Are you as a parent happy with the vocational opportunities for kids in your town? It could be plumbing, electrical, HVAC, welding, etc . Just asking .

No and I ran the largest skilled trade department in our area

Lots of opportunity here...Forest Service or welfare, same thing ...green pants or sweat pants.

The district I worked for built a trade school, teaching elec, plumbing, welding, and AC I hear they are turning out some kids with skills.

They do in some areas, but not where the money is going

I taught auto mechanics, auto body, welding, and machining for 30+ years. Most "educators" hate trade and industrial courses because they produce people who can actually work for a living and produce something of value instead of just accumulating worthless diplomas.

I remember some dudes in 12 grade that were taking 10th grade English, 11th grade English and Senior English on a final attempt.

Sitting bldg trades listening to one dude. “Man fugg this sheeiitt, my dad owns Moore Construction”

lol

Opportunity is there - the pay isn't. IMO.

We have J.M.Perrey Institute here where they teach everything from medical coding to diesel repair Just about every kid that comes out of there can find a job in his chosen field if they want one.
Contractors are waiting by the door for them to graduate.

boom!

I taught vo-ed in the sixties and seventies. Teaching didn't pay as well as doing so I swapped jobs and started making money and deriving satisfaction at the same time. Around '80 schools decided everybody ought to go to college and scrapped the shop classes. Wrong!
At Caterpillar, in the 90s we scrapped apprentice programs. Wrong.
Couldn't hire qualified tradesmen off the street so had to restart trades programs.
Eggheads, lawyers and accountants who have never had dirty hands can ruin about any industry.

I haven’t used it much, but sure glad I learned to arc weld and use an acetelene torch as well as quite a few other handy skills in my vo-ag classes in the 60s. In my high school, lots of girls in those classes these days. I have no idea what they’re teaching.

In my area, pay is there, but that's about it. Other benefits are nearly nonexistent unless you work for a big company, which I detest doing.

I guess it's probably relative though. I mean a person out of HS could work retail for 14-17 an hour or become a CNC Machine operator for 21-23, welder for 19-22 etc.

Trade wages here were stagnant for a long time, but in recent years have finally climbed up a bit. I'm in bit if a microcosm for construction here. Tons and tons of seasonal wealthy people who buy/build multi-million dollar homes/condos and only use them 3-4 months a year. Things have to get really bad for us to see a slump in work.

On the other side of things, because it's a wealthy area, everything is more expensive and in order to have some land and own a home, guys like me are forced to commute a long way to our work. As the local saying goes,"A view of the bay is part of your pay".

Vocational skills are in high demand in many areas but the pay doesn’t coincide with the need. In my area for example there are several manufacturing companies that desperately need skilled MIG and Tig aluminum welders but these same companies feel they can hire trained welders for $14-18.00 hr. McDonalds is paying that. The balance of the cost of goods produced, cost of labor and the cost of living continue to grow way out of balance. The worker bees just can’t support the system anymore and survive.

Doing it right and getting licensed, insured, taxes, and other costs of doing business can't compete with the millions of illegals who don't follow our laws from the beginning.

I went to our local Tech College for a couple years.

One of my best decisions.

I’m not sure today what they are teaching but the same schools are still around from when I was that age.
Those with hands on skills will do well in the future. Heck people used to look down at the garbage collectors, now that industry owns us, check your recent bills.
I tell young people asking to get into a trade people can’t/won’t attempt themselves. Anyone and everyone picks up a hammer it seems but most won’t mess with electrical, AC, heating, etc.
Good friend has a business supplying and installing dust collectors. Can’t get enough help of any kind for field work and they start them at 31.00 per hr. Company trucks, fuel, per diem as well.
Electricians up here commercial are at around 50.00 with bennies. Other trades not far behind.


Osky

Here we go again......everyone's little Billy has to make 100 g's out of high school or it ain't worth it.....

When I was in school, they allowed the retards into the industrial arts with us 23 chromo kids

Anyway, this girl Joan, she got one of her flippers caught in the damn belt sander.

Holy fugk we heard her over the Powermatic planer.

We have a local community college (DMACC) and the last I knew the only skilled trade our school was running was auto tech and wood working. There is a perfect opportunity to run college ed classes with the Tool and Die program or the Auto Tech at DMACC but the last I knew our school system had not yet opened up that opportunity. It was all about going to Iowa, UNI or Iowa State and getting a 4 year degree. If they utilized DMACC it was for college transfer courses only. I retired in 2008 so I have been out of the loop for some time but I have heard nothing about any skilled trades via the high school.

kwg

150 Grand plus or they’ll just stay right there in the basement and play video games. That’ll show the world by god!

Osky

I think a lot of people here believe that the trades pay better than what they really do.

For the amount of knowledge and skill involved plus the physical demands of the work and travel and layoffs often being a part of trades depending on the trade. The pay should be higher than what it is on average. Sure a union tradesman in a major city with high cost of living can make good money especially if it’s a heavily union area that drives up prices overall but on average the pay is decent but it isn’t great for the work, travel, and skill required.

When I was with the IBEW about 12 years ago first year apprentice started at $13.50 an hr with two days a month of 8hr class time unpaid. Journeyman electricians topped out at $35 an hour. Generally the more rural the lower the pay and the more travel by a big margin for both. Our local covered everything on the eastern half of the lower peninsula from Bay City MI to the bridge (about 150 miles).

Between unpaid travel for work turning 8 hr days into 10 usually in a company truck but occasionally my own and the gas/wear tear, or being put up in a motel for anything over a 1.5 hr drive, NO paid vacation, NO paid sick days, and NO paid holidays “you take off what you can afford to take off” and “travel comes with the work” layoffs being common from January through February unless willing to travel to other locals chasing work.

The healthcare and retirement plans were good but a whole lot of travel often boom or bust work life and zilch for a paid day off all sucked. The non union guys usually had paid vacation, holidays, and sick days but no pension and made about $10 an hr less.

By comparison my wife has a BA in business that she doesn’t really use and an associate degree in nursing. She makes $40 plus an hour working a set schedule three miles from home in a heated office doing very little physical work and has great benefits.

The trades aren’t all bad but they’re not what some believe that they’re cracked up to be either and depending on the trade it isn’t always a realistic career path for someone without some hands on mechanical experience going in.

Cousin taught in the vocational school in the Dallas ISD. Said after Carter signed the Dept. of Education in to law in 1978, vocational classes were slowly whittled away over the years by the district, under the watchful eyes of the DoE until there was nothing left of the department.

Exactly.

Good opportunities for training in the trades here, as this is a blue-collar area, but pay lags. In some cases almost embarrassing.

Example, two young guys I know, one is about done studying to be millwright. He just landed a MW job for $18 an hour.

The other kid is taking welding classes, but wanted a part-time job and got one delivering ice on the weekends. Starting pay is $25 an hour to deliver ice, doesn't even need a CDL. Summer will pay him $28/hr and lots of OT.

For whatever reason, the trades in this area start people about where they would if they worked at McD's.

Lots of young guys leave the area/state to make a decent wage.

I think for my area - we're fairly rural and not a ton have been off the farm for multiple generations so many have good skills already. They know how to weld to a decent degree so the pool of available applicants is pretty large - suppresses wages I think. For example.

Somebody has to do the work.

Lonny;
Top of the morning to you sir, I trust you're all keeping warm enough with this latest bit of weather that seems to be upon us.

Thanks for that bit of insight on your local situation, it's interesting to say the least.

While I can't speak to millwrights here, the young apprentices in the construction trades so carpenters, plumbers and electricians seemed to be in the same place where the starting wages while they were apprenticing were lower than say a summer landscaping job would pay.

I'm not certain if that's from the employers being able to get away with it so they do, from them having a high turnover rate once the apprentices reach journeyman status or just what exactly.

It seemed almost punative in some cases to me, but I do hear now that it's turning around a bit as companies are trying to retain the journeyman status workers.

The OP asked about high school here and in our part of BC it appeared to us that 95% of the curriculum was aimed at pointing students into university regardless of what level of liberal arts basket weaving would result.

We had one daughter who couldn't wait to get out of school and the system and one who knew she wanted to get a couple of degrees so worked towards that end.

The crazy thing was the local system really and truly didn't help either one that much and if the one who is now a high school teacher - which takes two degrees here - hadn't done a whole bunch of work on her own to chart her own course, it would have been a longer and way more expensive process.

One of her goals when she teaches now is to educate the kids who want to go on with secondary education how to do that, since as stated she got very little useful help.

Meanwhile though here for many trades but especially construction, we're so short of Red Seal tradespeople that they can walk onto a job and if they can refrain from chewing on their arm and have a pulse, they'll be hired.

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

Dwayne,

This is fantastic that your daughter is using her experience on achieving education to pass it on to others. Good for her! That is so needed.

I'm around a fair amount of young guys and so few have a viable plan on how to get what they need in either experience or education to make it to the next level. Too many think money and GOOD job offers will just fall into into their laps. The good jobs are still hard to get.

You mentioned landscaping paying more than some trades starting out-so true. My son is a machinist. When he started out machining a couple years ago, he was working at a screw-machine company and making $14 per hour. He had a list of clients he mowed lawns for from high school and kept mowing those lawns because $14 an hour ain't going to leave much left over. The lawn mowing paid more. At one point, he seriously questioned why he even went to machining school. He didn't stay long at the $14 job and they seemed to accept the fact they were a training ground for everybody else and some other young guy would come along, stay for 6-months or so before moving on to greener pastures. Seems to me to be a crazy way to run a business?

The running joke in these parts is Idaho's best export is it's young people. Employers like rural background kids who work without complaint and in many cases don't even question the wage because they were taught never to ask.

Lonny;
Thanks for the reply and further information, I appreciate you taking the time.

It's at best a questionable business plan to think you can have staff turnover and exist as a training ground for other shops. I know this intimately because I worked 27 years in the cabinet industry, in the same shop but with 5 or maybe 6 different groups and combinations of owners.

Our staff turnover for key positions such as CNC operators and stain/top coat applicators was way too high to get the continuity that was required. One could argue that they survived doing it that way to give me employment that long, but when I closed the doors for the last time, lack of forward planning was a major contributing factor. I was middle management for a lot of the time and finally was GM when cash flow from the owners shut us down and again not retaining the right people was a couple pounds of nails in our coffin.

To be absolutely crystal clear I'm a card carrying - literally and figuratively - Conservative and have little to no use for government intervention. That said, it would be a far, far more useful way to spend my BC tax dollars to have our kids become journeymen Red Seal whatever and stay here and use that skillset than to be giving free housing and hard drugs out to the homeless crack heads.

Call me crazy Lonny......

Again I don't like to see government meddling, but it could be as simple as some tax breaks for business as incentives to train and retain skilled labor. It's construction and not rocket surgery, but then again that's why I chose to run small businesses for people in my working years and not go into politics I guess? Maybe?

Anyways sir, here's hoping we who can see the fixes needed are able to work towards making them in time so our kids can have the full lives we had - due in large part to the functional system we were given.

We'll see.

All the best.

Dwayne

There are quite a few Vo Tech schools in this area. The biggest challenge for parents is getting the lazy bàstards out from infront of the video games and off weed long enough to want to do something with their lives.

They don't teach the importance of success in school and most parents would rather be their kids friend instead of a role model of achievement!

The trades are suffering from lack of qualified people. I turn down so much work because I cannot field two or more crews.

Highschool dropouts and druggies are the only labor force readily available for manual labor jobs......

I would gladly take on a couple of apprentices and teach them the finer points of automotive machining, but I can't even get my own kids and grandkids interested. I'm turning down high dollar offers from all over the country to build antique engines for car collectors- - - -I'm just too old and tired to increase production on my own!

Where I live the problem is the contractors. The illegals show up at 6 AM by the dozens in empty lots. Construction company vans pull up and pick up 5-6 guys in each van. At the end of the day all are paid cash and driven back to the empty lot. By avoiding taxes and other regulations the contractors are keeping more money in their pockets and keeping legal workers out of work.

This is exactly how Margorie Taylor Green and her ex-husband made their money. Stop crap like this, make contractors hire legal workers, pay them a living wage, and pay their taxes and you eliminate the incentive to come here.

And to the original question. We have a very good vocational education system in our area. Any kid who wants to go to a vocational school can do so for free here in GA and come away with a good career.

Vocational / Technical Education has been a blessing to me and the wife.
Worked in the field I was trained in, then taught my subject for 31 years in a Voc/Tech HS.
Started a part time job doing what I taught and now am in my 50th year doing it.
Been retired for 20 years with a great pension and good benefits,
My part time job, which has turned into my Hobby is paying me between $70 and $100 an hour.
Fun money for my hunting trips, some fine guns, and a good life with my wife of 54 years.
Can't say enough for Vocational Education.

Always glad I went through the Boiler Makers Apprenticeship. Only worked 10 years in the craft. But I knew I could always find a job. As stated earlier illegal immigration has hurt a lot jobs because of cheap labor. But not so much in the skilled crafts. Welding, pipe fitting, electrical etc. Hasbeen

My son inlaw took up diesel mechanics in vocational school & works for a large company who has hundreds of trucks on the road but mainly water hauling trucks for the natural gas industry. He is doing really well and loves what he does. He works 6 days a week and 10 - 12 hr. days. A lot of the breakdowns are due to stupid emissions where the truck barely stays running. He grabs his laptop computer to find the problem & gets the truck going again. His phone rings pretty much nonstop.

Same.

It was the Local 692 electricians union for me. It got my foot in the door as far as what I do now. I was glad to get out of it but I liked the actual work, it was something to fall back on and a bright spot on my resume.

Fugg illegals. I saw a lot working as brickes, and hanging drywall. Good for them for working hard and bettering their lives but it comes at reduced pay for every hard working American. I absolutely hate the lie about doing work that Americans won’t do. B.S. there isn’t a job that an American won’t do. They just won’t do it for a lowball under the table wage with no benefits and wouldn’t have to if millions of illegals weren’t flooding the border each year and undercutting wages while double dipping in free welfare, foodstamps, Medicaid, ect;

Clarksvegas ain't stopped growing since I got here in July 90

Trade school over in the industrial park.
Problem around here is most of the trade work cats seem to be age progressing.
You will see young guys doing construction but not in ratio to their demographic population #,s

Hard work is a alien concept to many of all ages now.

Skilled trades welders , plumbers, carpenters, electricians,ect ect ect .
Not seeing alot of early 20 somethings.
Throw in the illegal alien/ 151 card types doing trade work.
That has a effect on wages and job availability for young Americans also.

Do see alot of the city crews of various departments.
Gas and water
Parks and rec
CDE
Other on the site working city types

Have a good share of 18 19 yr olds on up thru 65 70 yr old bide their time types
Most of them are nepotism hires to begin with.
Generational schitt...
Numbnutts types for the most part, can't help saying what I see...
Alot of the more complex ground work and overhead electric work is contracted out here.
Cause the city crews can't do it and have groomed it away long ago and plus it also greases the skids of the good Ole boy network with contracts.


Repeat across america.

Another view…

How many take advantage of what’s offered?

Local junior college has a satellite branch in our county.

They offer different things throughout the year.


Welding, CDL, heavy equipment operating, beginner nursing, few other things.

Country supervisors will reimburse tution if you complete the training.

(You pay up front, must complete training to get reimbursed. That way you have some skin in the game. )


I taught the welding for 2 years ( about 5 yrs ago).

Trouble was filling the classes.

Like no one wanted to learn.

Maybe it’s easier being on welfare. 🤷🤷.

Wow, millwrights here are between $50-80 per hour.

Doug is 4 years licensed as a truck & coach technician & I'm paying him paying him $38.50 + full benefits !

Plumbers do really well if you work for yourself. Working for someone else can be alright too if you’re not an idiot and prove to be an asset.

I can't believe we have people who think it's okay to have NO skills whatsoever. I was "college track" but took a couple of Vo-Tech classes because my Dad had power tools and the high school had BETTER power tools. So today I am skilled enough to recognize those who DO have real skills and can do stuff right. But can they find warm bodies capable of taking the skills passed down? The answer seems to be mostly, no, and that rips my heart out.

Jack of all trades!
Master of none! 😉👍
That's me!
I learned a lot in 73 years.
I'm a pretty fair rough carpenter. Built our home.
So-so on the finish work, but it looks okay. We're happy and house payment free! 😉👍
Know "how" to shoe a horse, but that's about it. Guess I could in an emergency!🤷‍♂️
Learned to weld in high school. Acetylene and arc.
Shade tree gunsmith. I know just enough to say, "I ain't touching that!"
Assemble my own AR's.
Done computer entry.
Ran a SCADA system.
Know how to treat water from farm pond water to drinking water.
Residential electrical work.
Residential plumbing work.
Recently got into beekeeping! THAT is alot of fun!
Build my own hive boxes.
Build my own turkey calls.
So-so gardener.
Grow our own grapes and blackberries and make our own wine.
Sprouted the 5 pecan trees, 4 black walnut trees and 3 burr oak trees in our yard from the nut! Still growing! Should get our first, albeit small, pecan harvest this fall.
Done some railroading.
Ran a locomotive.
Drove spikes by hand.
Pulled pins and laced air.
Billed cars.
Handed up train orders.
Probably done some other stuff, but it's been awhile.
Again, Jack of all trades. Master of none!

I'm about at the point where I'm going to kick myself for not starting my own plumbing business 10 years ago. I like who I work for and he treats me well, but I think about the increased risk/reward possibilities a lot.

I got conned into current job 21 yrs ago own the company now 3rd generation

Got 2 boys that graduated in 22
One welder
One machinist


Both trades have demand in our areas and surrounding.

Both making over 21$ an hour not even a full year out of HS..
401k benefits and vacation.. no debt living at home.

Not glamorous but not 60-100k in debt going to college either

I'll put it this way, we never stop learning,

After flunking out of nursing school right out of high school, I spent many years in various parts of the retail industry. At 41 years old, I studied HVAC-R at the local tech school at night.

Before I finished, I landed a job in commercial food service repair. I enjoyed the field, but not my boss. My current company great to work for. I have a huge territory (Cleveland to Buffalo to Pittsburgh). Half of my lunch breaks are at gun shops and tackle stores. No two days are ever the same, and I make more than the average college graduate in my area.

Going to trade school changed my life.

Had a kid that lived down the road from us.
Boy was a prime candidate to be the next "village idiot"!
Hisxdad was always working on some sort of car.
When the kid hit high school, he just couldn't cut it.
The school gave him a choice of a vocational class. He signed up for an auto mechanics class.
When the boy graduated, he had NASCAR crews knocking on his door!
His mother, bless her little black, redneck, stupid heart proclaimed, "He cain't be runnin' all over the country! We gotta have him here to help pay bills!" Last I heard, he was working in a John Deere shop near his home.
The neighbors who knew what was going on tried to intervene. "Maw" wasn't having none of it!

Trade schools are a good deal for those who are self-motivation and have common sense. You have to work for a union or be self-employed, the local contractors take advantage of someone who isn't willing to travel and wants to be home every night.

Ag science
Biotechnology
Cosmetology
Auto Diesel
Metal fab
Building Construction
Culinary


Pretty much oriented to local jobs.
Some are widespread, metal fab and poltruded composites are our main industries with multiple factories doing both. There is some big ag lab that's always hiring.

This is traditionally a wage depressed area.
Very depressed.

Talking tonight with someone familiar with a poltruding plant.
5 or 6 years ago they were paying $10-12/hrs for established guys $14 was top.
Now, starting is $19.

Local Detroit Dealer has opened a trailer shop refurbishing trailers.
$28/hrs to start. 2 weeks vacation. Gotta pay to hire, everyone is trying to
hire.

Used to be every new facility would be doing wage surveys trying to decide
how little they needed to pay. Hundreds of applicants.

We have had 1 or 2 open jobs for over a year.
Hired at least 3, they didn't like the shift, got fired for cause, last quit to go
work for the Detroit Dealer. (Dont blame him)
Used to call the job service with a list of people whose apps they wanted, ignoring
the rest. Now, we have a Now Hiring sign at the road.

But what is the cost of loving up there?

Sorry Mate !

More expensive than you, for sure, but not big city expensive, either !

It's actually, way cheaper here, than in Australia, too.

Can't believe how little, we payed for our 80 acres of rural Paradise.

What is poltruding?

Thinking this;

https://www.tencom.com/whats-pultrusion

I'm a hydromechanic at the biggest dam in the US. We just fired back up apprenticeships. Our craft requires about 30 different trades to get by....and the talent pool is pretty shallow.

Son of mine is 16 this summer eating his options on what he wants to do in life.I told him what ever it is make sure it’s essential keep trying to lure into mine but he ain’t grabbed yet.

Many folks with a college degree are working outside of that field.

I only have two year Associate degree. After 40 years though I was a Program Manager supervising 50-60 people making under $100K. Where I worked in Nevada tunnels, trade people were making $150 K.

It was my own fault though. It was all On The Job Training.There are no degrees in Underground Nuclear Testing, but I sure loved the job. The company would hire new engineers and bring them to me with the instructions to teach them everything I new about the job. I ended up working for those guys until the company realized what was happening. Then Clinton signed the test ban treaty and put us all out of our jobs.

Problem now isn't money, it is what it has done to me breathing all that nasty stuff in the tunnels.

There is nothing wrong with jobs that get your hands dirty as long as you can make a living at it and like what you are doing.

I'm a CNC Machining student at a vo-tech school in Indianapolis. I wouldn't send my dog to this school. Grades are given away to boost the school's stats. Students are graduating with few marketable skills due to most of them being 18-20 years old and not taking their education seriously. I'm a good bit older than that and my grade average is 99.93%. That's mostly due to the fact we have unlimited attempts on the midterms and final exams we take and because our quizzes are only 5-10 questions and we have 2 attempts. The highest score is kept. Most the kids around me snap pictures of the answers after their first attempt and get a perfect score the second time.

I'm asking questions and work on my own half-cocked machining projects after class. I WILL get something out of this even if I have to challenge myself. The teachers are challenged enough just to breathe and see straight.

Luckily the VA's VR&E is paying my tuition and monthly stipend. I would have left a long time ago if I were paying for this crap.

One of the olders kids (21) in my class just interviewed with a manufacturing company in Louisville, KY. He walked out and told the hiring to GFY after he only offered him $23/hr to start. He's holding out for $27/hr+. 🤡🤡

Pultrusion was the worst job I ever had. Dirty, nasty, fiberglass everywhere. On my feet for 12 hours…Right elbow still messed up. After I quit, took 6 months for my body to recover.

I spent time in both worlds. Degree in Health and Biology and taught for several years before going into management and customer service in manufacturing. Rolled both the teaching/biology and the customer service backgrounds into buying one of the most “dirty” hands on service companies, a barely hanging on septic pumping business. By taking care of customers and educating them the resulting synergy of both backgrounds let us grow it into a successful company that continues to support my wife and I well into retirement and the best part is I never missed a school event, birthday or other milestone again. My point is take advantage of the opportunities presented and keep an open mind snd good things can happen in any field.

I have an Associate Degree and it has served me well. I did HVAC work before I retired. A couple of my grandkids want to follow in my footsteps, why not. I'm retired now and don't have a need for additional funding. Wife and I are doing very well, putting grandkids through hockey camps and what have ya.

Somebody has to get their hands dirty.

Pultruding spelled wrong!😊

In this case it's fiberglass materials, extruded through dies, while being injected with
resin, under heat and pressure.

Used to make construction shapes in a continuous process. It's being used in place
of steel. Stairs, walkways, buildings...

Someone mentioned it's a nasty business.
It is. Two sides in most shops. Pultruding, and fabrication.

Pultruding gets to deal with sticky, stinky resins and raw fiberglass.
Fab is machining the shapes, and bolting and bonding them together.
Either way, you get sticky and itchy.

Hate to guess how many here work in the field.
2 plants employ hundreds each.
Affiliated shops machine the stuff, assemble, or otherwise support the industry.

Most workers earn a decent survival with government assistance.

I don't know if he's crazy or not. Last I worked as a CNC programmer/lead was back in '96, at $19 an hour. 27 years of inflation ought to darn near triple that, I'd think. So starting as a skilled operator able to do setups for $27/hr may not be silly, depending on geography.

Anyway, good on you for putting your all into it. Cream will rise, whether it's your employer realizing it, or you going out and hopping from one employer to another every 2-3 years. And moving from job to job as a machinist is actually a good thing. Every shop will have its specialties, and learning new insights is never not bad.

Used to be............now they attach to many academic classes and doubled the time and cost to get training.

I encourage everyone to make an effort to apprentice in any powerplant they can. We make more $$ than the engineers. A guy working zero overtime in this craft will be $115-125k depending on location. We don't work odd hours very often and get treated pretty well.

We have a great CC nearby.
Courses in welding, machining, HVAC, auto tech, instrumentation, law enforcement and more.

Son did 2 years of welding/machining and had a great paying job secured 2 months prior to finishing his courses.