Its bad even in my industry which is commerical / industrial plumbing and hvacr. You cannot find any decent younger people that want to go out and make this a career. Albeit it is work, but not as hard of work as some trades that are out there. The money is pretty good, I'd say a worker working 40 hrs a week and never getting laid off is going to make right around 50k a year. More so with overtime worked in.
If you joined our local union and got in right out of high school through the apprenticeship program you'd start at about $12-13 an hour and move up through each year for 5 years. You become a journeyman after 5 years. But if you think, out of high school at 18, 5 years of apprenticeship program so they would be 23 years old, the base pay is about $28-29 per hour. That isn't too bad of money for someone who has no college bills, and making $50K plus a year at 23-24 years old. In theory that should be ideal if that is what you want to get into.
Unfortunately in our fine economy construction jobs aren't exactly banging away. So that is the tough selling point at this time.
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