"Boomers seem very resistant to understanding that the living standards"....

[madville]

112. There are still opportunities out there

For someone straight out of high school to build a nice career with a pension. I always encourage young people to look at the trades, look at municipal employment it cities in their area, utilities, and the military.

I retired from the military and now work for a large municipal electric utility and we also have gas and water departments. They hire apprentices regularly in our apprenticeship programs, they start at 35-40k and top out at 65k over the five year apprentice program, no cost health/dental, and are in the pension from day one. A 30 year career gets them about a 67% pension and the 401k matches 5% of their base salary whether they contribute or not. They make journeyman in 5 years and the journeyman payscale right now is $35-44 an hour, top out in 4 years.

It’s harder and harder for them to recruit and retain younger people these days. Many are turned off now because we’re still required to drug test for THC, others don’t want to dedicate 5 years to learning their craft in an apprenticeship. Some divisions in the departments here are offering sign up bonuses now for the first time ever because recruiting new workers is so difficult.