What's nutty to me though is that we don't have enough of any kind of skilled tradespeople either. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, cabinet makers, roofers - and I know it isn't just isolated to my geographic area. I've got a friend who is in the middle of building a luxury home to sell - he's basically doing all the work himself because he can't find guys who will just show up, stay off drugs on the job (hazardous!), and seek to do good work. Oh, and it helps if you don't steal tools from the job site too.

Here's a couple jobs that are in short supply: Home inspectors and appraisers. After the 2009 crash, they changed the licensing rules and it's led to a serious shortage of appraisers in particular. Both of these are gigs where you get to set your own schedule and can make some reasonable money while not needing to be a rocket surgeon. Yet, we can't find enough people willing to do it.

This is completely anecdotal and local but I am so with you there.

We have had really great experiences with tradespeople in one way and also incredibly bad with others.

A lot electrical work is required to be done by an electrician here. But what do you do when you have the electrician come out for a quote, you have the manufacturers manual opened to the page with the specs and the electrician can't make sense of it?

The specs clearly stated that the appliance needed multiple separate lines, including min wire gauge and the double pole breaker amperage. I knew I didn't have enough space in the panel for the required double poles. That's part of the reason I called the guy in the first place. And then he tells me it's no problem, the existing wire is sufficient and I can just order the appliance and he's gonna 'hook it up'. Unbelievable!

It took me quite some time of repeating (in different ways) all the info presented in the manual to get him to call his boss, read out the manual multiple times, telling me various half truths, being made to call his boss again and relay the parts of the specs he left out to arrive at the final answer.

The only thing that guy would've been good for is changing alight fixture, which is something you are required to hire an electrician for here. Where I grew up that is something an electrician will not even consider giving you a call back about if you were to try and hire him.

I have a relative that’s an appraiser, and he’s basically been scratching by for decades.

I can’t speak to what it’s been like in the past, but this summer there were appraisals for basic houses being picked up for $2K. We’re so short of appraisers in our area that they are coming from the other side of the state - and it seems to be worth their wile $$$. On average they are running $800/ house… could it be that the AMS is taking all the money and the appraiser doesn’t get much? Maybe?

You can't build a market around a one time summer event followed by decades of low volume/pay.

If people aren't doing it, then the money isn't reasonable.

Cute sentiment but wrong. These are skills, it's not Uber where you can simply choose to be a driver tomorrow without prior training. Lots of people simply cannot do these jobs, further, lots who might be able to are put off by the months/years of necessary training.

The money isn't reasonable for appraising. You are paid per appraisal, and the AMC will take 30-50% of that fee as a middleman. To even get to the point where you can make money as an Appraiser you need to be certified based on state level requirements. For my state

-154 hours of classes ($1000+)

-get initial license ($160)

-1,000 hours logged as a trainee of an appraiser (so anyone teaching loses money to pay a trainee or you work for free)

-apply ($35) to take and pass a state exam ($126)

- get full license ($175)

So it takes at least $1,500 and at least 6 months to even start making money. Then many appraisals require actually entering the home and taking pictures or a drive by, so there is massive amounts of travel on top of the paperwork. It's way more detailed than just picking a number for price based on X reasons, and anything that is inaccurate is on you to fix as part of the original fee.

Or the people are irrational and self-destructive.

I've annecdotally heard that appraisers do not make good money.

However after getting several houses inspected, making good money doing that, I can believe.

Yep. Which makes the entire thing absolutely ridiculous when the argument becomes “we need jobs for people to do jobs.”

UBI and whatnot is inevitable.

Why does UBI follow a lack of useful labor? A dominant ideology in the US is that it is unjust to take from the skilled, so those without useful skills should simply be left to their struggles.