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America's new millionaire class: Plumbers and HVAC entrepreneurs

(www.wsj.com)
185 points hhs | 2 comments | 13 Oct 24 15:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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SoftTalker ◴[13 Oct 24 16:38 UTC] No.41829404[source]▶
There are several tradespeople I know (electricians, plumbers, carpenters) who make more money than I do. But I don't begrudge them that, electricians do work where a mistake can literally kill you, and all of these jobs have high injury rates and will wear your body down much faster than sitting at a keyboard.

Edit: and there are no "open source" tools. You have to buy them, and good ones are not cheap.

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clusterhacks ◴[13 Oct 24 17:44 UTC] No.41829930[source]▶
This general topic about trade workers pops up on HN periodically and there is always some discussion about high-earning people working in the trades. But I can't find any data that actually supports this statement - the BLS numbers tell a story that plumbers and electricians make almost exactly the median income that full-time, year-round workers in the US earn.

I don't doubt that someone who is running a business is earning more, this article in the WSJ says:

"At the time that they sold the company, it had 18 employees and was bringing in about $3 million in revenue a year. "

This was a plumbing business with two founders, founded in 2012. The article goes on to say that PE buys smaller businesses like the one above for:

"smaller outfits (such as Rice’s), which Redwood says it buys outright for an average of $1 million..."

The Occupational Outlook handbook says:

"The median annual wage for electricians was $61,590 in May 2023. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $38,470, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $104,180." The mean annual wage for all occupations in that resource is $65,470.

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1. mistrial9 ◴[13 Oct 24 21:46 UTC] No.41831933[source]▶
in the construction I saw, there were several big groups of electricians.. a) ratty, self-employed often with serious baggage or obvious deficits.. can be paid well or very badly.. insurance is a problem; b) big company that hires and fires frequently.. wears a uniform, clean tools and trucks.. do not expect anything different than the work order, and sometimes a pawn in some kind of low-ethics moves between developers and service company; c) career, union electricians.. involved in very large, slow moving, multi-part works.. by the book, can do industrial installation in large teams; all manner of insurance, and also health care and retirement benefits. Modern times? probably add non-English speaking versions of (a) and (b). The pay varies quite a lot between those situations.
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2. dgacmu ◴[13 Oct 24 22:23 UTC] No.41832225[source]▶
Or the guy I use for stuff at my house when it exceeds my comfort level (i.e., live work on 240v in the panel, things requiring a big masonry drill and conduit, etc.): he's an in-house union electrician at a university by day and moonlights doing private jobs after hours.

It's really a fantastic deal. He does exquisitely good work at a reasonable price. Not the cheapest electrician, but the price/quality is great.