But wait. These are the jobs that teaching professionals say are for losers.
I wonder what a journeyman machinist or tool & die maker makes these days.
Tool makers are making damned good money.
I don't. You met today's youth? I mean have you actually spent more than just a passing glance on a street with them? They are vacuous. They have absolutely zero aspirations. They don't want to work. They want to sit in an air-conditioned room with a smart device with Internet access. They don't want to make anything better, including their lives.
I was talking with my personal trainer about this stuff just last week. He's in his mid-20's, but he's doing personal training for cash and putting himself through nursing school. He has drive. He's also a practicing Christian with hopes and dreams and wants.
I could tell my lazy ass younger brother that he could make $30/hr working in a T&D shop or as a welder or a carpenter, and his ears would perk up. Problem is as soon as he finds out it's actual work involving deadlines and shop foremen, his interest will collapse like a cheap lawnchair.
Kids today have an extreme aversion to authority. They don't want to be "managed," and those who try to be their own manager, try to start a business or work in a trade come to find out real quick that Uncle Sam is the biggest bully boss of them all. For today's youth, there's zero incentive to work. They've been raised and educated to believe that materialism is evil. Nice things are evil. Starving children in Africa can't have nice things, why should they?
The idea of America as an exceptional nation of "doers" with a drive to succeed and be better is dying if not assuming room temperature. Even I, in my early 30s, have become disenchanted by my future prospects. My wife and I save money, continue to get out of debt, and we aspire to fix up our little home together, but outside of that, work is just an 8 hour interruption in our daily lives. It's sad, because I really enjoy my career; but without any real goals or long-term aspirations, work is something I need to keep the lights on and food in my belly. Perhaps it's the liberal education that indoctrinated me in my later teen years, but I definitely feel like life is so much more than the money we make or the stuff we have. Then again, to what we aspire usually requires funds to obtain.
Don't know about those trades, but I can tell you about our longtime auto mechanic. He's scrupulously honest, and he has so much business it's unreal....had to take out his gas pumps to make room, and is making so much money he was able to do away with Saturday hours. He owns several Corvettes and is always looking for more. He and his dad live on either side of the business in little ranch houses. The dad, who started the business and handed it down to him, is worth 7$ million.
I don't think they mind not having degrees.
“I wonder what a journeyman machinist or tool & die maker makes these days. “
When I was in Grade School in the late Fifties, a LOT of High School boys did one half a day at the Public School, then left after lunch to go to the Trade School in the next district. Tool and Die Making was the most popular course. If the program still exists, it’s probably CNC based now.