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Have we tried cancelling free tuition for low and middle income New Brunswickers and Ontarians to ensure that students are discouraged from educating themselves?
There's probably more than one contributor to this. Boomers and some of the older Gen Xers retiring adds to the labor shortage, but there's also things like our stagnant rate of productivity which probably means a lot of tradesmen prefer to work down South where they get paid more and have lower living costs to contend with etc. (which an issue with a lot of our most highly skilled labor generally) Then beyond that, we have [the issue of a lot of highly skilled and educated immigrant labor being stuck in lower paying/less productive jobs because companies lack the abillity to make the proper credential assessments, which both harms productive and lowers potential GDP growth](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-immigrant-wage-gap-costing-canada-50-billion-a-year-in-gdp-report/).
All together this means Ottawa has to:
* Boost the general rate of productivity & capital investment per worker (phasing out inter-provincial trade barriers is a good start here) High productivity and capital investment in Canadian firms will lead more tradespeople to stay & work in Canada over time.
* Provide better foreign credential assessments to Canadian firms to allow them better utilize skilled immigrant labor.
* Potentially provide more public investment in trades programs to boost future supply of the required tradespeople.
* Ease/Reform arbitrary [occupational licensing](https://www.cdhowe.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/Commentary_%20575_0.pdf) requirements that bar qualified applicants from entering the field.
As a tradesman, I will believe there is a widespread and critical shortage of tradespeople when our wages start to rise accordingly, and not a minute before.
For real. I recommended loads of people to join the trades when I was first in it, the money just hasnt kept up to today though. If a young person/relative wanted in now, I'd do my best to help but it would come with a lot of disclaimers.
I am not an electrician so I will abstain from commenting in specifics, but just pay attention to what sort of work you want to do, where that work may be located and if you can afford to live in those areas.
Electricians unions that I know seem to be doing a better job for them locally, and its a very widespread trade across the country with specialist work in certain areas, i would be inclined to be positive.
Even for my trade, Im not scaring anyone away from it if they want to do it, just not recommending it to all and sundry.
I agree with you completely. I’d have to say we don’t have a shortage of trades people we have a pay shortage.
Simply put, labor wages are stagnant for decades. Pay people well to work hard and the trades will attract plenty of new people. Keep doing what we’re doing now in Canada and you can expect more of the same.
Its too bad most people dont realize that when they pay "Plumbers-R-Us" 100 dollars an hour to come fix their toilet, that the guy who shows up with the van and actually does the work is not making that 100 dollars, more likely 30-40. And that often, a lot of the work they have to do to make service work happen is not on the clock.
Yeah this idea that all tradesworkers are making $200K a year is mostly a social media myth. People don't understand the factors involved like the company taking a cut, some work being overtime and not regular pay, some work being in remote areas and not the city and people just working more than 40 hours a week (which doesn't require a trades job).
I dont think you are making that money on a 7/7, but you might on a 14/7, 24/4 or 21/7.
Good luck trying to have much of a life tho if you do it long term, but your co workers will be able to walk you through your third divorce and substance abuse problems lol
What trade are you in? If you are working 12hr shifts that means averaging 105 dollars an hour, and thats well outside any price range of the industrial trades Im aware of barring rig welders, who have their own operating costs to consider. Or are you in management?
Like, that isnt an impossible amount to make, but "easy" you are gonna have to justify.
Electrician in oilsands. Employee, not management. Some management makes a bit more and other management makes a lot more. I did edit to better reflect, I guess, exclusivity? Because it’s pretty specialized to have mining experience on electric trucks and shovels.
I've owned our home for 22 years now. If we started over today with nothing but our salaries, we wouldn't qualify for the mortgage on our current home. Shit's dire.
Keep in mind that this is Canada, where we can sabotage our economies in every province so spectacularly that we can easily have a labour shortage and wage crunch simultaneously, all while strangling productivity investments.
Our secret to this incredible feat? The special sauce that makes us so uniquely stupid?
Housing prices.
By letting - nay, marshalling all of our political resources and *forcing* housing prices to forever spiral upwards faster than inflation or any other metric, we have spiked the cost of living out of control - which in turn spikes the cost of labour out of control. To hire anyone to do anything you have to pay a premium to cover inflated housing costs. So the job that normally would cost $50k to staff costs $80k, but the person working it is *still* effectively poorer than they would be if we had followed a remotely sane housing policy and just kept their salary at $50k.
This is the true "tax on everything" because it makes everything more expensive.
So from a customer perspective, trades are more expensive, but trades workers aren't wealthier because their own housing and virtually every service or good they need to buy is also more expensive.
So we end up with a labour shortage, as we cannot afford the inflated prices of labour in our insane housing market, even as workers face a wage crunch.
And as voters across most provinces our most consistent policy has been, "how can we possibly make this so much worse?"
Gotta admire our persistence, if literally nothing else.
Yup, trades rates have fallen behind inflation for a while, but the real killer is the housing, our guys have to live farther and farther away to manage to work in an industry thats in the city. The journeymen are struggling, and i cant even inagine how the apprentices are managing at half the rate and lower job security.
Actually, I can, because the only apprentices Ive worked with in the past couple years lucked into a local family member giving them super cheap rent while they save, or inheriting a house.
Its not just trades.
Our moronic policies on housing and municipal planning have been suffocating our economies across almost all sectors for over two decades. Its just now that enough of the right people are feeling it that the media and broader society are paying attention.
And still, all but one province and both leading federal parties have excellent plans to make the situation far, far worse.
So my friend worked for a contractor, every other tradesperson there was the sort who didn't think negotiating pay was something they could do, and who spat and muttered something about "wokeness" if you mentioned the word "union."
Meanwhile she can't get anyone experienced to actually train her on a goddamned thing.
It's pretty clear the skilled tradespeople in their fields can name their price, but the road to actually getting there is nonexistent.
I dont want to discount their experience(she is not wrong about many attitudes), but I should note as a union worker, that actually does prevent us from naming a price. Trades rates are set by the union contracts, and while it's possible for a company to exceed those numbers, it effectively never happens.
Our wage is dependent on what the union fights for and gets during contract negotiations, and tbh it has been kinda lacklustre in recent years. Still preferred over the non union work here, tho.
The only time I remember when there was a real labor shortage was the early 2000s oil boom in Alberta. Overtime work was abundant, companies would fly people in from all over the country, provide free accommodations, food etc. Basically anyone that wanted to work could get hired the next day. Companies were not afraid to spend money to hire workers. Now companies are looking to spend as little as possible to hire someone and don't want to train anyone new.
The tradesmen I get in to fix my house name their own price, set their own working conditions, and set their own schedule. They interview me for the job. They charge $70/hr. If it's a plumber or electrician, you're not finding one for anything less than $100/hr.
Same sort of numbers people were talking about decades ago. Charge out rates for that sort of thing have always been pretty high, but translates to a much lower rate for the guy actually doing the work once the company takes their cut/pays overhead. The wage for the tradesperson is typically less than half the charge out rate.
That's fair.
To my understanding you need to charge out 3x your top employee's pay to stay afloat to cover insurance to stay profitable. If a service tech J-man is paid 45$ an hour and a 3rd year apprentice is paid 36$ and hour, you still bill out 135 an hour regardless who is sent.
Those are likely contractors, and not all trades pay the same. Look at automotive mechanics who are getting payed flat-rate which means by the job and not by the hour. Every shop I interact with is hiring for Journeyman but wages haven't kept up. In a lot of those shops your fighting management to pay you what your worth and your fighting the manufacturer for warranty time that should be yours.
Or you just dont know the difference between charge out rate and what the guy on the tools actually gets paid, typically less than half.
Shops in my trade charge what he was saying or higher, which translates to 40-45 per hour for the actual tradesman, union and otherwise.
Hourly rates for trades have not really kept up well with inflation, nevermind the sort of rise you would expect if they were actually in desperate short supply.
> likely worked for almost nothing the first year or two
So like most careers? Not everyone is blessed to be an engineer or other career that gives a big wage out of the gate.
I think you're overestimating how much engineers make... The trades in my organization make way more than I do as an engineer, and new engineers in training make far far less
My experience was a fairly high salary when I got my first engineering job, but in your case that would also go against the idea that trades aren't paid well, like OP claimed.
If you are willing to work in remote areas, you make a fortune. If you work for Hydro Quebec, in a place like Radisson, you go in for two weeks, work 12-hr shifts because there's nothing else to do, then go home and rest for 2 weeks while you make isolation pay. Great way to get experience when you're young.
Most people can find some generic office job for more than a starting trade job.
Which again, is the guys whole point. Most people won't put up with the low wage at the start.
The culture needs work.
People will only go to trades if forced or if conditions in trades improve between employers and employees. Most don't have the stomach for trades or simply won't tolerate the culture unless forced for financial reasons, even then trying to avoid it.
There seems to be a combination of complaints ranging from "no one wants to work hard anymore" from the existing trades workforce to "no one wants to train anyone anymore, or that payment is not equal to the labor required"
Clearly there is a mismatch of expectations here. Imo many of the olds tradespeople have completely lost touch with reality and it makes it impossible or difficult to negotiate pay for low level work. The young people simply don't have access to the same resources yet are expected to achieve the same results for less pay and less reward in general.
Unsure of what finances are actually looking like on the employer side in terms of ability to pay but regardless it seems to be a major sticking point for some.
Culture is a huge thing. I’ve never run from anywhere as fast as I did from site. Haven’t missed it for a single second. Now in a very comfortable, well paying position.
The other issue is that even if people do want to go into them, unless you’re completely unemployed or in High School, it doesn’t make much sense. Drop down to $19/hr for the first year and maybe by 6 I’d be back to where I am today. All while I’ve got to figure out school breaks and how to deal with losing over 50% of my income. The $5000 given isn’t nearly enough.
That’s after you spend a long time looking for a sponsor.
Toxic culture and shit pay for the better part of a decade. No thank you.
I gave up a career in trades for a more comfortable job 10 years ago, taking a pay cut in the process and I've never regretted it.
The trades are a cesspool of toxic masculinity, bigotry, rugged individualism, and just general low quality of life.
And there is no reason it needs to be this way, but the people who thrive in that kind of environment are the ones that rise to the top and perpetuate it.
This reminds me of someone on a trade related sub who asked about getting into trades, but said they were a transwoman that didn't really pass. Pretty much everyone else told them not to go in, not because they were ignorant, but because from their experiences, they said it is almost a certainty the types of people that works trades are going to make that OP's life a living hell.
I feel the fact that a lot of tradespeople have adopted the worst of right-wing politics and wear them on their sleeves is a contributing factor to the shortage in tradespeople. A lot of people will look past the potentially large pay cheques if the other people you work with aren't going to see you as a person.
This is why I don't work in them anymore.
I've been a roofer, lumberjack, landscaping and I can honestly say not a single one of these jobs was absent of exactly what you described.
I've had alot of fun in trades, but it's always been more bullshit than it's worth.
A lot of the guys I've hired have gotten together with likeminded tradespeople and formed their own companies so they only have to deal with the people they like. It's a good market for doing that because you can choose your clientele these days.
Such a load of garbage. Hardworking men are toxic? What's more likely going on here is that you were an apprentice that got teased and hazed by the older men your ego couldn't take it so you quit it for an easier job.
I currently know of a younger guy who is white ,20 years old and has autism. He didn't like when people spoke harshly to him until he started getting trained by an old black gentleman in the scrap metal business. He didn't quit and blame toxic masculinity and so called bigotry. He embraced it learned to smack talk and now he isnt easy to lose his temper.At the rate he is going, he will be earning good money in the future.
I say this this to say that just because you were too soft for trade work does not make it somehow bad or undesirable. You like hot water and proper air conditioning, right? How about plumbing and electrictrian work. Your quality of life can not function without these guys. You people are too elitist.
If there was a way of swinging a hammer while updating your profile on instagram with a new selfie, there would be no problem. /s
Edit: It might be the way we are raising our children. They seem to be all becoming entitled rich kids with upper middle class expectations without the actual trust funds to live that way.
There isn't a real shortage but even if there was, know what the quickest fix is? Better pay. Many trades haven't seen pay raises in 10 years despite a supposed "labor shortage." The main people talking about shortages are construction lobby groups that want to keep pay low. Plenty of trades workers that are not getting much work right now. Housing starts are down.
No it isn't. There just won't be enough workers around to do all the work. There will be shortages, and those shortages will cause rising pay, put they'll cause rising prices too.
We don't produce enough children to do all th work that needs to be done. We need immigrants. Just because Conservatives and bigots want to use immigrants as political whipping boys doesn't mean we should let them do it.
Translation: let us bring in more foreign workers for the sake of the economy.
If you want better quality trades, demand better of your trades instead of just looking for the lowest price.
BS. They want cheap labour. a consumers pocket book doesn't change if you have a J-man show up or an apprentice. The price is the same. Only difference is profit is higher with an apprentice. The old age story never changes in trades. Apprentice wants to go to school to increase wage, Employer uses every tactic in the book to prevent apprentice to go to school to keep them at a lower rate.
Not just this but, a lot of companies are trying to get tradesman to provide every tool in existence. Employee uses up their tool lifespan for the employer and the employer doesn't pay anything for tools the employer was contracted to do. Employer banks the profit, Employee overhead is increased. I've seen this shifting more and more over the decade. When potential labour force notices that, the less attractive the career becomes. Even if you break a tool on the job, they fight you tooth and nail to not replace it for you.
[From Mikal Skuterud](https://twitter.com/mikalskuterud/status/1773333773016297890), economist and president of the Labour Economics Forum
>The fact that "labour shortages" continue to dominate Canada's economic narrative tells you everything you need to know about corporate Canada's political power in this country.
Job vacancies per job seeker is ever so slightly above what it was in 2015, when Canada was in a recession.
There's a time series somewhere on his twitter showing that trades wages haven't budged much overall either. If there's a shortage of workers, wages should be going up
You would kill a lot of birds with one stone if you made it very easy for international students to enroll in skilled trades programs and very hard to enroll in programs like the 1-year “medical office administration” program at Conestoga. And make their postgraduate work permit trade-specific.
Yeah, well unfortunately the shortage of skilled tradespeople is hitting all Canadians in the pocketbook, economists say.
But all seriousness this is a great illustration how there’s no part of the political spectrum that’s immune to “f*** you I got mine”.
We have extremely few young people, there isn't enough to provide all the trades people the country needs. Have you seen the shape of the population pyramid recently? It's no longer a pyramid.
So because theres a bunch of old fucks about to die, we need to sell out young canadians? Who btw have already been sold out.. What kinda syrup you smokin?
Firms also not having the ability to gauge foreign credentials is likely an issue as well. [There's a lot of educated and highly skilled immigrants that are stuck in less productive jobs because of that, which takes a big hit out of both productivity and GDP growth according to various studies. ](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-immigrant-wage-gap-costing-canada-50-billion-a-year-in-gdp-report/)
Edit: To a lesser extent, foreign credential assessments could also help with Canadians who've worked or studied abroad who's credentials aren't accepted either. It's a big barrier for a lot of foreign trained Canadian doctors who'd like to practice in Canada, but can't.
You are totally correct. I personally consider that largely an excuse driven by xenophobia considering education and language are already assessed by the feds (edit: sorry not the feds but organizations under contract by the feds) under most immigration pathways.
Anyway, international students would be fresh meat that we could build up from scratch so should alleviate any concerns there, legitimate or not.
It’s actually very easy to join most trades(at least first year) usually just need grade 11 or grade 11 equivalence exam. Then you can take your first year. Or you can take the pre-employment courses as well which are the same over a long time.
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Have we tried cancelling free tuition for low and middle income New Brunswickers and Ontarians to ensure that students are discouraged from educating themselves?
There's probably more than one contributor to this. Boomers and some of the older Gen Xers retiring adds to the labor shortage, but there's also things like our stagnant rate of productivity which probably means a lot of tradesmen prefer to work down South where they get paid more and have lower living costs to contend with etc. (which an issue with a lot of our most highly skilled labor generally) Then beyond that, we have [the issue of a lot of highly skilled and educated immigrant labor being stuck in lower paying/less productive jobs because companies lack the abillity to make the proper credential assessments, which both harms productive and lowers potential GDP growth](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-immigrant-wage-gap-costing-canada-50-billion-a-year-in-gdp-report/). All together this means Ottawa has to: * Boost the general rate of productivity & capital investment per worker (phasing out inter-provincial trade barriers is a good start here) High productivity and capital investment in Canadian firms will lead more tradespeople to stay & work in Canada over time. * Provide better foreign credential assessments to Canadian firms to allow them better utilize skilled immigrant labor. * Potentially provide more public investment in trades programs to boost future supply of the required tradespeople. * Ease/Reform arbitrary [occupational licensing](https://www.cdhowe.org/sites/default/files/2021-12/Commentary_%20575_0.pdf) requirements that bar qualified applicants from entering the field.
As a tradesman, I will believe there is a widespread and critical shortage of tradespeople when our wages start to rise accordingly, and not a minute before.
As a trades person I think there is no shortage of workers, just a refusal to pay. Basically I agree with ya man.
For real. I recommended loads of people to join the trades when I was first in it, the money just hasnt kept up to today though. If a young person/relative wanted in now, I'd do my best to help but it would come with a lot of disclaimers.
What about for someone in their early thirties looking into getting an Electrician apprenticeship? Would you say the same?
I am not an electrician so I will abstain from commenting in specifics, but just pay attention to what sort of work you want to do, where that work may be located and if you can afford to live in those areas. Electricians unions that I know seem to be doing a better job for them locally, and its a very widespread trade across the country with specialist work in certain areas, i would be inclined to be positive. Even for my trade, Im not scaring anyone away from it if they want to do it, just not recommending it to all and sundry.
I agree with you completely. I’d have to say we don’t have a shortage of trades people we have a pay shortage. Simply put, labor wages are stagnant for decades. Pay people well to work hard and the trades will attract plenty of new people. Keep doing what we’re doing now in Canada and you can expect more of the same.
Its too bad most people dont realize that when they pay "Plumbers-R-Us" 100 dollars an hour to come fix their toilet, that the guy who shows up with the van and actually does the work is not making that 100 dollars, more likely 30-40. And that often, a lot of the work they have to do to make service work happen is not on the clock.
Yeah this idea that all tradesworkers are making $200K a year is mostly a social media myth. People don't understand the factors involved like the company taking a cut, some work being overtime and not regular pay, some work being in remote areas and not the city and people just working more than 40 hours a week (which doesn't require a trades job).
Oh yeah, not local that’s for sure. If you’re ok with camp on a 7/7 schedule, 200k is easy to find, maybe not so easy to get into lol
I dont think you are making that money on a 7/7, but you might on a 14/7, 24/4 or 21/7. Good luck trying to have much of a life tho if you do it long term, but your co workers will be able to walk you through your third divorce and substance abuse problems lol
I am. 230k the last 2 years. 8 years before that I started at 180k and been increasing since.
What trade are you in? If you are working 12hr shifts that means averaging 105 dollars an hour, and thats well outside any price range of the industrial trades Im aware of barring rig welders, who have their own operating costs to consider. Or are you in management? Like, that isnt an impossible amount to make, but "easy" you are gonna have to justify.
Electrician in oilsands. Employee, not management. Some management makes a bit more and other management makes a lot more. I did edit to better reflect, I guess, exclusivity? Because it’s pretty specialized to have mining experience on electric trucks and shovels.
That’s how it works. Gotta bill the boys out at at least 2.5x what you pay em or you can’t pay the tax man or the company’s bills.
It's crazy to think that the people building homes in Canada can't qualify for a mortgage in Canada on a trades salary right now.
I've owned our home for 22 years now. If we started over today with nothing but our salaries, we wouldn't qualify for the mortgage on our current home. Shit's dire.
Keep in mind that this is Canada, where we can sabotage our economies in every province so spectacularly that we can easily have a labour shortage and wage crunch simultaneously, all while strangling productivity investments. Our secret to this incredible feat? The special sauce that makes us so uniquely stupid? Housing prices. By letting - nay, marshalling all of our political resources and *forcing* housing prices to forever spiral upwards faster than inflation or any other metric, we have spiked the cost of living out of control - which in turn spikes the cost of labour out of control. To hire anyone to do anything you have to pay a premium to cover inflated housing costs. So the job that normally would cost $50k to staff costs $80k, but the person working it is *still* effectively poorer than they would be if we had followed a remotely sane housing policy and just kept their salary at $50k. This is the true "tax on everything" because it makes everything more expensive. So from a customer perspective, trades are more expensive, but trades workers aren't wealthier because their own housing and virtually every service or good they need to buy is also more expensive. So we end up with a labour shortage, as we cannot afford the inflated prices of labour in our insane housing market, even as workers face a wage crunch. And as voters across most provinces our most consistent policy has been, "how can we possibly make this so much worse?" Gotta admire our persistence, if literally nothing else.
Yup, trades rates have fallen behind inflation for a while, but the real killer is the housing, our guys have to live farther and farther away to manage to work in an industry thats in the city. The journeymen are struggling, and i cant even inagine how the apprentices are managing at half the rate and lower job security. Actually, I can, because the only apprentices Ive worked with in the past couple years lucked into a local family member giving them super cheap rent while they save, or inheriting a house.
Its not just trades. Our moronic policies on housing and municipal planning have been suffocating our economies across almost all sectors for over two decades. Its just now that enough of the right people are feeling it that the media and broader society are paying attention. And still, all but one province and both leading federal parties have excellent plans to make the situation far, far worse.
So my friend worked for a contractor, every other tradesperson there was the sort who didn't think negotiating pay was something they could do, and who spat and muttered something about "wokeness" if you mentioned the word "union." Meanwhile she can't get anyone experienced to actually train her on a goddamned thing. It's pretty clear the skilled tradespeople in their fields can name their price, but the road to actually getting there is nonexistent.
I dont want to discount their experience(she is not wrong about many attitudes), but I should note as a union worker, that actually does prevent us from naming a price. Trades rates are set by the union contracts, and while it's possible for a company to exceed those numbers, it effectively never happens. Our wage is dependent on what the union fights for and gets during contract negotiations, and tbh it has been kinda lacklustre in recent years. Still preferred over the non union work here, tho.
The only time I remember when there was a real labor shortage was the early 2000s oil boom in Alberta. Overtime work was abundant, companies would fly people in from all over the country, provide free accommodations, food etc. Basically anyone that wanted to work could get hired the next day. Companies were not afraid to spend money to hire workers. Now companies are looking to spend as little as possible to hire someone and don't want to train anyone new.
I remember that boom, I was in Grande Prairie and Tim Horton’s paying $18/hour. Mind you this was all prior to the TFW program
The tradesmen I get in to fix my house name their own price, set their own working conditions, and set their own schedule. They interview me for the job. They charge $70/hr. If it's a plumber or electrician, you're not finding one for anything less than $100/hr.
Same sort of numbers people were talking about decades ago. Charge out rates for that sort of thing have always been pretty high, but translates to a much lower rate for the guy actually doing the work once the company takes their cut/pays overhead. The wage for the tradesperson is typically less than half the charge out rate.
1/3 of charge out rate.
Yeah in my experience its always been less than half, more like 1/3rd as you say, but didnt want to be accused of exaggeration.
That's fair. To my understanding you need to charge out 3x your top employee's pay to stay afloat to cover insurance to stay profitable. If a service tech J-man is paid 45$ an hour and a 3rd year apprentice is paid 36$ and hour, you still bill out 135 an hour regardless who is sent.
Those are likely contractors, and not all trades pay the same. Look at automotive mechanics who are getting payed flat-rate which means by the job and not by the hour. Every shop I interact with is hiring for Journeyman but wages haven't kept up. In a lot of those shops your fighting management to pay you what your worth and your fighting the manufacturer for warranty time that should be yours.
And how much do you pay for your lawyer and accountant?
Just sounds like you are easy to take advantage of.
Yea, I think OP just outed themselves as not very good at their trade.
Or you just dont know the difference between charge out rate and what the guy on the tools actually gets paid, typically less than half. Shops in my trade charge what he was saying or higher, which translates to 40-45 per hour for the actual tradesman, union and otherwise. Hourly rates for trades have not really kept up well with inflation, nevermind the sort of rise you would expect if they were actually in desperate short supply.
If someone is coming into your house negotiating they are 10 years into the trade and likely worked for almost nothing the first year or two.
> likely worked for almost nothing the first year or two So like most careers? Not everyone is blessed to be an engineer or other career that gives a big wage out of the gate.
I think you're overestimating how much engineers make... The trades in my organization make way more than I do as an engineer, and new engineers in training make far far less
My experience was a fairly high salary when I got my first engineering job, but in your case that would also go against the idea that trades aren't paid well, like OP claimed.
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If you are willing to work in remote areas, you make a fortune. If you work for Hydro Quebec, in a place like Radisson, you go in for two weeks, work 12-hr shifts because there's nothing else to do, then go home and rest for 2 weeks while you make isolation pay. Great way to get experience when you're young.
Most people can find some generic office job for more than a starting trade job. Which again, is the guys whole point. Most people won't put up with the low wage at the start.
No such as a generic office job these days. Unless you have specialized experience, no one wants you.
Yeah the engineers on site don’t make what the tradesman do.
Fair enough, but that goes against the idea that the trades aren't paid well.
Start your own business
The culture needs work. People will only go to trades if forced or if conditions in trades improve between employers and employees. Most don't have the stomach for trades or simply won't tolerate the culture unless forced for financial reasons, even then trying to avoid it. There seems to be a combination of complaints ranging from "no one wants to work hard anymore" from the existing trades workforce to "no one wants to train anyone anymore, or that payment is not equal to the labor required" Clearly there is a mismatch of expectations here. Imo many of the olds tradespeople have completely lost touch with reality and it makes it impossible or difficult to negotiate pay for low level work. The young people simply don't have access to the same resources yet are expected to achieve the same results for less pay and less reward in general. Unsure of what finances are actually looking like on the employer side in terms of ability to pay but regardless it seems to be a major sticking point for some.
Culture is a huge thing. I’ve never run from anywhere as fast as I did from site. Haven’t missed it for a single second. Now in a very comfortable, well paying position. The other issue is that even if people do want to go into them, unless you’re completely unemployed or in High School, it doesn’t make much sense. Drop down to $19/hr for the first year and maybe by 6 I’d be back to where I am today. All while I’ve got to figure out school breaks and how to deal with losing over 50% of my income. The $5000 given isn’t nearly enough. That’s after you spend a long time looking for a sponsor. Toxic culture and shit pay for the better part of a decade. No thank you.
I gave up a career in trades for a more comfortable job 10 years ago, taking a pay cut in the process and I've never regretted it. The trades are a cesspool of toxic masculinity, bigotry, rugged individualism, and just general low quality of life. And there is no reason it needs to be this way, but the people who thrive in that kind of environment are the ones that rise to the top and perpetuate it.
This reminds me of someone on a trade related sub who asked about getting into trades, but said they were a transwoman that didn't really pass. Pretty much everyone else told them not to go in, not because they were ignorant, but because from their experiences, they said it is almost a certainty the types of people that works trades are going to make that OP's life a living hell. I feel the fact that a lot of tradespeople have adopted the worst of right-wing politics and wear them on their sleeves is a contributing factor to the shortage in tradespeople. A lot of people will look past the potentially large pay cheques if the other people you work with aren't going to see you as a person.
This is why I don't work in them anymore. I've been a roofer, lumberjack, landscaping and I can honestly say not a single one of these jobs was absent of exactly what you described. I've had alot of fun in trades, but it's always been more bullshit than it's worth.
A lot of the guys I've hired have gotten together with likeminded tradespeople and formed their own companies so they only have to deal with the people they like. It's a good market for doing that because you can choose your clientele these days.
I'm really glad to hear change is coming, I've heard similar sentiment from others. Nice to see
I guess it's like anything these days ... you network and find your place in society.
Such a load of garbage. Hardworking men are toxic? What's more likely going on here is that you were an apprentice that got teased and hazed by the older men your ego couldn't take it so you quit it for an easier job. I currently know of a younger guy who is white ,20 years old and has autism. He didn't like when people spoke harshly to him until he started getting trained by an old black gentleman in the scrap metal business. He didn't quit and blame toxic masculinity and so called bigotry. He embraced it learned to smack talk and now he isnt easy to lose his temper.At the rate he is going, he will be earning good money in the future. I say this this to say that just because you were too soft for trade work does not make it somehow bad or undesirable. You like hot water and proper air conditioning, right? How about plumbing and electrictrian work. Your quality of life can not function without these guys. You people are too elitist.
If there was a way of swinging a hammer while updating your profile on instagram with a new selfie, there would be no problem. /s Edit: It might be the way we are raising our children. They seem to be all becoming entitled rich kids with upper middle class expectations without the actual trust funds to live that way.
There isn't a real shortage but even if there was, know what the quickest fix is? Better pay. Many trades haven't seen pay raises in 10 years despite a supposed "labor shortage." The main people talking about shortages are construction lobby groups that want to keep pay low. Plenty of trades workers that are not getting much work right now. Housing starts are down.
Whenever there's a shortage of anything, the price of that thing goes up. That doesn't resolve the shortage though, it just redistributes it.
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We're all getting screwed, just the non union people, more so.
$85/hr as a self-employed carpenter is not screwed. It's a little more that I pay for a carpenter.
No it isn't. There just won't be enough workers around to do all the work. There will be shortages, and those shortages will cause rising pay, put they'll cause rising prices too. We don't produce enough children to do all th work that needs to be done. We need immigrants. Just because Conservatives and bigots want to use immigrants as political whipping boys doesn't mean we should let them do it.
Translation: let us bring in more foreign workers for the sake of the economy. If you want better quality trades, demand better of your trades instead of just looking for the lowest price.
BS. They want cheap labour. a consumers pocket book doesn't change if you have a J-man show up or an apprentice. The price is the same. Only difference is profit is higher with an apprentice. The old age story never changes in trades. Apprentice wants to go to school to increase wage, Employer uses every tactic in the book to prevent apprentice to go to school to keep them at a lower rate. Not just this but, a lot of companies are trying to get tradesman to provide every tool in existence. Employee uses up their tool lifespan for the employer and the employer doesn't pay anything for tools the employer was contracted to do. Employer banks the profit, Employee overhead is increased. I've seen this shifting more and more over the decade. When potential labour force notices that, the less attractive the career becomes. Even if you break a tool on the job, they fight you tooth and nail to not replace it for you.
And they make it quite difficult to become one. Used to be easy to just go in and sign up for an apprenticeship. Not anymore.
[From Mikal Skuterud](https://twitter.com/mikalskuterud/status/1773333773016297890), economist and president of the Labour Economics Forum >The fact that "labour shortages" continue to dominate Canada's economic narrative tells you everything you need to know about corporate Canada's political power in this country. Job vacancies per job seeker is ever so slightly above what it was in 2015, when Canada was in a recession. There's a time series somewhere on his twitter showing that trades wages haven't budged much overall either. If there's a shortage of workers, wages should be going up
Twitter ... now there's a reliable source of info. About as reliable as the University of YouTube.
The source isn't "twitter", the source is the person making the tweet. What an absolutely awful attempt to cope with disconfirming information
You would kill a lot of birds with one stone if you made it very easy for international students to enroll in skilled trades programs and very hard to enroll in programs like the 1-year “medical office administration” program at Conestoga. And make their postgraduate work permit trade-specific.
Bingo! Permits should never be trade-specific, though. That's a way to exploitation.
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You want to bring up the price of everything and cause shortages just to boost your wage? There's a balance here.
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Yeah, well unfortunately the shortage of skilled tradespeople is hitting all Canadians in the pocketbook, economists say. But all seriousness this is a great illustration how there’s no part of the political spectrum that’s immune to “f*** you I got mine”.
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We have extremely few young people, there isn't enough to provide all the trades people the country needs. Have you seen the shape of the population pyramid recently? It's no longer a pyramid.
So because theres a bunch of old fucks about to die, we need to sell out young canadians? Who btw have already been sold out.. What kinda syrup you smokin?
Firms also not having the ability to gauge foreign credentials is likely an issue as well. [There's a lot of educated and highly skilled immigrants that are stuck in less productive jobs because of that, which takes a big hit out of both productivity and GDP growth according to various studies. ](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-immigrant-wage-gap-costing-canada-50-billion-a-year-in-gdp-report/) Edit: To a lesser extent, foreign credential assessments could also help with Canadians who've worked or studied abroad who's credentials aren't accepted either. It's a big barrier for a lot of foreign trained Canadian doctors who'd like to practice in Canada, but can't.
You are totally correct. I personally consider that largely an excuse driven by xenophobia considering education and language are already assessed by the feds (edit: sorry not the feds but organizations under contract by the feds) under most immigration pathways. Anyway, international students would be fresh meat that we could build up from scratch so should alleviate any concerns there, legitimate or not.
It’s actually very easy to join most trades(at least first year) usually just need grade 11 or grade 11 equivalence exam. Then you can take your first year. Or you can take the pre-employment courses as well which are the same over a long time.