3- Mechanic
Starting salary: $30,584 - $40,564
Want to be the envy of all your worthless liberal arts degree-having friends? Become a mechanic. Being able to fix cars around these people is like having a license to print money. Plus, it’s a damned respectable and professional career choice.
Starting as a mechanic usually involves being an apprentice. You know, how useful education used to be passed along before everyone decided you should have letters after your name?
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Malarky. You can get a job as an oil changer maybe, but this guy must be talking about when people would shade tree repair basic Fords and Chevy’s from 1972.
There is so much electrical and emission crap that goes into cars now, and you need to be certified in some states to even work on emission parts. Not to mention know how to run the codes on the computer hooked up to the system.
While it might need an academic degree, you will be making minimum wage changing tires and oil unless you go get a technical degree. And even this, in this economy (we own an auto repair shop and business SUCKS), people are riding on “check engine” lights as long as they can. People just can’t afford to fix it unless it interfers with their emission test. And even then they will pay the mechanic to clear the code and pass the test.
My Dad was quite a mechanic back in the day. He used to work on dragsters/racing cars. He doesn’t do much work now because as he says, “It’s all computerized and requires diagnostic machines.” I hope that your business climate improves.
My sister’s fiance is a mechanic at a big Ford dealership. Its better now than it was two years ago, but (apparently) things are still dicey. He had to take two paycuts because business was that slow.