As I’ve replied twice on this thread, shipyard welders in Mobile, Alabama make over $20.00 an hour. You guys may have a totally diffent perspective on what constitutes good pay, but I would say that’s pretty good especially with the overtime they get. There are some small piece of crap shipyards where the wages are lower, but there are two fairly big ones and one small one with a combined workforce of around 3,000 who pay over $20.00 an hour for shipyard welders with normal benefits (medical, etc.).
Oh I understand. Worked in Texas for 35 years and now retired pipefitter here in north east Alabama. In Texas it would be hard to get a welder to load his toolbox for $22.50. Had a guy here who wanted to hire me as a pipefitter and run his crew, asked me what kind of wages I needed. Told him I needed somewhere in the mid $20’s to come out of retirement. Told me that was more than the prevailing wage and couldn’t pay that much.Told him too bad.
Out here the taxes and cost of living is through the roof which is why they are paid more especially through government.
As an example, where I am a local paper wrote two years ago that the AVERAGE retirement for the 900 city workers was 3.5 million dollars.