Article in todays Daily Mail Australia-“Tradies’ Lifelong earnings are higher than those with degrees-
“According to experts, employers are more focused on people who have actual skills, employment history, and are job-ready – something fresh university graduates don’t always have”
Correction: Seldom ever have.
This is not new,nor is it confined to Australia.All over the west we have a surplus of lawyers,accountants,sales staff,middle managers and god knows politicians.
What we have a shortage of ,and it’s getting worse with each passing year,are people who know how to do something of value.
That there is water in the tap and electricity in the wall is the result of tradesmen and engineers,not poly-sci majors and cultural studies grads.
Trades sound like work!
Trust me, I know.
Oh this is great news, it sounds like my predictions have finally come to pass. At one point a degree meant a valuable skill. Now that this is no longer necessarily the case, reality has caught up, and those with actual real skills are being paid more than those with artificial skills (degrees).
So now maybe all the political correct nonsense has been hit with a battering ram.
What goes around comes around. What was it, the 1980s or so when the perception began top be bandied about that white collar is where its at, that the trades are only for those who couldn’t do well in school? Schools cut their shop classes, those who worked with their hands were mocked and shamed. Welp, who didn’t see this coming? Now its time to pay the piper. Now there exists a dearth of qualified, read experienced, tradesmen.
I simultaneously ran two construction companies, one new building, the other renovations; both of which I founded. I recall one not isolated example where I became engaged in a conversation with a homeowner who worked as a physicist. He was entirely slack jawed that I could hold forth on string theory. When I hit him with my sarcastic comment that he probably thought I was a 10th grad drop-out, he said yes. He thought my comment was declarative.