These numbers are seriously misleading. "Carpenters: What it pays: $16.78 per hour." Whoever wrote that never hired a carpenter.
An apprentice may get $15-20/hr to start. When he reaches journeyman level, he gets at the very least $20 per hour and it goes up to $35-$50 per hour. With a contractor's licence and a crew of 3-6 apprentices and journeymen, he sets his fees by the project. A carpenter with maybe ten years experience and a good crew can make $150,000-200,000.
This also depends on the region. In Silicon Valley, it's hard to get a carpenter to do a project under $50,000. There's quite a bit of work in remodeling/upgrading 50 year old houses. I suspect this is true in nearly every metropolitan area in the USA.
More to the point: those jobs can't be offshored. Carpenters, electricians, and brickmasons with a contractor's licence have far greater job security than MIT graduates in computer science.
This isn't just theory. Here's an example.A friend is a web developer for major corps. She is married to a truck driver. He drives concrete trucks. It's a unionized job, with benefits, health insurance, and a retirement package. Concrete trucks gotta move. If it's late, the concrete sets and the load is useless. Guess which one in the marriage earns more? Guess which one didn't go through layoffs, downsizing, and offshoring? Guess which one is considered the breadwinner and the stable job?
yrs, andreas www.andreas.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Ursula Stange" <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 6:54 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Top 10 Blue-Collar Jobs of the Future - AOL Find a Job
All the things that can't be outsourced. Although if you can do surgery from a distance, I'm not sure why you can't inspect buildings remotely. And maybe global warming will be good for the air-conditioner business. They can be manufactured overseas, but they'll have to be installed one at a time over here. Every cloud...silver lining...http://jobs.aol.com/article/_a/top-10-blue-collar-jobs-of-the-future/20061215113609990006?ncid=AOLCOMMjobsDYNLprim0001 Ursula, amidst her morning putter... ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
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