Question:
Over the last couple of years I've spread around here information about
alternative jobs/careers where the pay ain't too bad but you don't need a
PhD or spend ten years in low paid "preparation" for a highly specialized
occupation that has low lateral transferabilty, as much or more
age-discrimination hazards as anything else, politics, and a short career
half-life.
Answer:
Your idea of aircraft mechanics is pretty good. I am very mechanically
inclined. I live near an air port..
2 years of training seems miniscule to the 20 years of "training" I have gone
through for a phd job.. and still no hope of over 30 k per year.
If you get the gumption, maybe drive over there and "nose around" and see
if you can "network" yourself into contact with some people who might tell
you where these guys get off work, what exit gate, what time, and on the
way out try to nail a couple and find out what the deal is. I think I know
where I'm going to wind up on my expanded business, but you can blow off
these BLS statistics that say no-B.S. degree average wages are $25K or so,
and those NSF stats that say PhD ave wages are $70K, and just keep your
eyes open for gossip, rumors, ....anything about decent jobs at the higher
end of the pay scale.
Also, of note, a Dupont Nylon factory in southern Delaware (Seaford) is
laying off 900 people. The newspaper article I read went into lots of data
on the people there and the thing that struck me was that the average pay
for the whole factory was, (and I wish I could find the newspaper
article), in the low $50Ks. Now that is a factory! Most of those guys were
there all their lives and surely got decent COLA increments, too. Most of
the guys getting laid off are in their 50s, too. I'm sure they are not
hiring. Buuuuuut, again, my point is that there are decent jobs with quite
decent pay out there....you just have to find them, then decide to try to
make a play for one of them (Then pray they don't lay you off before you
retire [but its better than one year appointments and funding
uncertainty based on one year budgets]).
When you talk about coal mining, you have to talk about two completely
differenttopics. Underground coal and surface coal are about as different as
night and day.
Underground is typically (at least in Appalachia) thin seams of coal where
you're lucky to be able to crouch, let alone stand. You're dusty and dirty, your
lungs are full of coal dust, you have the constant threat of roof-falls .... In fact,
the coal-dust explosions that make the news are one of the less-likely hazards of the job.
(A former college classmate works for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. She
says the coal accident investigators earn every penny of their salary with what
they see of the aftermath of an accident.)
Surface coal is a completely different world - open air, minimal worry
about explosions, most jobs highly automated. In fact, in some of them you get to
run some of the biggest industrial equipment you've ever seen. Running one of those
draglines at an open pit coal mine is like driving a naval destroyer (they use the same
things in Florida for the phosphate mines), and they're about the same size. They take
a lot of training, and the people that run them are well paid. However, I really don't
find a job where all you do is scoop up the bucket, turn left, empty the bucket, turn
right, start over, to be all that interesting.
Your quote doesn't say where Mr. Damron's mine is, but I'm guessing
somewhere in Appalachia. If so, there are a lot of other factors going into his trouble
in hiring someone besides just the unpleasant nature of the business. He'd be in an area where
family ties go back many generations, and a lot of those people cannot even conceive of
moving over the next ridge, let alone into another state.
Mining also tends to take place in remote locations, which is not exactly
attractive to people interested in raising a family. And you have to keep in mind the
fact that whatever you're mining, it's a finite resource. Eventually you will dig up
everything of value, and at that point your facing a ghost-town. You don't even have to
have dug up the entire deposit, either. Let someone in Brazil discover a richer
deposit, and their lower mining costs will more than pay for the extra cost of shipping the
stuff to this country. (This has actually happened to the US iron ore industry.)
