Where is all the money people paying tradespeople going? If I need any plumbing work done it costs me $200 an hour or more. Even with overhead and expenses, 10 hours a week gets you more than $50k a year. Twenty years ago my grandfather was a marine plumber and made $200k a year. How many apprentices and part-time plumber are in these datasets?
If retail stores are making record breaking profits, why are service workers paid so little? If medical costs are so high, why aren't nurses and nurse aids making more?
It's not rocket science. People aren't getting paid for the value of their labor, and productivity has rocketed up while wages have stagnated for decades. Your plumber charges 200 an hour and doesn't make anywhere near that much, because they work for a company who profits massively off their labor and exploits him as far as the law and supply and demand will allow.
> plumber charges 200 an hour and doesn't make anywhere near that much, because they work for a company who profits massively off their labor and exploits him as far as the law and supply and demand will allow
Do most plumbers responding to house calls work for an employer? There aren't many economies of scale in that work.
Being a plumber who works for a company means you are given tasks and show up at those assignments. You need to know how to plumb.
Being an independent plumber means handling: marketing, networking, customer service, etc, plus plumbing. Like any other freelance position it's not easy to break in and get enough work to live. And we're not in the days of people just opening the Yellow Pages and calling a random plumber. Now it's a labyrinth of competing search engine results, yelp reviews, HomeAdvisor references, etc.
Some people will take the time to find an independent plumber. Most people call RotoRooter or whatever company has advertised the most in their area. The plumbers, electricians, handymen I call are all independent, but they're also old, at the end of their careers, having a set of regulars they could take with them going independent, and having saved a bunch of money because they were getting paid fair wages in their prime. There are economies of scale in the skilled trades, they're just not the trades themselves.
Agree that it isn't easy going independent as a plumber. But it's easier than in, say, construction. That leaves room for trade-offs between ambition and risk on one hand and a safe, secure job on the other hand.
You pay $200/hr for the work you see onsite. What you don't see is overhead, drive time to site and back to HQ and because plumbers aren't guaranteed to work 40 hours a week.
If you're in Oregon or California, it looks like the wages there are much higher.
Also, you're probably paying the company which manages the plumbers, of which the plumbers don't directly earn that.
If you're hiring a plumber directly, I'd assume it's a more experienced one running their own business. In addition to charging you $200/hr for the work, they're probably doing their accounting and business management, billing, ordering parts and equipment, replacing tools, and communicating with clients.
I could see that only resulting in 10-20 billable hours per week.
Also, if many of their jobs are paid in cash, it's possible there's a significant amount that is unreported to the agencies generating these statistics.
To the business owners, towards tool and vehicle maintenance, to time sitting around talking to people on the phone trying to line up jobs or making bids, towards the substantial amount of material stock they need on hand, to saving money for the inevitable down turns in construction, etc.
For someone to come work in your house for 30 minutes, they have to compensate for 2-3 hours of time doing everything else.
Also it sounds like you live in a high cost of living area if you are paying that much for plumbers.
Sure there are a few good jobs plumbing new commercial construction that makes good money, but there is far more need and demand for people to crawl down into some residential crawlspace nobody else has been in for decades to fix and retrofit old garbage and clearing toilets and replacing wax rings or installing faucets or garbage disposals. Those aren't really money making jobs, especially when you have no idea what you might run into once you are down there.
