The thing is that most of those wages are not great. Starting on$25 is terrible when the job is backbreaking work in a toxic environment. I’d rather work in an office and start on $22 or whatever min wage is these days.
Is the $25/h rate for new tradies before or after the apprenticeship? To earn $25/h to learn, instead of paying it to learn is a significant step up in early life.
And while some degree earners, maybe even the average degree earner, may earn more over their life than the average tradie… I’d be willing to bet this is not the case for the majority of people who are doing a degree “because everyone else is” or they “don’t know what else to do”, as compared to the ones who e.g. have wanted to be a doctor their whole life.
Plus we have to compare the people who spend tens of thousands and drop out without a degree.
25 is the starting wage. Maybe apprenticeship starts lower. You go to a jobsite in auckland and you can find people doing the trade for 20+ years making under $30 an hour. Ultimately I think the trades are a good job but due to the people and culture of them they are a bad place to work.
The stats show degrees far out earning those without.
Why I think trades are bad is because of the people in them. The older tradies seem to be genuinely horrible people. I’ve only done 3 years in construction but every single job was filled with experienced people taking advantage of those stupid enough to try get into it. I was new to the trade and getting $19 while being rented out to the comapmy we were subbing for as experienced and $65 an hour. The senior guy spent his whole day gambling while the team who was all being paid $19-23 did all the work. The senior was racist and aggressive and would constantly make decisions that would fuck over the work other tradies were doing in site. For example he would borrow people’s equipment instead of provide his own. He would get the forklift to dump our materials in front of other people’s materials so it was harder for then to do their work. He would climb on other people’s pipes and cable racks and sometimes this would break then.
A few other jobs all had similar dynamics. My dad who’s been in construction his whole life compley agreed and has 100s of stories worse than mine. He says the pay isn’t worth destroying your body.
Its definitely possible to do trades and not destroy your body but that would require treating workers with respect and not forcing them to work through sickness and injury. I don’t think most bosses are capable of that.
These employers don’t seem to care about the safety and dignity of staff either. After high school, a friend worked as a builder and he had to install pink batts without any protective gear, so he was itching like a p-head for days. I tried installing pink batts in an attic once. My goggles fogged up and I couldn’t see a damned thing.
The median income in NZ is about $66k a year ($1,273 * 52). This means half of full time employed people earn less than $31.83 an hour (assuming 40 hour weeks - the median is even worse if you assume more hours).
If you’re not a qualified builder, even if you’ve been working on job sites for 20 years, $30 an hour isn’t too bad.
But on all your points other than money, I have heard similar things. I’m not sure what we can do about the attitude problem, as a country, in order to make the trades more attractive to young people.
Hard to know whether our wages are too low, or costs are too high, or both. But yeah, looking at how low some of these cap out after a few years’ experience and our insane housing costs, you can see why trades may struggle to attract people.
The thing is that most of those wages are not great. Starting on$25 is terrible when the job is backbreaking work in a toxic environment. I’d rather work in an office and start on $22 or whatever min wage is these days.
Is the $25/h rate for new tradies before or after the apprenticeship? To earn $25/h to learn, instead of paying it to learn is a significant step up in early life.
And while some degree earners, maybe even the average degree earner, may earn more over their life than the average tradie… I’d be willing to bet this is not the case for the majority of people who are doing a degree “because everyone else is” or they “don’t know what else to do”, as compared to the ones who e.g. have wanted to be a doctor their whole life.
Plus we have to compare the people who spend tens of thousands and drop out without a degree.
25 is the starting wage. Maybe apprenticeship starts lower. You go to a jobsite in auckland and you can find people doing the trade for 20+ years making under $30 an hour. Ultimately I think the trades are a good job but due to the people and culture of them they are a bad place to work.
The stats show degrees far out earning those without.
Why I think trades are bad is because of the people in them. The older tradies seem to be genuinely horrible people. I’ve only done 3 years in construction but every single job was filled with experienced people taking advantage of those stupid enough to try get into it. I was new to the trade and getting $19 while being rented out to the comapmy we were subbing for as experienced and $65 an hour. The senior guy spent his whole day gambling while the team who was all being paid $19-23 did all the work. The senior was racist and aggressive and would constantly make decisions that would fuck over the work other tradies were doing in site. For example he would borrow people’s equipment instead of provide his own. He would get the forklift to dump our materials in front of other people’s materials so it was harder for then to do their work. He would climb on other people’s pipes and cable racks and sometimes this would break then.
A few other jobs all had similar dynamics. My dad who’s been in construction his whole life compley agreed and has 100s of stories worse than mine. He says the pay isn’t worth destroying your body.
Its definitely possible to do trades and not destroy your body but that would require treating workers with respect and not forcing them to work through sickness and injury. I don’t think most bosses are capable of that.
These employers don’t seem to care about the safety and dignity of staff either. After high school, a friend worked as a builder and he had to install pink batts without any protective gear, so he was itching like a p-head for days. I tried installing pink batts in an attic once. My goggles fogged up and I couldn’t see a damned thing.
The median income in NZ is about $66k a year ($1,273 * 52). This means half of full time employed people earn less than $31.83 an hour (assuming 40 hour weeks - the median is even worse if you assume more hours).
If you’re not a qualified builder, even if you’ve been working on job sites for 20 years, $30 an hour isn’t too bad.
But on all your points other than money, I have heard similar things. I’m not sure what we can do about the attitude problem, as a country, in order to make the trades more attractive to young people.
It is systemic here. Macho attitudes to health and safety. Hour upon hour of AM/TalkBack radio doesn’t help.
Oh boy, nothing makes you angrier about the “others” than talkback radio.
Hard to know whether our wages are too low, or costs are too high, or both. But yeah, looking at how low some of these cap out after a few years’ experience and our insane housing costs, you can see why trades may struggle to attract people.
I’d take a job site over an office any day myself, plus trades typically get a company vehicle etc.