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America's new millionaire class: Plumbers and HVAC entrepreneurs

(www.wsj.com)
185 points hhs | 1 comments | 13 Oct 24 15:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | 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. mtnGoat ◴[14 Oct 24 14:44 UTC] No.41838022[source]▶
It’s very regional, for instance in Quincy Washington they are actively constructing well over a million square feet of data centers. Each one has hundreds of electricians working in it. My personal friend is clearing $350k before union benefits the last three years as an electrical foreman. They work 6 days a week 3 weeks a month and work 10 hour days in a really small town. Union work, prevailing wage, over time and completion bonuses increase the pay in these jobs to be triple what a local electrician would make doing house calls. Of the 500 heads my friend oversees, most are not even from this state. But… once those data centers are done being built the economy will crash for many local business rely on those high paying jobs. Restaurants, hotels, etc are hit hardest. And a lot of the workers will to another “hot” region, or go back to where they came from and earn half. I know a few that “retired” by 40, making $300k living in a trailer on site, in a town with nothing to do after 8, gives you a lot of chance to save money.