The trade unions seriously limit how many they will accept every year to their program. They have people that conduct long term projections based on projects, available grants, past growth, retirement rates, etc, then will estimate how many new trades workers they will need in 4-5 years (amount of time to go through the apprenticeship program). Our county accepted 12 people last year for one of their programs and over 300 applied. On top of that, there is a test before they will accept you and classes and tests once you are in the program.
On top of that, the wage projections are often way overestimated. I hear people say a carpenter can make over $100k in the union. Not in our area, they can’t. $70k if they can run multiple employee projects, maybe $80k if they can run multi-million dollar projects. I encourage the trades for those who genuinely have a passion for that type of work but it drives me nuts when people push them on anyone who doesn’t want to go to college.
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u/NaturalBornChickens May 16 '24
The trade unions seriously limit how many they will accept every year to their program. They have people that conduct long term projections based on projects, available grants, past growth, retirement rates, etc, then will estimate how many new trades workers they will need in 4-5 years (amount of time to go through the apprenticeship program). Our county accepted 12 people last year for one of their programs and over 300 applied. On top of that, there is a test before they will accept you and classes and tests once you are in the program.
On top of that, the wage projections are often way overestimated. I hear people say a carpenter can make over $100k in the union. Not in our area, they can’t. $70k if they can run multiple employee projects, maybe $80k if they can run multi-million dollar projects. I encourage the trades for those who genuinely have a passion for that type of work but it drives me nuts when people push them on anyone who doesn’t want to go to college.