According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics the mean hourly wage for cabinet makers and bench carpenters as of May 2022 was $20.25 per hour. Even in San Francisco the mean hourly wage was only $26.37. Lesson for today - your instincts abiut whay real world, non-dev jobs pay are totally out of whack with reality
Would you believe the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Here are the "Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2022" for "51-7011 Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes517011.htm
(2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data.
The "Top paying industries for Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" are:
Employment Annual mean wage
Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing 240 $ 60,520
Federal Executive Branch 190 $ 60,460
In the "Industries with the highest concentration of employment in Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters" the best paying is:
Motor Vehicle Body 3,040 $ 49,990
and Trailer Manufacturing
The most common (at 20% of the industry) is:
Furniture and Related 68,860 $ 41,620
Product Manufacturing
EDIT: in 2001 the mean annual wage for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters was $25,120 with median of $10.74/hour and mean of $11.40. https://archive.org/details/welcometoamerica00demi/page/984/... . (It is the oldest record I could find, published in "Welcome to America : the complete guide for immigrants : the English-Russian version".)
What did your father do in the cabinet field to get $20 an hour in 1991?
He had just moved to the US in 1988. He had no real wood working experience beyond building a small sailboat when he was a teenager. In 1989 my mom and I moved here with him. In 1991, he got a raise to $20 and we went to Price Club (Costco) and bought a ton of groceries, and took a photo with them on the kitchen table with all 3 of us using a self timer. It's a major memory of mine.
He was one of the 'foreman' in the shop handling the custom fixture/reception desk line. So if Sun Microsystems at the time wanted new cabinets for their new building, the rest of the shop would build the boxes, but my dad's department would build the reception desk. Basically, you could give my dad some drawings from an architect and my dad could figure out how to make it, while also getting it into the building. He was still cutting and assembling then too as 'engineering' and cutlisting is a short part of that overall work.
From the BoL, a cabinetmaker is someone who job is to "Cut, shape, and assemble wooden articles or set up and operate a variety of woodworking machines, such as power saws, jointers, and mortisers to surface, cut, or shape lumber or to fabricate parts for wood products."
Your father did more than that. He was a foreman, he did design, and he worked on custom office furniture including installation. Of course he gets paid more than a non-supervisory cabinetmaker working in a factory.
As a first approximation, "First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers" at https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes471011.htm says the mean wage is $77,650 - nearly twice as much as the mean wage for a cabinetmaker at $42,120.
> You're not going to find someone screwing together ikea like boxes in America.
That's actually quite literally what my cabinetmaker did for my most recent home. Ikea cabinets cut down to size in his shop, and installed when ready/all the parts got in. Other brands seemed pretty identical to this - largely premade parts with a few sections designed to cut down to size.
Didn't seem to take much more than a measuring tape and a couple different saws to me. I'm sure I'm being flippant, but it was eye opening seeing that process vs. watching my grandparents build a second home growing up.
Part of the reason wages have not kept up is also due to the work becoming less skilled. The middle has been more or less completely hollowed out as far as I can tell. The types of job my grandfathers both would have set the dinner table with in their respective trades simply no longer exist. You either need to go mass-market low-end and seemingly as low quality as gets you a check in the mail, or high-end luxury market and all the spit'n'polish that entails.
I'd love to be wrong - but trying to simply find those craftsmen in the "middle" to hire is more or less impossible for me.
That's not a cabinet maker, that's a handyman basically.
When I said people should go work for a cabinet shop and make $60k+, I meant in a place that's making medium to high grade cabinets, custom hopefully or atleast to spec for track homes at worst.
What you're describing is somebody modifying mass produced cabinets from a catalog and installing them.
The installers I know all make $80k+ a year if they do work you're not embarrassed about.
You earlier described the position as "screwing a cabinet together for $60k", when you wondered why a stocker making $40K wouldn't want to change jobs.
Now you are describing a position which requires non-trivial training.
How long does it take to learn those skills? Who pays for the training?
https://www.carpenterstraininginstitute.org/apprenticeship-p... says "To graduate from cabinet maker apprentice to journeyworker, you’ll complete 7,000 hours of on-the-job training (OJT) and 640 hours of classroom learning." That's much more training than needed for stocking. It gives these statistics for the carpenters training as a whole:
Average earnings for all first-year students:
$33,436 – $46,363 + benefits*
Average earnings for all second-year students:
$45,600 – $63,200 + benefits
Average earnings for all third-year students:
$51,666 – $71,646 + benefits*
Average earnings for all fourth-year students:
$57,748 – $80,077 + benefits*
Journeyperson
$60,789 – $84,295 + benefits*
Foreman
$72,485 – $97,010 + benefits*
which again means $60K/year requires a lot more training than being a stock clerk.
Can you point to a job listing for this sort of position? I looked and found roughly comparable positions, but paying less than $80K.
"As a Woodworking Prop Builder, you will play a pivotal role in bringing our clients' visions to life by crafting unique and eye-catching props and decor pieces. Your craftsmanship will be on display at a wide range of events, from weddings and corporate gatherings to private parties and more." paying $18-$22 hourly
"The Craftsworker, Carpenter position focuses on carpentry and basic construction related projects/repairs. The position requires good math skills and the ability to think outside of the box. Experience in set design or custom woodworking is a plus. The Craftsworker, Carpenter works with a variety of materials, such as wood, fiberglass, rebar and concrete. The Craftsworker, Carpenter is often called upon to build/construct things that don’t come with blueprints or an instruction manual; they are built to specifications of the client and/or to fit in an allotted amount of space. Projects can vary from day to day, based on work orders, department requests, routine maintenance, or capital projects. Tasks can include such things as roofing; fencing; wood structure repairs; fixing doors/door hardware; installing door systems and windows; fixing ADA building access buttons; fixing shift doors in an animal enclosure; constructing safety fences/barriers for an exhibit; designing and building an automatic animal feeder disguised to look like a tree; or constructing various exhibit elements such as artificial plants, rocks or trees." paying $30/hour. That's far more than cabinet working and still only $60K/year.
(The site I was using doesn't have linkable URLs.)
Zip Recruiter has positions for cabinet maker in the range "$12-22/hr".
It matters to me. And unless we want to assume my father was special and gifted a salary long ago, and now everyone I know in that industry from his lifetime in it is an anomaly, I have to talk about it.
Sure you could. At that point you should just give up entirely on talking to people if you think I'm lying about the experience of my cabinet maker father.
You could be telling the truth as far as you know. Did your father tell you everything?
That's a simple way to resolve this impasse - point to a job ad for a cabinet maker offering $60K/year for someone with no "real wood working experience beyond building a small sailboat". [1]
You know an employer right now who is looking for people. Can you point to a help-wanted ad for that company showing what they are looking for?
I did a job search and found a $66K/year Cabinet Maker I job in Hawaii (which is one of the best paying places for cabinet workers according to the BLS tables you don't trust), for the state Department of Education. However, it requires apprentice training or 4 years of carpentry experience. https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Cabinet+maker&l=Hawaii
From the same site, in Hawaii, there's an offer for on-the-job training, starting at $17/hour, so about $35K/year + overtime.
Otherwise there are cabinet maker jobs in Hawaii in the $20-$25/hour range and require a few years of experience. The same holds for elsewhere in the US.
I did find that CalTech is looking for "a Journeyperson level contributor in carpentry and cabinet making" at https://phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf03/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisiti... and they pay $29.75 - $43.75 Per Hour, but require "Completion of apprenticeship or equivalent training, one year or more of journeyperson level experience and five or more year’s total experience in cabinet and/or carpentry trades"
Furthermore, that person "will apply journeyperson level skills in providing building maintenance, laboratory installations and rehabilitation projects. This person will also apply cabinet making skills to the layout, fabrication, and installation of new and rehabilitation projects" and must be able to weld, and they would like someone with at least 5 years of work experience in a university or facilities setting and CNC machining certification.
So yes, "approach $100k for dependable people that known the field" is possible. But that's someone with years of experience, and for something far beyond the basic skills your father had.
