[alephnerd]

They are extrapolating the $70k figure:

"When Rios graduates next year, he plans to work as a fabricator at a local equipment maker for nuclear, recycling and other sectors, a job that pays $24 an hour, plus regular overtime and paid vacations."

This sounds like a union job, and the $70k figure sounds like towards the upper end due to hierarchy, so realistically he'll be earning maybe half of that for a couple years first.

[fred_is_fred]

48k at 2000 hours. Getting to 70k would need roughly 600 hours of overtime at time and a half but some of these places do double time on weekends nights holidays etc.