Interns Vs. Apprentices
Working for free is unheard of in the trades. You may have thought that the Emancipation Proclamation did away with slave labor in this country, but it persists in many office buildings around the country. That’s where thousands of college students spend their summers or evening hours fetching coffee, shuffling papers and doing other […]
Can you afford college and a home?
Student loan payments quash home ownership Homeownership among young Americans has hit the lowest level on record, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s probably not a coincidence that this coincides with burgeoning student debt. College graduates with student loans owe an average of $33,000, up by almost a third since 2007. The aggregate […]
Academic vs. vocational education
A well-rounded person needs both. I feel blessed to have graduated (class of 1965) from one of the best public high schools in the country — Lane Technical in Chicago. Then as now, Lane Tech ranked among national leaders in graduation and college admission rates. Lane graduates get accepted into the most prestigious universities […]
You can tattoo yourself out of a job
Every generation freaks out its parents! Back in the Roaring Twenties most older folks couldn’t understand their children’s fascination with a new style of music known as jazz – “the devil’s music,” as it was widely called. Those children grew up to be just as shocked when an even more raucous beat came about […]
Trade workers must be drug free
Legal or not, you’ll have to choose between a career and getting high. We live in a society in which use of marijuana and other illegal drugs is widespread. One recent survey showed that about one out of 11 Americans uses illicit drugs regularly. Another says that 38% have tried marijuana at some point. […]
Myth #5 about trade work: it’s for males only
Service firms in particular clamor for female technicians. Okay, this myth is admittedly hard to refute. Most estimates peg females as only about 2% to 2.5% of all skilled trade workers. That’s probably doubled since the rise of feminism in the 1960s, but progress has been at a snail’s pace. It would be ridiculous […]
Myth #4 about trade workers: they’re always getting laid off
Job security is higher for skilled trade workers than most other occupations. This myth originates in the fact that construction work is highly cyclical. While it’s true that when work slows down many construction workers get let go, this deserves a closer look. In my last entry I said that nobody who enters the […]
Myth #3 about trade work: college grads make more money
Performance pay often leads to six-figure incomes. How much do trade workers earn? That’s a difficult question to answer definitively because so much depends on the type of work (construction versus service, residential vs. commercial, etc.), geographic region and other factors, not least of which is the quality of the company they work for. […]
Myth #2 about trade work: it’s dirty and dangerous
Service work is a lot different than new construction. It’s a half-truth that the work of the trades is dirty and dangerous. A construction project is fascinating to watch, which is why big job sites usually have a fenced-off area with peep holes for onlookers. If you’ve ever poked your head into one of […]
Myth #1 about the trades
They say the trades are only for those who aren’t “cut out” for college. Let’s not mince words. A large segment of our society is biased against blue-collar workers. It wasn’t always that way in America. Our founding fathers included numerous artisans and craft workers. Paul Revere was a silversmith, Ben Franklin a man […]