the_6th_dimension t1_ja4trs8 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 9:16 PM

Reply to comment by bodydamage in So what should we do? by googoobah

Can you provide any evidence to support your claim other than your own personal experience? And can you provide any evidence that would suggest that the information I supplied is incorrect or misleading? Because the BLS is completely transparent with their methodologies; they provide multiple sources on their website that details this in pretty excruciating detail.

Because if not, it seems like you just want to prop up a narrative that fits your worldview and not necessarily reality. I'd be happy to consider contradicting data if you can provide it but if you can't, I'm going to stick to the data that I do have considering it's the best (only) data that's been offered so far.

It's also a super easy google search to show that blue collar jobs make a median annual income of $39,850 so I'm not sure what the $100k comment is about.

Actually, as an afterthought, I have a question that I should probably ask. I promise I'm not meaning this in a rude way but do you understand what mean (aka average) and median actually indicate? I made an assumption that you did but that wasn't necessarily a fair assumption on my part.

bodydamage t1_ja4uvi9 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 9:23 PM

I’m sure I could, don’t care enough to go look. Feel free to go look at union payscale different places in the country, I know of more than a few that are over $50/hr

I’ve never found BLS data on income to be particularly accurate in ANY job. It’s also entirely too broad, since you’re looking nationally at that fails to take into consideration the differences in COL and thus pay.

I’ll rephrase; If you live anywhere near a medium-large sized city, making $100k+ is easy to accomplish in the trades.

Average is just all your data points added together and divided by the number of data points.

Median is the mathematical middle point between the highest and lowest data points.

the_6th_dimension t1_ja51mzl wrote on February 26, 2023 at 10:09 PM

Well I'm not sure that you could because you haven't, so the answer to my first two questions is "no".

But here, let's look at multiple sources and where I can find cost of living information and adjust income with that:

With income adjusted by COL (where possible)

Unadjusted income

I mean, what can I say? 50% of trade workers are estimated to make less than these numbers and that number only increases as salary increases, and even after adjusting for COL the vast majority of individuals are making <$100k with many making less than half that. It wouldn't be that way if it were easy.

Yes cost of living affects pay, but not nearly enough to support your claim. Union members also tend to make more, but most people aren't in unions or benefitting from them (though I wouldn't argue with changing that). These are again just some examples I could find quickly.

From BLS, the union membership rate for all occupations in the United States was 10.3% in 2021. This includes both trade and non-trade workers.
- The BLS also provides data on union membership rates for specific occupations. For example, as of 2021, the union membership rate for construction and extraction occupations (which includes many trade workers) was 12.9%.
From EPI, the union membership rate for construction workers specifically was 13.5% in 2020. This is slightly higher than the overall union membership rate for all construction and extraction occupations reported by the BLS.
- The EPI also reports that the union membership rate for production and transportation workers, which includes some trade workers, was 15.4% in 2020.

So even if we assume these numbers are off, I think it's fair to say that <20% of trade workers are unionized. This certainly helps them, but it doesn't apply to most people.

Have I been able to make solid enough arguments and give enough evidence from a variety of sources to change your mind? Maybe you happen to make $100k+ working in a trade and the other people you work with or know in the trade are also doing similarly well. If that's the case, it makes sense that you'd extrapolate that most people who do a similar kind of job (e.g., trade work) would probably have a similar outcome to yourself. It's just in this case you'd be wrong specifically because you and your immediate circle of reference are all outliers. Like, I'm not trying to sway you on some political point here, I'm just trying to present the actual numbers.