because a patient was falling and they went to catch the patient. Much like an I-beam falling on you, you don't always get to pick and choose what you have to deal with.
I asked a couple nurses I know and they have never heard of this "staff-to-weight" ratio. At least here in America most hospitals operate on staff-to-patient ratio. I suppose this could be different in other countries.
1-2 hours a day of exercise is easy. You stop when you want to, and can take time off. There are literally machines that guide the exact path your weight takes so as to avoid injury. Weights are symmetrical and designed to be held and carried. Workout conditions are generally comfortable or at least tolerable. The likelihood of you dying or getting hurt cuz of someone else not knowing what to do in a gym is low to negligable.
Meanwhile it's 4:41am, and you're going to be working for the next 8 hours on your feet lifting 80 lb things at weird angles in high humidity. Half of your staff may be Hispanic day laborers and not speak English, and the other half may range from the semi-literate to get-in-get-out experienced tradies who DGAF about your problems cuz they're only on site for 1 day. When they fail to nail a board in properly it falls on you, not a serious injury or anything but another scratch and bruise. And then you get to do the same thing tomorrow.
The problem is that repetitive work is inherently injurious. Also, working under high pressure is very likely to lead to mistakes that cause injury.
I did hard physical labor for eight years and felt great (it's honestly the best I've ever felt physically and I miss it), but I did not do repetitive work or work under extreme pressure. We were always strongly encouraged to take tons of water breaks, not rush, switch tasks several times a day, and stop working immediately if something started hurting or didn't feel right.
If people are regularly wearing themselves out on physical labor, it's the fault of management.
Exercising 8 hours a day for 40 years, where much of the “exercise” involves inefficient postures which put load on joints and tendons. This isn’t a session at the local gym with nice machines using movements specifically designed for safety.
That’s a big if. My dad wrecked his back just getting down from his backhoe/skid loader/whatever it was. The ladder only went so close to the ground. You do something like that multiple times per day for so many years and eventually something will probably give.
Just doing renovations on my house every weekend, I constantly notice bruises and cuts at the end of the day. So like that, but 8 hour days instead of 4 hour days, and 5-7 days a week.
Vertebra damage from lifting too fast or incorrectly.
Falls. These are usually life altering.
Not using PPE because it takes too long or impedes your vision or it causes you to sweat more or you just don't want the rest of the crew to call you a pussy.
Hearing damage (because no PPE).
Cuts and bruises because you didn't wear gloves.
Sunburn every day which means skin cancer is guaranteed eventually.
Long term exposure to stuff like concrete dust, fiberglas insulation, sawdust from treated wood, volatile organics etc which can wreck your lungs.
Poor nutrition because of too-short lunch breaks and unavailability of non-processed food.
Getting ripped apart by heavy powered equipment because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody did something stupid. Again, life altering.
Frequent alcohol use to ease the aches and pains built up during the day.
But mostly just hard damn physical activity in brutal conditions 8-12 hours a day. Do this for 20 years and it ages you fast and wears out your body.
This is not exercise at the indoor gym with safe equipment under the supervision of a coach. This is "get your ass up that ladder with 100 lbs of shingles on your shoulder without a stinking safety rope and fast, or you're fired."
What about OSHA? OSHA on construction sites is not really a thing I've seen, and if anybody mentioned an OSHA violation they would probably be fired. And since much of the labor force is undocumented, they ain't gonna report a violation anyway, lest they get discovered and deported.
(My experience is probably too limited. I'm mostly talking about residential construction. I suspect large commercial projects get more OSHA oversight. But it's still very hard, damaging work.)
Alot of loads they carry can become completely impossible for human physiology to carry by having to extend any weight too far from your body. Or pieces of material that weigh above 150kg. No safety intstruction can prevent guys from hoisting that up on their own if it needs to be done in order to continue working. That in addition to lots of chemicals, sprays, fiberglass and dust in the air makes it a health nightmare.
I’ve been looking at all the jobs in my local area for a little while now.
Despite a lot of construction, I have seen very few “hiring” signifiers anywhere. A few management and PM roles get posted, usually wanting people with long established experience, but not many labor jobs.
There’s a big construction project that’s been going on right next to me for a while. When I go past it, there’s a lot of yellow tape, and signs warning that it’s a felony to steal from the site, but no “we’re hiring” signs.
Most of the jobs I see are bottom tier retail or restaurants positions, call center positions, some logistics jobs, various sales, medical jobs, and management. I do see some electrician work, but usually not in construction.
These jobs are not generally posted online because it is a fractious world of zillions of tiny business entities that aren't exactly computer or even record keeping centric. Those PM/management type jobs are posted by general contractors which are much more conglomerated and white-collar (not entirely) than the subcontractors they manage. At those levels, trade unions and trade schools facilitate a lot of the hiring, and the rest is often word of mouth and person to person relationships involved, independent contractors and small businesses and whatnot, often operated completely from one person's cell phone. You might go to a local general contractor and say, do you know anyone looking for help for role X or Y? Almost guaranteed they do.
You also won't find hiring signs at large construction sites because it's a significant nuisance to have a stream of random people (usually unqualified) walking into a managed construction area looking for work. I know this from experience.
They are not able to interview at the construction site, and may need you to attend off site safety training before you are allowed in. They are hiring, but it isn't walk in and start working.
Really? Because it used to be you could walk through a subdivision going up with a toolbelt slung over your shoulder and you'd have a job by the 4th house site you stop at.
You can probably still do that in lots of places in the residential single family rapid copy-paste development space (there's a reason why so many of those new homes are terrible quality these days) but unless you have trade qualifications, you're probably going to start with basic and grueling 'unskilled' general laborer work.
Large or more technical construction projects (industrial, public infrastructure, roadways, government projects, warehouses, commercial, bespoke luxury homes, dense multi unit housing, office buildings, skyscrapers, sports arenas, etc) are a completely different ballgame - consider it the difference between college (or even high school) football and the NFL. Safety and liability are taken much more seriously because the stakes are higher, the scale larger. It is correct that you generally cannot even enter such a construction site without an offsite (although usually adjacent) training operated by the general contractor, (who manages site liability) in like an office trailer.
You can still walk into that office trailer (after knocking or ringing a doorbell, usually) and ask the general contractor if they know anyone hiring for role X or Y, etc. This is somewhat okay because during construction phase of a project, GCs usually operate on an interrupt-based process of various and numerous onsite folks walking into their trailer needing this or that. But odds are pretty good they'll quickly tell you to get lost if you're not showing them some sort of valued trade qualifications or know them personally in some way. If you have those qualifications, usually your phone is already ringing off the hook (see above article) and you don't have to walk into random construction sites, hence why so many of the people that do have no qualifications.
Another way to get your foot in the door is to go to a temporary staffing agency like PeopleReady and tell them you want such a construction site job. It will be grueling 'unskilled' general labor. Then you can get the training to get on the site, and possibly make a connection for future work. (Does not happen successfully often, except for the most exceptional and lucky temp workers)
And, I feel it should be said, that unless you are in a union-hostile environment you can generally in a similar way pick up a toolbelt, walk into a few union halls and ask for steady skilled work with good pay and benefits and they'll explain the path to get there with them which, at a good union, will be transparent and fair - one of the main potential benefits of trade unions is democratizing the trade skills qualification process.
Unfortunately I don't really see much of a difference between that and the behavior of many incorporated business units in construction.
It's a moldy part of the piece of bread that prospective workers have to eat around, whether they go union or non-union, until we can get rid of it completely. But we're making progress fast in a ground-up sort of way.
Also - a good union is often a successful foil to a bad business, but rarely the other way around. I think the best foil to a bad union would be strong regulation and enforcement of the platonic idea of the union, like in Germany. Unfortunately that particular solution would probably be DOA in USA.
Trade qualifications?? Have you ever worked in construction? HVAC, Electrical, and Plumbing are the only three trades involved with making a house that have any form of credential available. Literally everything else is the wild west.
You won't pass inspection if you can't build to code. It isn't hard to learn that on the job. It also isn't hard for inspectors to tell who does a bad job. Even of the three you name, most (not all) of the qualification is just about doing time and isn't really needed for doing a good job.
One doesn't go to trade school to build to code, there's no cert for it, and I won't bore you with the number of times I've watched inspectors faceplant on code enforcement.
> It will be grueling 'unskilled' general labor. Then you can get the training to get on the site, and possibly make a connection for future work. (Does not happen successfully often, except for the most exceptional and lucky temp workers)
... and people wonder why there is a "labor shortage" for these jobs.
There is no labor shortage, there is a glut of roadblocks.
I think you usually join a local union serving a specific subset of construction. Filling jobs is a major part of what the union does for you.
Ages ago my dad worked concrete construction back in IL. I was young and didn't pay much attention, but I recall him referring to "the hall" as where he'd go to find work. Google search turned up this:
I still listen to commercial radio and my 'hard rock' local radio station runs ads for this stuff all the time. Carpenters, hvac, and sheet rock are what I remember but I do my best to tune commercials out, sorry. ;) Lots of drivers also wanted, trucking and short haul? maybe? I admit to not remembering my terms.
Also bailbonds, divorce lawyers who specialize in men's cases, and requests emailed in from the local prison.
Every major urban city has these jobs - population is not the only type of growth. Industrial, commercial, infrastructure projects demand just as much if not more of these jobs than residential.
Yeah.
Work for a summer as a manual laborer some time. Grueling, backbreaking work, unless you have the "in" (and five years journeyman experience at no to little pay) to be a plumber/electrician/heavy vehicle operator.
Every time I've tried working in laboring I haven't lasted a month, usually less than two weeks (till paycheck). Carrying sheet rock, digging trenches, general haul this go over there. People come out of manual laboring either built like a professional wrestler, with severe muscle-skeletal problems, or both.
No one wants to work those jobs because they're so terrible.
I wanted to argue with you about this, as I have experience working as a construction site laborer, and then I thought back to the time I had to spend a night on-site because a huge beam fell off a wood pile and pinned my leg in the dirt and other fallen lumber, and everyone else had gone home and no one could hear me yelling.
I wasn't seriously injured, but ninety nine out of 100 times someone in that position would be.
Also from some time spend in construction. To me it looked like plumbing and electricity might not also be that much better always. At least if you had to work with heavy stuff. The higher amperage cables are heavy and stiff. And the working positions are not always optimal. Cast iron is not used anymore, but it is also example of heavy stuff.
Heavy vehicles get to office work situation, with added risk of having to get up and down and possibly jump from places...
Even as a hobbyist plumber; I've squeezed in a humid crawl space on a hot day, watched my torch die and laughed as I realized it was due to lack of oxygen.
They don't want to work those jobs because they have no concept of mental and physical toughness. It's a shame too, spend 4-5 years bouncing around through the trades and you'll pick up enough skills to get a lifetime 70% off coupon for all home repair and renovation projects.
A lot of people talk about the money, but here's some other factors:
Schedule - shifts start at 6AM or earlier. I knew a guy who worked concrete, he'd have to show up at 4AM to load the mixer. I knew another guy who majored in construction management, he said they had a 6AM class every day. The theory was if you couldn't make it to class, you wouldn't make it to work either.
Consistency - I knew an electrician who was constantly in and out of work. He was either working 70+ hours a week or out of work for 2-3 months. The construction industry is very boom or bust.
Drug Testing - the same friend who majored in construction management told me that something like 60% of their applicants failed a drug screen (almost always marijuana). The crazy thing is that he claimed they didn't actually care - their insurance company insisted on it. THC stays in your urine for quite a while so a positive test doesn't necessarily mean you're high right now, but people just wouldn't stay clean long enough to clear it.
Safety - Others have mentioned it but between the day-to-day wear and tear and the risk of accident, it's tough on your body. Not many people over age 50 still work in construction trades, unless they're at Master level or have moved to management.
> Schedule - shifts start at 6AM or earlier. I knew a guy who worked concrete, he'd have to show up at 4AM to load the mixer. I knew another guy who majored in construction management, he said they had a 6AM class every day. The theory was if you couldn't make it to class, you wouldn't make it to work either.
This cuts for the nice highly paid salaried construction engineers too, as you allude to with the classes at 6am anecdote. IME, project management expects the engineers to be on-site at least a half hour or more before the field shift begins, and at least an hour past the field shift to ensure that the 'actual' work, the field stuff, is organized, ready, and gets carried out productively. Regardless if the field is working 8s, 10s, 12s, or more.
No first thing in the morning panics or scrambles when a foreman realizes he doesn't have a work plan in hand and his crew of a dozen who started at 6am sits around waiting for the engineer to traipse in around 9am with an iced coffee just to print a pdf that should've been ready the night before.
These kind of hours pretty rapidly cut into that equivalent hourly rate your salary equals!
Yeah - employers in these industries seem to be acting like there's a plentiful supply of young adult males from which to pick and choose. They need to look at a few demographic tables and charts.
I think it could be fun to work these types of jobs if part-time was acceptable. Part-time would be ideal to give some time to recuperate and avoid accumulating injuries.
I once built a house with two friends over a summer, gruelling work (70-80 hours per week) but lots of fun & great learning experience. A month in I had a major flare up of RSI in both wrists and had to take two weeks off to get it back under control (with the help of ibuprofen to reduce inflammation & on advice of my doctor), and then I wore wrist braces on the construction site after that.
If it had been an actual job then I imagine there would've been more pressure to not take that time off to recuperate, leading to longer term damage.
> According to an outlook from Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group for the non-union construction industry
> Plenty of money to build, not enough to recruit and train
edit:
> President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill magnifies the issue – money has been allocated for updating America’s infrastructure, but no money has been allocated for enticing new workers into the construction industry, or training new workers. This, according to Davidson, has worsened the labor shortage that already existed prior to the bill’s passage.
America only thinks in terms of subsidizing the wealthy. The industry should be paying to train people to get into the industry, and government should be assisting and coordinating private businesses, not providing for them.
> “It’s cultural,” Turmail said. “Mom doesn’t want her babies to grow up to be construction workers. For the last 40 years, we’ve been preaching a message nationally that the only path to success in life lies through a four-year college degree in some kind of an office." ... Vankudre said that construction as a career path is not particularly appealing to young people, and until the U.S. government and construction companies find a way to change that belief among the labor force’s newest generations, the shortage will linger.
I used to work medical/safety on major construction sites, and I'm not sure it's purely pay, because lots of guys love the overtime (caused in part by fewer men per man-hour of work). The beginning of the proverbial pipeline is drying/has dried up.
Good for workers, bad for companies.
A google search for "meme about college vs trades" captures the sentiment: "College Kid is $100k in debt for his PhD in Philosophical Basketweaving, is unemployed, and looks down at tradesmen"; "Tradesman got paid for his apprenticeship, owns a house and a brand-new pickup truck, and just disconnected College Kid's utilities for non-payment"
I feel like these memes completely ignore the fact that being an engineer exists as a career and is basically the trades job but for far more pay and with more thinking involved.
I haven't seen any where College Kid went to become a doctor/lawyer/engineer.
They've all referenced "useless" degrees, which I've interpreted broadly as people who get degrees for the sake of having degrees - especially those who look down on people without degrees.
Don’t get me wrong being a gender studies major or something without a clear career path to a well paying job when you leave college is stupid but there is a college version of every trade that does cooler shit and gets paid far more. Why fix planes or cars when you could design them if you have the means to go to college? Obviously not everyone can afford a 4 year college degree but if you can it’s a no brainer.
I think "cool" here is subjective, and aptitude aside, not everyone can [design|fix] things, because then who will [fix|design] them?
I think a lot of people like the hands-on aspect over, say, math, and/or the fact that their job is done when they punch out - they don't have the responsibility that a PE or PM does. Go to work, turn wrench, come home, drink beer, repeat.
A search for "traveling construction jobs" will get you at least part of the story, but advertised salaries usually don't include the unplanned-but-essentially-guaranteed overtime. There's also Per Diem rates that aren't technically part of salary/base pay - e.g., $250 per day to cover your travel/hotel/meals.
The demurrage clauses in contracts are generally more expensive than paying overtime, even 2x rates, so it happens as the project falls behind, which it almost inevitably does, due to weather, failed drug tests, people walking/getting kicked off the job, etc.
Things like large concrete pours or topping off a wind turbine need to be done in one go, which can quickly result in 16, 18, or 20-hour days and/or 7-day work weeks.
So, the job might advertise $20-40/hr, but many of these guys are making well over $100k annually.
I used to work in a position that had many things like you describe.
My per diet was $250, but hotel in the middle of oil field nowhere was $140/night, I couldn’t get breakfast for less than $15, lunch about the same, and any dinner that wasn’t a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store $25. Now you’re at $225/250 of your per diem, you’re covered in concrete, and you get $25 “bonus” for the privilege of living away from home out of back eating whatever you can find in the middle of nowhere.
A lot of the smaller contractors would bring in a 5th wheel, break out the bbq after work, and pocket the hotel money to make work better.
And maybe they make $100k but they work heavy overtime, away from home, and 3000 hours a year to make it happen. And they still have to spend 12 hours actually doing the physical work to make the job happen.
Yeah, there's definitely lots of variability in both the per diem rates and how people spend it. I'd work 4 weeks on/2 weeks off (and travel some more), which I valued more than being back in my apartment every night.
We rented a 3BR for practically nothing and ate out just about every night (food was cheaper there than at home). I basically lived off of the per diem and put the actual salary away for the off-season.
Most of the people I worked with, myself included, were young and (more importantly) single and traveling all over the country was a plus. One of the electrical foreman used to work in Antarctica, and I forget what insane amount of money he made there, but I'd definitely have jumped on that even for half the pay.
Re: Hourly vs. Annual - I'm speaking more to the fact that it's non-linear, because of the per diem and lots of overtime.
I'm not sure I'd call it glamorous, but I'd definitely do it again if I didn't have a family to consider.
(My wife used to do commercial fishing, which is perhaps even more un-glamorous, but there's something satisfying about coming home after a few weeks with more money than you know what to do with - at least in your early/mid 20's.)
>So, the job might advertise $20-40/hr, but many of these guys are making well over $100k annually.
This is not mutually exclusive. Both per hour earnings and annual income are relevant measures. $100k annually for working 2,000 hours is a very different quality of life than $100k annually for working 3,000 hours. The other factors that will come into play are working conditions (for example, outdoor temperatures, working in active roadways, etc), working nights, early mornings, weekends, and frequency and distance of travel.
But it will all work itself out, even though there may be some pains while supply and demand curves move to find the correct prices.
I worked unskilled manual labor jobs (ranching/landscaping/construction/roughnecking/etc.) in the southern US starting age 14 during high school, then through university to pay for tuition (sometimes working two jobs), and after university in the oilfields until I finally found a white collar job utilizing my degree. It is back breaking work, sometimes in 100°+ heat/12 hr days, typically with zero health benefits. Many times employers are happy to use people up. The chance of injury is high, and even in skilled trades the longterm career sustainability is tough and hard on the body. It is also sometimes a culturally abrasive/toxic work environment, with hazing and poor leadership. I quickly decided that was not the life I wanted, and leveraged my degree into something else. I think that in the US some of the primary reasons people leave or avoid blue collar/hard hat industries is due to the risk of injury and poor quality/nonexistent or unaffordable healthcare.
Pretty simple explanation right here: https://i.redd.it/7h1mwj3gcjd61.png
I do my software engineering work in the middle of the night, while I'd happily work during the day for labor. Why not? Hard work keeps the body young. 2000 hours and licensing barriers is why not. There's no entry level apprenticeships available. There is no on the job training available. Even if someone is an autodidact the shortage is a given when the hiring requires unnecessary experience.
You clearly haven't worked a labor job. "Keeps the body young"? No, it generally destroys the body. Also, there's a reason the phrase "regulations are written in blood" gets repeated. Spoiler: It's because people have been injured and died doing things they didn't know were bad. In this guy's case, does he know under which conditions the giant hole he just dug with his shovel will cave in and bury him alive? Likely not. The same applies to "licensing barriers".
This plague of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, especially those who came before them, and know about everything is insufferable.
At least in my country, there are three types of "labor shortages".
1. Pay and/or working conditions suck so much people aren't interested. Think of nurses, various staff (restaurant, cleaning etc) that are often employed through third-party companies that offer you limited hours on weekly basis.
2. Labor limited through artificial constraints on supply. Doctors are a good example of this here - doctors associations successfully lobby to keep medical school student intake low, which means lower supply and better pay for those who make it.
3. Positions that require just too much experience, knowledge or talent to be obtained simply through right education. Think of top senior software engineers for example.
Bracero Program and before were workable. Not that they are directly applicable to today, but the paperwork to work temporarily in the US should be made many times simpler and easier than the convoluted, kafkaesque, corrupt abomination that it is now that benefits primarily medium and large agribusinesses by exploiting undocumented persons. The meat agriculture industry openly advertises salaries in newspapers in central and south America to encourage undocumented migration. It's a dirty secret that undocumented peoples who work for large industrial concerns are generally safe from ICE raids except for occasional token enforcement to maintain the pretense, while other undocumented people are subject to raids at any time. This isn't by accident but through the power of lobbyists and money.
The last large raids were in 2006 at Swift Meat packing. What set them off was an internal investigation of a Hispanic worker in ICE who the IRS was complaining had not been paying income tax. Due to identity theft, her name & SSN were being used at more than 50 simultaneous jobs. Apparently the financial motive for a lot of identity theft is to find Hispanic name & SSN combos, which were, at least back in 2006, worth over $50 each to companies looking to dodge eVerify checks.
Usually it's not the company that pays. The company just says "turn up with an SSN" and then other people who already work there put the new employee in touch with someone who deals in them. I've heard it cost 200-250$ for one. But that way the company has plausible deniability, and its the worker who is the "identity thief". A lot of the stuff is done on word of mouth, by compatriots just looking to help each other out.
On the contrary, it’s the best idea if you want to force manufacturing back towards your shores. Less painful now versus when a full blown conflict kicks off and trade seizes up.
Despite popular belief, there is still a lot of manufacturing in the us. Cheap plastic 'junk' is made in china, but there is plenty of manufacturing in the us and thus know how to do it.
It's not 1998 anymore, China has a huge industry in precision and high tech manufacturing. They build the iphone after all, not to mention most of the components inside, 95% of the drone industry, more automobiles than anyone else, high speed trains, hell, they even make their own 5th gen stealth fighter jets.
Which ones? The display, SoC, and RAM are not manufactured in China. IIRC the battery and one of the cameras are made there and the main camera is not.
Let's see just how well that worked out, shall we?
>In June 2023, the surveyed unemployment rate of young people between 16 and 24 years of age in urban areas of China ranged at 21.3 percent, up from 20.8 percent in the previous month.
>In 2022, S&P Global Ratings found that corporate debt in China reached nearly $29 trillion in the first quarter, the highest in the world and roughly equivalent to the size of the U.S. government’s total debt.
I suspect that's an artifact of what counts as "corporate" debt in china. LGFVs[1] count as corporate debt, but are more accurately classified as government. If you factor that out and reallocate that to government debt, and consider that the US has higher government debt as % of GDP than china, the two countries don't look too far off.
Conflating between national/gov vs total/aggregate debt. PRC national debt is ~75% of GDP vs US ~120%, total aggregate debt PRC ~270% vs US ~760%. Youth unemployment rate basically same as US @7.5%. PRC youth unemployment stats exclude 60% of youths in school unavailable for work, PRC youth unemployment using US bureau of labour definition is 8.5%. PRC debt is more managable than US on any metric that matters, meanwhile outcome of said debt is surplus talent and new infra. Opposite of what US is currently dealing with. US does seem to have advantage inflating away (i presume) dollar debt though, US aggregate debt high was like 860% during covid.
US is getting infrastructure and talent. STEM graduations are at an all time high. US is also building new chips and EVs. Construction job openings are at all time high.
Here's bloomberg on PRC National Bureau of Statistics:
>Over 33 million young people have entered the job market and more than six million of them are currently unemployed, NBS spokesman Fu Linghui told reporters in a briefing Thursday. The population of those aged 16 and 24 is about 96 million, but many are not looking for jobs because they’re still in school, he said.
6/33, youths entering job market = 18%+ (round up to 7/33 since "more than 6m" for 21% figure), aka the figure MSM narrative and PRC collapsist are fixating on
But it's really:
6-7/96m, total youths 66m either in education or not looking = 6-7%, aka in line with US Bureau of Labour Statistics BLS (~8%)
Now compare from from BLS 2022 report:
> The unemployment rate for youth was 8.5 percent in July 2022
AND
>The labor force participation rate for all youth was 60.4 percent in July 2022, little different from a year earlier.
Were people losing their shit over 40% US youth unemployment rate? No they quote the 8.5% from BLS in same report.
Also note PRC NBS statistic is URBAN youths, 16-24 population total is ~150m, there's about 60m rural youth not accounted for. Also note urban un/underemployment so far skews less skilled - basically service industry got fucked during covid so many low skilled youths got the shaft. TBF, rural youth unemployment probably bad, so would not be far fetched if PRC aggregate youth unemployment is also 40%+, but bluntly rural youth not really skilled cohorts driving up PRC economy. But also expect UBRAN youth unemployment statistics to increase, IMO 30-40%+ because one of the largest cohort of students are about to graduate (12m) into mediocre economy, which TBH even PRC with high 8% (vs projected 5%) growth is going to struggle to create that many jobs. For reference India youth unemployment is 45% from May, 16-24 is like 40% of Indian population pyramid, while only 15% for PRC. What's a bigger problem? PRC with 6m+ unemployed youths or India with 250m+? Why is western MSM and PRC collapcists wanking about about India replacing PRC instead of massively squandering what's left of their demographic divident. This isn't directed at you, just general comment on PRC reporting.
Now realize even at 30-40% youth unemployment in PRC, that's still employment for ~6-8m youths, especially skilled. Equal to about 2x US total tertiary graduation, while PRC generates ~5m STEM per year (9x more than US), and jobs in strategic S&T industries in PRC like semiconductors are booming. The TLDR is people in west meming about PRC youth unemployment should be TERRIFIED that PRC urban youth unemploymentis only 20%/6% because that's anywhere between 2-9x more skilled talent than US, especially in competitive high tech sectors.
On cancelling projects half way, yeah there's bad infra projects, just like US wastes stupid amount of resources trying to get things built only to not. Difference is PRC is left with a bunch of underutilized infra or worst case half finished buildings and wasted emissions and US is left with some richer paper pushers. They're both wasteful, but PRC waste has chance of future utility. And that PRC waste is make job for millions of low skill worker (by design) while US waste is directed towards bureacrats (again by capture/design).
The long TLDR from figures above is US can start emphasising STEM and construction, but won't be in the same league as PRC. PRC population base effect with poor TFR and even future shit TFR is STILL so high US can't boost STEM + immigration close to parity, and even less chance now that PRC talent is increasingly inaccessible to US due to geopolitics. Keep in mind next 24 years of PRC demographics already baked in, the kind of talent gap they're spitting out right now can be reasonably maintained for about 2 decades since birth from 2000+ is 9-12m per year. That's ~50-100M STEM, aka the greatest high skill demographic divident in human history. US population is projected to increase by 40m in that time frame. PRC employing 1/2 of future STEM talent in relevant fields is enough to compete. Like all the news of PRC climbing up value chains, leading in science and innovation indexes from last few years? Or moving from 1T to 18T economy. They did that by growing STEM from ~2M to ~17M STEM. US construction IMO even more hopeless, of course opennings are high, but where's the talent to fill and if talents there, the ability to cut tape and actually build. CHIPs fab already behind schedule. I'm sure US will get there eventually, but they have different hurdles, as does PRC. But PRC advantage is demographics (yes demographics, despite Zeihantards claims), as in skilled talent important in national building, and ability to get physical things build, even if it means building to much. PRC's has over capacity "problem", but the problem of excess is different from problem of paucity, which is what US is dealing with in terms of STEM shortage and inability to actually build.
I want to correct I messed up reading NBS calculation methods. PRC already use comparable youth unemployment calc as US.
But general point remains, PRC youth unemployment different kind of problem - it's reflection of state overcapacity, problem of excess is different from problem of paucity, which is what US is dealing with in terms of skilled talent shortage. PRC general employment ~5%, which means most youth either give up or end up in workforce eventually. People work if they have to work. The important consideration is if enough of them work in relevant sectors to push PRC up value chain, last few years show that is happening. Recent reports PRC moving up value chains, science and innovation indexes coincides with trend of increasing youth unemployment since it's lag effect / byproduct of PRC was spamming as many bodies into tertiary as possible. Surplus has been trying to find places to go for years, from bureaucracy to other stable state jobs, and maybe eventually they'll eat bitter like Xi wants and start filling well paying blue collar jobs. Society is eventually going to accept/reckon with with talent over production. IMO Saturating society with more talent than needed (or more infra than needed) is better problem than shortage.
PRC kneecapping softtech so hard tech like semi get first dibs on talent, hence hard tech jobs and wages up. They figured it's probably bad use of resources to waste talent refining DiDi delivery by +5 seconds or pervasive Edtech making child rearing onerous. Plenty of movement in LLM AI space, people are conflating unfinished regulations with broad AI kneecapping which isn't actually happening. FDI is basically drop in the bucket to domestic investment and has been for a while. Investment as % of GDP in PRC is ~40% vs EU/US/OECD 20-30%. It's stupid high. West overinflate importance of their low single digit percentage / non substantive investment in PRC.
On semi, you're comparing building things that US should already be able to build, advanced fabs that they have entire tech supply access to VS PRC trying to replicate / close gap to tech they don't have, i.e. it's an innovation not construction problem. Where it's a construction issue, i.e. large nodes, PRC is building like crazy and mostly on schedule. Significant delays are in 28nm and smaller fabs due to escalating export controls by US who has to literally roadblock PRC from being on schedule. US systematically self-sabatoges so she has to also sabatoge PRC to ensure gap doesn't close.
On PRC shifting from big fund, that's due to US sanctions/export controls forcing PRC semi to actually focus on indigenous tech. Big fund was wasteful carrot trying to get PRC semi to indigenize, but no one wanted to when access to mature western tech was available. Now it's not, so incentive structure different, as stated in article itself. See major companies in PRC semi have explosive growth in last couple years... without big fund tier subsidy because sanctions have made them viable. US sticks works better than PRC carrots. No one's fucking around trying buying US/western equipment anymore and doubling down on actually developing and integrating indigenous semi supply chain since unlike bigfund era when situation wasn't existential and bigfund basically opportunity to graft.
PRC is behind only in the sense that US has to actively keep PRC down (which is US right), US CHIPS has no reason to be behind other than lack of human capita and inability to build. BTW there's a reason TSMC/Samsung expanded to PRC before US, and US had to sanction/export control their way to prevent PRC from leading gaining advanced nodes, not just indigenous efforts like Fujian Jinhua, but other established semi players as well. The Taiwanese and Koreans know PRC (just like TW/SKR) has no issue building or staffing and economically operating advanced fabs, meanwhile they were reluctant to expand to US even with CHIPS subsidy.
>After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
> Between the three big pieces of legislation passed in President Biden’s first two years — *the Bipartisan* Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act — *the Democrats* are trying to fundamentally reshape American industrial policy.
>the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act — the Democrats are trying to fundamentally reshape American industrial policy.
I guess it's technically "bipartisan" in the sense that they got some republicans to vote for it, but if you look at the actual votes[1] it's clearly being carried by democrats. Given that, I don't think the claim of "the Democrats are trying to fundamentally reshape American industrial policy" is misleading or "interesting editorializing" (whatever that means).
Well, it was somewhat more bipartisan in the Senate, where 19 of the 69 votes were Republicans. Who knows what the outcome would have been, though, if Democrats didn't already have 50 votes and the tiebreak. https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
Then you would agree that two of the three pieces of legisliation were _not_ bipartisan, and that they should be attributed to the Democrats, correct? So your issue is just that they included the third piece of legislation in the account?
A lot of these construction jobs are fake advertisements to try to make it seem like the company employed more people than it actually did. Ton of PPP fraud going on in this industry.
So $200k a year before overtime, plus $50k in benefits. The construction industry cannot afford that even with 0% profit margins, and society cannot afford the construction industry to raise quotes high enough to fund that. New homes and city infrastructure projects are already at nosebleed prices.
You asked and op answered honestly. Most people on HN recognize the value of their labor and won't take a lower paying _desk job_ than what they know they're worth, much less a backbreaking labor job that will likely ruin their health long term.
thats not how it works. you just dont accumulate or lose time off so theres no game playing about how much you have. if your sick, you take off, no stress about how many days. have an appointment, you just go, it doesn't eat into your vacation time. the time off still gets approved.
If I had no education or other skills, I'd do it for 30 bucks an hour with the same benefits office workers get like health care, pto, sick days, and guaranteed concern for safety.
This is not a high bar. 30 bucks an hour is just above a basic living wage.
These dudes are not only ruining their bodies in unsafe conditions they're doing it for 15 bucks an hour.
And they're destroying themselves for peanuts because they're competing against immigrants who will allow themselves to be treated like animals because they come from a country that treats it's citizens like animals.
Americans are being pitted against immigrants in a massive race to the bottom to see who is ok with being treated like shit the most.
