I work a blue collar mechanical job. To keep things vague, becoming fully licensed to perform work on my own requires over 2 years of training that culminates in oral and practical testing from a federal entity. I’m a year~ into my on the job training.
Anyway, the shop I work for is a smaller facility so I understand that working here will never be as well financially compensated as you can be working at one of the big companies in our field who’s technicians are unionized (they cap out over $65/hr).
That said, I was able to sneak a peek at my supervisors paystub recently and he’s making less than 70k a year. This man has been doing what we do for 20 years and is the right hand man to our company’s owner. Seeing this made me more curious and I was able to look at a few others pay and the lead tech is only making $6/hr more than me with over 10 years experience. The less experienced guys with licenses are only making a couple dollars more than me as an apprentice.
Needless to say, I’m pretty disheartened about making this a long term employer. The silver lining is that at least there are much better opportunities waiting for me once I serve my time here and acquire my license.
Just a shame to see how poorly compensated highly technical blue collar jobs are unless you’re working for a massive company, but that’s just business I suppose.