Guess what!
There's a whole generation of old men about to pass away, most of them tradesmen. And in my experience, crotchety and unwilling to teach.

Because this generation generally has less interest in trades, likely from being viewed down upon (see above), there is going to be a severe shortage of people working in the trades.

This will possibly mean two things:
Companies are going to scramble desperately to get new apprentices, so -good news- more jobs. But, expect a startling lack of quality in the years to come.

I don't understand why people pick on tradesman as if they're somehow lesser than them.

There's lots of skill and knowledge that goes along with doing any trade.

Also, while it's back breaking work, and you often work overtime, construction workers make bank.

This is an aged and outdated take that devalues the contributions of a very important job.

All jobs are skilled labor.

They get to create useful things unlike a lot of white collar jobs

The irony is now that the situation is totally inverted.

My STEM degree has got me making a barely livable wage while the GEDs who went straight into a trade are making twice what I make.

And the cruel reality is there is not a good way to determine which way this market will go unless you're one of the 0.01%. And if you were it would make this a mute point.

Construction workers can make bank, mom!

I mean.. At least as a construction worker my retirement plan is three-fold. The trick is to survive long enough and well enough to enjoy retirement.

The three are 401k, annuity, and the unheard of pension.

Granted, I'm also on my fourth pulled back muscle for the year. I really need to stretch more.

The construction dude who dropped out of high-school at 16, never went to college, and makes $90,000 a year at age 25 is doing just fine lol

Like the guy with steady pay, job security, benefits, and a strong union?

Shit I better stop studying

Are people actually still talking trash about tradesmen? Come on, what year is it supposed to be?

my parents used that one: "do you want to dig ditches when you get older ?" it took a lot of work for me to lose that attitude towards manual and mechanized labor.

Labour adheres to supply/demand. Now that boomers are retiring who primarily made up most of the blue-collar workers, there's a derth of them and its only going to get worse.

So homeboy with the hardhat is gonna be making 6 figures easily out of 2 year apprenticeship while your fancy university degrees will be competing with all the other Asian students raised with this mentality.

We were all under the assumption automation was going to replace manual labour first, turns out its actually the code monkeys and adminstrators who are biting the bullet.

As an ex-programmer that is now in the trades I can say my mental health is way better and my back hurts less these days since I'm not sitting in an expensive "ergonomic" chair all day. There are a lot of high paying trades that are far from back breaking work. Personally I got in to finish carpentry building science labs specifically.

There's also the added benefit that I like playing with computers again, when it was my day job I wanted nothing to do with them after work.

phone marketing would be more apt job to scare kids with. It brings nothing of value to society and its awful for the worker and those being bothered. Or just skip pointing fingers at any job and just tell the kid they will end up being exploited if they are left with no options.

The union employee who probably makes more than you and dad combined? Sure, I don't want to end up like him or the garbage man that I know for a fact makes more than both of you combined. Great job employment shaming mom.

I think the most important thing when it comes to a job, over pay, is mental health. If you're doing a job you hate that pays you higher than doing a job you love, is it really worth spending so much of your limited time on this Earth doing something you hate? Unless what you want to do with your life will literally risk you and your family's starvation, just do it. It's not worth the stress. I know, I'm stuck in a horrible job trying desperately to get out.

While construction workers should absolutely be respected, you definitely don't want to end up as a construction worker in India. Construction workers earn like 300-400 rupees (3.61 - 4.81 USD) per day of work in the part of India that I live in (which is a very industrious part btw). These people overwhelmingly belong to the lower castes. They don't have their own home, and live on site in temporarily constructed structures made from metal panels.

These people suffered the most when the COVID lockdowns happened. Their places of employment fired them. They thus lost their temporary home. These people, along with their kids tried to move back to the villages that they migrated to the cities from. However, for quite some time, they weren't allowed to return back. Thus, thousands of people were immediately made homeless, having to sleep on the streets. Of course, they were harassed by the police a lot. Finally, when special trains were organized for them, there were instances where the police sprayed water into these trains on these people "to clean them". Watch this documentary by Vice news if you want to learn more about them.

They do a pretty important job, I just wish every single one of them didn't seem to be a die-hard Trumper for some fucking reason.

Tell me your mom is totally insulated from reality and a huge cunt without saying it explicitly.

My boss once told me he would never ask me to do something that he wouldn't do himself. This 'mom' is espousing the opposite idea, that certain jobs are beneath her. I'm pretty sure these people have no clue how to do anything other than be some low level manager or bureaucrat and will vanish from existence like the morning mist, come the apocalypse.

All judgement until you hear a dripping in the night and have to pay that person a quarter of your "smart peoples" wages