[anthuswilliams]

Summary of article: in an uncertain job market, some young people are going into blue collar trades. Others are starting startups. Others are powering through. Journalist says some words about "AI" being the cause of all this uncertainty.

[edwcross]

Not sure how it works in the US, but in some parts of Europe, blue collar trades are currently much better, for several reasons:

- Price of housing and associated maintenance keeps rising, and so do small jobs like fixing plumbing, gardening, etc; - You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to, so that's a 20% increase, or even more, if you can benefit from social services (e.g. since you don't earn a lot, you pay less for several services); - Doing the fixes yourself saves lots of money; - Avoids several burn out and mental health issues related to stress such as academia, bullshit jobs, etc; - No need to spend years in school, so you can save money earlier and invest it.

One disadvantage is that the barrier to entry is somewhat low; but the PhD students also have to compete with cheap international labor, so in the end, someone 25 years old that just left grad school is happy to earn, say, 2000€, while someone in the trades can easily make 200€/day with just one appointment.

So, if you're physically fit for blue collar work, there are currently few reasons not do it.

[alistairSH]

Is it actually true that the savings on home maintenance and social services offsets the higher salaries of white collar work? That's kind of crazy if it's true.

In the US, you can make pretty good money in the trades, but generally, there are many caveats - you have to be your own boss, preferably with a few employees; you pay your own benefits; you don't get any paid leave; and depending on the trade, you could be physically worn out before minimum retirement age (65 in the US to get health coverage as a retiree).

[Scarblac]

Right now blue collar work can pay much better than white collar work (in the Netherlands).

Not all of course, but construction work and electrician type work, certainly.

The labour shortages in construction and the energy transformation are huge. And it can't be solved with immigration because there is no housing.

[carlmr]

In Germany I'd say you still make more with white collar, if you have a job. The problem for Gen Z though, is that they aren't hiring for junior positions.

Still if you go blue collar you have to build your own business.

[bloppe]

> there is no housing

This could be said of literally anywhere except a ghost town, and it's only true in a very narrow sense. The problem is not housing supply. It's zoning, which is a political decision.

[AStrangeMorrow]

Might be surprising but I am kinda willing to believe it. Since we bought our house, we had quite a bit of work done by professionals. But whenever I can I do things myself.

Like I had multiple companies quote me $300-500 based on the job for things that take me maybe 2-3 hours total to do, including learning about it (will be faster next time), getting the materials, and doing the job.

When you have a few of these a months they add up. It is usually nothing for a month and then 4-5 things to fix/improve the next

[gruez]

>When you have a few of these a months they add up

If these jobs really number in "a few of these a month", then your inclusion criteria must be absurdly broad (eg. changing your lightbulb), or your home is on the verge of falling apart.

[everforward]

You may be surprised how many people can't mentally disassemble basic mechanical systems. I just helped a family member change the handle/arm on their toilet, and they'd been waiting a month for someone else to help. My mom is currently waiting for me to pick up some drywall anchors to re-mount a (small, lightweight) light fixture.

There are a lot of people who don't understand this stuff to a degree where they don't even know whether a repair is dangerous or not. My family member was afraid that if they messed up installing the toilet arm they'd flood their house.

Those people are very capable of having a few repairs a month, just on random stuff. Cabinet hinge screws wore out their hole and just needs a bigger screw, shower curtain mounting is loose and needs new anchors, an outdoor light fixture with a bulb cover needs a new lightbulb and they can't figure out how to get the cover off, etc.

[msdz]

The difference is that the work a contracted tradesperson will do is typically under some sort of guarantee, e.g. typically 2 years on work done in your home (up to 5 for bigger construction etc. type work), at least here in Germany… which you don’t (need to) factor in when DIY-ing.

[glitchc]

If your hourly wage is $150 or more, then the cost is break-even, or possibly cheaper to hire someone else.

[jbxntuehineoh]

only if you _have_ an hourly wage, if you're salaried it really doesn't make sense to value your time that way

[trollbridge]

Yes. It’s relatively straightforward to work on a fixer upper house during which time you are drawing no salary relative to that, and then you can turn around and sell it (or just enjoy being in a nice house which otherwise would have cost hundreds of thousands).

[alistairSH]

But if you're not drawing a salary/wages, how the heck are you buying groceries or paying the mortgage? You'd need to turn houses over very quickly/regularly for this to work...?

I'm not debating that tradespeople can make good money - that absolutely can. But, that's the exception not the norm...

The average plumber or electrician in the US earns about $65k/year... that's about 2/3 (or less) of an entry level programming job. Even if that isn't capturing side work/income, that's still less than a mid-career developer (earning $150-$200, more if they're on the west coast on NYC).

Put another way, even at retail consumer prices, I can buy a lot of plumbing or electrical service and still be money ahead on my fairly average engineering manager salary.

[trollbridge]

Live off of savings and then sell the house for a profit, thereby acquiring more savings. Then do it again.

(I know some people who basically do this - buy a non-habitable house, do a few weeks of work to make it habitable, live in it 2 years, do an entire house remodel themselves, then resell it. Up to $500,000 of profit is tax free.)

$200k mid career developer jobs are very hard to find and basically don’t exist outside of a few major cities.

[bloppe]

Someone with savings could take advantage. Medicaid is not actually means-based. It's income-based. In many states like California, so is SNAP. So a multi-millionaire can actually get free health care and $300/mo for food as long as they don't have income that year. Spend that time working on something that won't pay off for a few years, and you get a ton of benefits, even though you're already rich.

It's pretty bonkers.

[trollbridge]

Someone who had a business which is producing little or no income gets full coverage from the Medicaid, snap, etc safety net.

I don’t see a problem with this. I know people whose businesses produce a small profit or no profit at all and pay themselves a small salary. They also employer other people, who make a lot more than they do in wages. The government wants to strongly incentivise this kind of activity.

[notrustincloud]

Except for the fact that the application paperwork requires disclosure of assets, even an insurable collection qualifies against a 'lack of income', and will need to be declared. Failure to disclose risks committing fraud, subject to recovery of assistance and prosecution. So, no, not really.

[xhkkffbf]

And this is often taxed at capital gains rates which can be lower.

[trollbridge]

Yes, up to $125k per year per person excluded from capital gains.

[pmontra]

From what I see on the other side of the ocean, the same applies to Europe, at least to Italy. Add to the list: wake up early, drive to customers all the day long, learn to always smile and be kind to customers even when they don't deserve it.

[glitchc]

> Is it actually true that the savings on home maintenance and social services offsets the higher salaries of white collar work? That's kind of crazy if it's true.

Yes, this is called Baumol's cost disease.

[bloppe]

This is actually the opposite of Baumol's, which says that productivity gains in one sector result in price rises in other sectors. In this case, you have subsidized social services compensating for the fact that a sector with low productivity growth is not experiencing "enough" wage growth (according to the voters who want these subsidies).

[red-iron-pine]

$10-20k of home improvement work adds considerable value for reselling, and you're only on the hook for raw materials -- you've already got the tools and skills and time

one of the wealthiest dudes I know is a carpenter who loves workin wood. his free time is spent making cabinets and furnature and blasting obscure music

[LtWorf]

Most people don't like working in addition to working. Plus if you're constantly home renovating, it's kinda of hell living in there and your partner might go to greener pastures.

[saidnooneever]

i earn now too much to get social shit. just too much like few bucks.

my salary went up about 1.5x

my living costs went up more than 3x and rise each day seemingly.

its fuckin useless. like a scam.

sadly i have injuries that prevent going back to bluecollar job. Id be temped to ask my boss to lower my salary but that also feels fucking stupid.

maybe its time to avoid all taxes and go live in a fucking tent by the side of the road -_-.

[Amezarak]

You would be highly advised to learn how to do basic plumbing, electrical, and renovation tasks yourself in the US as well. The cost savings is enormous. Finding a quality contractor, in addition to being expensive, can also be very hard - there's plenty of people doing plumbing or electrical who might be licensed and everything but are grossly incompetent or never finish jobs.

A lot of stuff in the US is absurdly easy, as well. For example, in my area, pretty much all plumbing is PVC or PEX. Anyone on HN can learn very quickly how to work with this stuff and it's very cheap. There are very few repairs, for example, you could ever need to do that would cost more than having a plumber just show up and look at it - even accounting for buying tools.

[eigenrick]

One added benefit of knowing how to do this stuff is even when you hire it out, you typically get much better work out of contractors for a better price. If for no other reason than you can more effectively communicate requirements and handle potential surprises/changes (which is guaranteed to happen when renovating)

[jghn]

Which of course is not dissimilar to the current state of using GenAI tools.

[alistairSH]

In my area, DC Metro, it's $200 for a plumber to show up. That's before they do any work - just the cost to schedule them.

And they don't do drywall - they'll hack a nasty, over-sized hole in the wall or ceiling to get the plumbing and leave you with a $600+ bill and needing a drywalled and painter next.

[adabyron]

In my experience, it's really hard to get someone good who can do a plumbing job, or electrical job, then patch the drywall & match the texture well. You need to search for a "Handyman" service for this & often you're getting a jack of all trades, expert at none. If they really are amazing, they're booked solid & no one will ever recommend them to you as they're already hard to get an appointment with.

For a lot of specialists like drywall, the really good people seem to never want to deal with small jobs. They get paid better & it's easier to do large jobs.

[WarmWash]

Yeah, generally if you even have a mild disposition to learning how things work and building stuff for fun (i.e. you tore open things and played with legos as a kid). You can generally crash course most home servicing work in a afternoon and very often end up with a better result than paying someone $500 or even $5000 to do it.

Especially nowadays with AI, you can really quickly consolidate what you need to know for your specific job. Though of course, trust, but verify.

[bodhi_mind]

Cutting pex to remove old shutoff valve and crimp on a new 1/4 turn valve took me probably 2 min and a $15 tool from Amazon.

[rwyinuse]

Yea, at least over here in Finland many university degree programmers are hardly worth it, even though there are no tuition fees. A plumber or electrician can easily earn more than a researcher with PhD, with much shorter studies, better job security and more options for starting a business.

I know lots of people with master's degrees who have started studying something practical after graduation, as they were unable to find any job with their degree. Of course the general economic situation (highest unemployment in the EU) is having an impact on everyone, but it's hitting those with higher education particularly badly this time.

[gambiting]

>> plumber or electrician can easily earn more than a researcher with PhD, with much shorter studies, better job security and more options for starting a business.

And every single plumber and electrician I know is completely worn out(physically) by the time they hit 50. Both are these are incredibly demanding on the body, more than most people imagine. So they get to that point where they actually can't move and they need double knee replacements before they even hit retirement, and suddenly can't work anymore. Some of them try to hire people, but that's hard and not everyone is built for it - so actually (at least in my experience) you go from being very well off to practically destitute, because like someone else pointed out - people in these professions are typically cash only to avoid taxes, they spend it, they don't put it in retirement funds to avoid having to explain the source of income, and they get to a point where they can't work and don't have any income.

It looks like a great option compared to someone who just got their PhD, sure. But long term I'm not sure if that's such a great option.

[menaerus]

> It looks like a great option compared to someone who just got their PhD, sure. But long term I'm not sure if that's such a great option.

Why? I am sure we can agree that SWE domain has its own set of disadvantages, no?

Many people I know have been burnt out in their 30s on their jobs and are unable to continue with the same capacity in their 40s, not to even mention 50s, and later ages. What company wants to hire a 40+ or 50+ year-old SWE? Not many. I am not sure how is that any better than being physically worn out? Physically worn out you can organize work, and hire other people to work for you, but when you're mentally worn out there's not much you can do really.

Avoiding the burnt-out syndrome trap alone isn't enough. You can also easily become unemployable because (1) you're either not good enough for hi-profile jobs demanding maybe 95th percentile skills on the market, (2) you cannot work 50-hour long weeks under high stress continuously because of social and existential aspects of your life (family), or (3) you're simply over-qualified for many other jobs on the market so there's a real risk attached to employing you.

Being a plumber or electrician OTOH does not bear these type of costs or risks so, with things put into a ~20 year context, and given the today's picture of the market, I am also not really sure I would favor SWE over being a plumber or electrician or carpenter.

Many of those folks over here where I live earn 6 figures, and mind that this is only what they report (!), the actual figure is likely 2x as much since the preferred way of paying for the bill is cash (without invoice).

OTOH to break into the 6 figures territory as a SWE over here you need to become a recognizable domain expert - for me it took ~15 years to build the expertise other people believe I am exceptionally good at, and are therefore willing to pay for it. This is far from being easy and there's only of handful such people (in my area) since it takes an unreasonable amount of time and stubbornness to reach that point, barring some other factors of course too.

SWE domain might have been lucrative ~15 years ago but the dynamics in SWE changed dramatically in the last ~20 years. And as we see now with the AI, the change seems not to be declining.

[gambiting]

I think that for some reason you took my critique of being a plumber or electrician as an endorsement of being a software engineer, and it's not entirely clear to me why.

[menaerus]

Maybe I mistook your position but that's not what my intent was. I just wanted to paint the picture from the other side too, and perhaps spark a discussion too. That's all.

[abc123abc123]

Yep. The ability to work without paying taxes in this profession is of enormous value. It keeps prices lower for the consumer, and income higher for the handyman.

I seen many handymen with the latest and greatest luxury cars, and the demand is endless.

On the other side, it seems technologists salaries are stagnating, and the new guys on the market get lower and lower salaries, so it does indeed seem as if the best and quickest way to retiring early is the handyman approach coupled with a high level of non-taxes work.

[ForHackernews]

If you're willing to commit fraud anyway, just run a crypto scam. The payout is a lot higher, and it will use the white collar tech skills you already have rather than forcing you to learn a trade.

[indoordin0saur]

But then you have to feel bad that you're not contributing to society. The plumber is doing far more for society than any crypto con-artist is.

[altruios]

I mean, or you could help build houses instead of drain electricity. One is clearly less lazy and helping humanity more.

[Larrikin]

Not paying taxes is a drain on society

[altruios]

It's for certain a drain on the military industrial complex, but building houses while not supporting the current regime is certainly better than draining a bunch electricity to enrich only yourself and paying money to a bunch of authoritarian wannabe's.

I am impressed with your compression of the entirety of this conversation down to two values of right/wrong. /s

[lb1lf]

Time for a classic, Soviet-era joke:

A Soviet engineer needs some plumbing done in his apartment, and calls for a plumber. The plumber arrives, does his thing, and hands over the bill. The engineer is shocked. -'What, this is like a quarter of what I make in a month - for half an hour's work???'

Plumber shrugs. -'Well, why don't you come join us? Easy work, well paid, no responsibility - just remember to keep mum about your degree, as we're not supposed to hire academics.'

Our engineer contemplates this for a while, applies for a job as a plumber - and gets it.

All is well, good money, no responsibilites - until management requires that they take evening school classes to gain new skills and thus better build socialism. So, grudgingly, our engineer enrolls in a math class and, upon arriving, finds that the teacher wants to establish what the plumbers already know.

-'You over there - could you please come to the blackboard and show us the formula for the area of a circle?' he asks our engineer.

Standing at the blackboard, he suddenly realizes he can't for the life of him remember the formula; while a bit rusty, he soon figures out how to reason it out - furiously writing out integrals on the blackboard, only to find the area of a circle is -(pi)*r^2.

Minus? How did a negative enter into it, he thinks, going over his calculations once again. No, still gets the same result. Sweat building, he turns away from the blackboard for a moment, turning to the other plumbers watching.

As in one voice, they all whisper -'Comrade, you must switch the limits to the integral!'

[strofocles]

thank you

[KoolKat23]

Here the barriers to entry are high imo but artificial, you need to complete an apprenticeship paid for through opportunity cost of lower wages and less working freedom for a few years.

[lukan]

For gardening jobs as well?

[baud147258]

> - You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to, so that's a 20% increase

You mean by how VAT is not paid on materials a company is going to use (at least that's the case here in France, no idea what the rest of the UE does it). Or by doing undeclared work?

[edwcross]

Doing undeclared work.

Just had it happen to a friend: needed a plumber, impossible to find anything reliable (no one in town knows of a reliable plumber; it's a rare find). All Google Maps results contained lots of paid 5-star reviews (ratings with a full, typo-less phrase, praising the company in very generic terms, and the only review for that profile), so he had to pick one of them anyway.

Guy shows up, doesn't present a quote before doing the work (mandatory for >150€), does a mess but fixes the issue in less than 30 minutes, bills 200€, or 250€ if you want a receipt. No paperwork whatsoever, and in a position to physically harm you or do damage to your home if you refuse. And that's a "good" one. Locksmiths that charge 500€ or more for 10-minute jobs are a dozen a legion.

Then, these same people start buying cheap houses here and there, and in 20 years they'll be worth so much money that they'll become rich landlords and live on rent alone.

Several friends during PhD were renting cheap apartments whose owners were truck drivers, electricians, etc.

The point is, concentration of wealth and never-ending property values going up is only going to make becoming renter a better and better deal. And every profession that caters to renters is going to get some share of that money.

[wiether]

> Doing undeclared work

> No paperwork whatsoever

> in a position to physically harm you or do damage to your home if you refuse

So it's not "blue vs white collar jobs"; it's being a law abiding citizen or not.

I know a lot of people who matches what you're talking about, but they all have in common to have their own interpretation of the law. There's not a single thing they do by the books.

They're just "blue collar crooks".

Of course they can "win" if they cheat.

[gambiting]

I am yet to find any "blue collar worker" who would do this properly and actually give me an invoice or (god forbid) would take a bank transfer to a company account or maybe even a card payment. Literally every single person I have ever interacted with for fixing my house was like "mate it's cash only or the taxman is going to get me".

Recently I even needed my rims redone on my car, went to a big autoshop in my town, the owner came out with me to look at the car and went "mate it's going to be £500, cash only, you know how it is with the taxes. Or I can give you an invoice but it's going to be £600".

I literally turned around and left. Yes, they are crooks and fraudsters - but in my experience it's completely normalized. If you can get away with it, they will do it, and since everyone seems to be getting away with it, they do exactly that.

[tristor]

This is a bit surprising to me, but I've only ever rented in Europe. In the US, though, it's common to get discounted pricing for paying cash, usually 2-3% reduction in price as that's what they pay for card processing, otherwise anyone will take a card and everything is done with free estimates in writing up front, signed contracts, and payment due on completion. I can't imagine what you're describing in this thread happening in the US, that's a great way to get sued into oblivion as a tradesman.

[funki]

"You can easily avoid paying VAT if you know how to"

Interesting. Would you care to enlighten us on a legal way to do this ?

[stdbrouw]

You don't have to pay VAT on things you fix for yourself, because you don't pay yourself at all. This is in fact a kind of (legal) tax avoidance, but not (illegal) tax evasion. Given the cost of housing, being able to build your own house or even just doing small fixes here and there, leads to a big increase in perceived income. The tradies I know can afford whatever kind of car they want, whatever kind of holiday experience, and they live in a nice home. Mind you, they typically work 50h+ a week so there's that.

Of course, the parent may also have been referring to getting clients to pay in cash and not putting anything on the books, at the expense of getting barely any pension in the end, but that's not how I read it. This is getting somewhat less common because people are more likely than 20 years ago to get a loan from a bank to pay for renovation work, and the bank will want to see invoices.

[falcor84]

> You don't have to pay VAT on things you fix for yourself, because you don't pay yourself at all.

Just to be clear, if you're a VAT-registered tradie doing a job for yourself, you are obligated to pay VAT for the materials. Diverting vat-reclaimed materials for self-supply is tax evasion (which can be identified by auditing invoices). So legally speaking, the only money saved is the VAT on your own work hours.

Slightly ironically, self-supply is much easier and almost impossible to identify when devs use work-paid subscription services (e.g. Claude Max) on personal side hustles.

[lb1lf]

-Besides, in some jurisdictions, the taxman thought of that.

If a Norwegian tradesman works on his own home, he's supposed to pay VAT on the value of the work he's done - not only on the materials used.

I suspect such work is being under-reported, though.

[KellyCriterion]

> If a Norwegian tradesman works on his own home, he's supposed to pay VAT

Do you have a link here?

[lukan]

Context was getting income. You don't get income, by avoiding paying more. So it is about black market jobs. Works until something happens. Disputes, accidents, .. you cannot go to the police or courts to demand money from an inoffical job.

[stdbrouw]

You don’t get more income, but you do get more disposable income.

[KellyCriterion]

In EU, you can declare a business and go to wholesale sellers and buy stuff with your business-ID without VAT and use this stuff for your own usage in your house.

[IdiocyInAction]

Most of it is just blatant tax evasion.

[smcg]

The EU has better healthcare and safety regulations than the US. Blue collar work is risky.

[newsoftheday]

How will people be able to afford to pay for blue collar labor though, when AI will potentially have decimated all white collar and many blue collar jobs; that's what I worry about.

For example, if someone decides to stop being a software engineer and become an automobile mechanic, but few people can afford an automobile; they demand for their services will also greatly diminish.

[msabalau]

Either AI causes a collapse in aggerate demand, or it doesn't.

If it doesn't, you still have your blue collar career.

If it it does, you still have your skills at things that are hard to automate, and don't seem to be any worse of than anyone else, even if collectively, we are all worse off.

At an individual level, this still seems worth pursuing. You don't get to control your macro environment.

Of course, one could still use the political and persuasive tools you have towards the aim of ensuring the benefits of AI are broadly shared. It's reasonable to fear that is hard and uncertain work, but you don't get do decide if you live in hard and uncertain times or not.

[Empact]

Affordability is a combination of individual productivity and the economy’s productivity. A substantial increase in the economy’s productivity through AI and robotics should result in greater overall production, which should tend to result in abundance, and thus a lower cost of living, which can even overwhelm a decline in your individual productivity.

[nilamo]

But cars will be 50% of their current cost, once all those useless managers and c-suite folks are replaced by ai. Right? Right??

[pstuart]

I recently had a chat with a young person who'd recently graduated with a degree in marketing, found the work entailed unsatisfying, and left that to become an apprentice electrician.

He said that with the tariffs situation work had severely dried up and jobs were tight. This was in the PDX metro area. It makes one wonder what is really safe...

[baxtr]

Thank you. That was the comment I came looking for.

[blitzar]

Your role writing these summaries could be outsourced to Ai if you don't improve your productivity.

[fancyswimtime]

The AI has evaluated your performance as unsatisfactory; no food stamps this week.

[ramon156]

What does productivity mean in this context? AI would just give you the same crap the article used. I like a good TL;DR.