Young guy on our street been learning to weld for the last couple of years. He told me that there are a lot of jobs available, and on good money. He also told me that most don’t even stay on the course for more than a few weeks, or even days. Those who leave say its because it’s often cold or it’s hard, heavy work.
Could become a problem in the near future.
Opposite_Boot_6903 on
Tecforce are a great company. Anyone around Derby looking for a solid trade, I recommend looking into this.
Fearless-King3399 on
Fibre Laser Welder – once these become mainstream in a couple of years anyone with five minutes experience will be able to do the job better than most experienced mig/ tig welders today
The only skill will be ability to read drawings
Just_Match_2322 on
It doesn’t help that apprenticeships are still chaotic. You simply don’t know if the training you get from one company will make you employable by another.
InformationNew66 on
Whatever happened to “AI will take all the jobs” in news Today?
qwerty_1965 on
I guess we’re assuming robots will do all the trade skills and with no tea breaks.
nearlyFried on
It’s the same problem as every other industry. Companies want experienced people only and they’re unwilling to take people who can weld but don’t have two years experience.
Just to highlight the ludicrousness, I did a welding night class for three months, mig, tig and mma welding. I also have verbal agreement that a local community development fund are willing to pay my entire wage at a welding job for some amount of time. But the companies I’ve contacted with help from someone at Enable are yet to take us up on this offer of a free welder.
Scotland btw.
AxelFastlane on
If it’s needed, wages will rise until the jobs can be filled. More people will train and it’ll balance out.
thercoon on
I work in the welding industry. The vast majority of fabricator shops are abysmal, freezing cold, absolute garbage air quality, miserably dirty work and overall crap working conditions. As a man in my 30s I’d rather stack shelves in asda for half the wage than work in a fab shop. Nobody will do the job until conditions improve.
NostrilWarbler on
Unfortunately a lot of bigger companies gave next to no opportunities to people for a decade or two. Despite being warned the management done nothing and are now playing catch up for skills and experience depletion that’s happening to their work forces
hadawayandshite on
My nephew just got a job in this- lucrative. He’s not going to be far off higher tax band as a teenager
DanHarold on
I hope in the future more companies offer shorter weeks, I found it really physically demanding full time plus companies always want you to do overtime and work Saturday’s which is just depressing, don’t think I would go back into it unless it was part time, the amount of hazards you are exposed to aswell, is it really worth it?
Georgist-Minarchist on
if schools didn’t push UNI so much then people would go to trades , being told apprenticeship aren’t worth it and UNI is the best option constantly doesn’t help
inevitable_dave on
It’s easy to see this as being the problem of a “soft” generation, but the job is inherently dangerous, physically demanding, and the wages at the entry level are pitiful if not insulting – nowhere near enough to be liveable.
regprenticer on
> A welding firm in Derby has launched an in-house training facility in an attempt tackle a declining and ageing workforce.
This is the way it was up until the 90s.
Employers needed staff, they trained them up to do their job and many jobs were for life.
If you went back in time no one would believe that in the future it would be a revolutionary idea.
stevielfc76 on
I work in this field and our production manager was complaining about not being able to hire apprentices or young, qualified welders,
I put it like this – you could get into welding but even in a decent fab shop it’s cold in winter, roasting in summer, noisy, dirty, loud and full of fume (even with good LEV system there’ll be residual fume despite what people think) or you could work in a call centre on better money, AC in the summer, heating in the winter, no H&S issues (not in comparison anyways).
The only way we can get younger people into the industry is more pay (overtime is a necessity to get decent money), better work life balance and overall better conditions.
funfuse1976 on
Just go slinging and lifting,it’s the same money and much easier to learn.
buggerthatforagame on
Was a welder, 5 year pipe fitting apentiship, I looked my instructors , middle age men coughing up there lungs , and realised there are no old Welders , good ones yes , but no old ones ..so I swapped over to domestic central heating service, repairs…fiberglass is as bad
-foutupourfoutu on
Indeed have the average salary for welders at £18.37 in the UK and £22.90 in London. I wouldn’t be falling over myself to work for that much in a physical job likely to shave years of my life
Limp-Asparagus-1227 on
My brother in law was a welder. Earned good money, but shit working conditions. Also repeatedly made redundant and rehired as needs of business kept changing. He’s now a part time janitor and much happier, even though much poorer.
godsgunsandgoats on
From my perspective a lot of the problem is this country is there’s people out there willing to do the work but employers are extremely selective for no real reason and opportunities to start from the ground up are limited. Whenever a vacancy crops up they expect a perfect candidate with decades of experience who can work at lightning pace.
I went back to college and got qualifications in joinery in my 20’s whilst working with my mate who’s a joiner during that time. He couldn’t keep me in work forever but he enabled me to gain some practical experience whilst gaining the relevant qualifications. After gaining those qualifications I spent three years getting knocked back from god knows how many jobs before eventually moving to Australia and within a couple of days I’d secured a job working as a metal fabricator. I did that for 9 months, picked up a lot of new skills and felt my experience in joinery helped in that job. My employer was all for sponsoring me but unfortunately covid arrived and I had to return home. After coming home I applied for joinery and metal fabrication jobs and didn’t get a single interview. I now work as an engineers assistant for a large company in warehousing, it pays fairly well and it’s not a bad job but I don’t make much use of the skills I’ve acquired and the ‘engineering’ aspect of it is very limited. Every now and again I’ll apply for something closer to what I’m qualified in and never even get an interview.
I’ve said this for years now but one of the best things this country could do would be to set up something similar to Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in America back in the day. Employ people on a low to reasonable wage, provide training in key trades this country needs and use said workforce for infrastructure projects and house building. A double edged sword that could help fix infrastructure issues whilst also upskilling the nations workforce. It won’t happen though because the political class of this country are short-termist, vision-less morons.
MikeInPajamas on
40 years ago, when I was studying electrical and electronic engineering, the old guy who ran the program recommended we choose a career in high voltage systems: transformers, power grid… that sort of thing… as, he said, although microelectronics was the popular choice, the country needed high voltage engineers to replace the old guys.
I wonder if that’s still the case…
TheCharalampos on
Welding pays somewhat decently but damn if it isn’t a job I’d ever do – too easy to break yourself from burns to inhaling gas, to metal shavings. Too dangerous.
Rho-Mu13 on
I work in construction and there is a huge disparity in native welder quality compared to import. Part of this is becuase construction wages are not the same as nuclear, offshore etc, but the majority of the welders on my site (70 or so at peak) have been and will be foreign sourced.
grumpy_pants on
We’re a few years a way from reaping the reward for going the American route of companies not training. Until they do then there’s nothing that’s going to help
Toedipper19 on
Aircraft industry is the same we are struggling to find young people with good hand skills ( except their thumbs of course) Schools need to go back to teaching basic skills. There are loads of educated idiots out there with a degree and no basic hand skills.
Crazyivan1979 on
I work in health and safety consulting. I have many different clients. I work predominantly in workplace monitoring which includes steel fabricators. I’ll go in and monitor operators exposure to welding fumes by affixing monitors to them. Results can be pretty high compared to their WELs especially if there are little controls in place. Fumes are tiny particles containing many different metals plus ozone. The best way to minimise the risk to health from inhalation is using a combo of RPE (PAPR) and local ventilation extraction (LEV). Also admin controls will help.
Raidenuk on
My neighbor has been a fabricator / welder since leaving school ( 50 now). I hear him every morning coughing his lungs up. I asked him once if he regretted his career path. Guess the answer ?
iamakoni on
I’d love to learn to weld, however I can’t financially justify leaving my current job to trade up. Prison officer on £40k with a family, dying to leave to earn a trade and live a happier life.
Astriania on
Maybe we should see this coming and expand training before it happens.
Companies used to have in house training where new hires could learn from the existing pros, and (if they picked it up which most did) they’d have a job at the end of it. This scheme sounds great, but it’s problematic that it’s newsworthy, not the norm.
Remote_Storage_4107 on
I work in this industry. Two things to add to the discourse.
1) the HSE require ventilated air fed masks now when welding steel. So if you work for someone who isn’t providing that then you can push to have it provided.
2) The Welding Institute allows “time served” welders to complete the European Welding Engineer course meaning you can (for a fair cost) switch to an office based Engineer job mid career without doing a degree. Welding engineering is a role that really likes to see practical experience more than,say, civil eng.
Nice one
Dizzy_Engine_4854 on
I got out of welding when still young a time served welder warned my Dad about the health effects he suffered. Typically at the end of a shift even if you were wearing a protective mask and using fume extraction the inside of the protective gauss was lined with a brown sludge. Many welders never reached retirement suffering dehabiltating respiratory problems leading to early death.
rev-fr-john on
The youngsters will stand around looking confused and asking why there isn’t a metal joining app.
The problem with welding is it tends to be done outside, frequently in the cold and wet, but setting aside the health hazards presented by the welding process, there’s some physical issues to deal with, not all welds will be easy to get to, some contortions will need to be entered into all while maintaining a steady hand for considerable periods of time in order to lay down a good weld, none of this is going to appeal to most people born in the last 30 years, but there’s one more problem, experience!
Most people leaving college now and for the last 30 years have been told that their skills will enable them to earn a veritable fortune, unfortunately employers know the differences between college experience and real world experience and that sometimes your college skills while quite impressive are not that relevant to the modern workplace, so no, you won’t be on 86,000 a year in you first year, you’ll be on little more than minimum wage because for a few months you’ll be little more than a liability with a shit ton of attitude.
ModeratelySalacious on
Cause honestly it’s not a great job youre spending your health to make good money and even then you need to be a really really good welder if you want the really good money. You need to be able to grt x out of y welds perfect according to x ray machines for a lot of the high end welding jobs and honestly its not ducking easy as someone who’s only had some tangential education in engineering.
Not easy, not great conditions and as someone else mentioned theres a lot of hazardous materials involved that take years off your life.
DjCounta101 on
This problem is tradewide and nationwide… I work in a Food Service / delivery Warehouse that supplies schools, Hospitals, Councils and many private businesses we have about 60-65 members of staff, I was the second youngest person to work in the warehouse at the time when i joined i had just turned 20 the youngest being 18 he left about 3 months later, average age was around 35-40, I am now 35 and I am still the second youngest apart from 1 warehouse worker who is 22 and one of their parents is a Director (wonder how they go the job haha) The average age of the staff now is about 50-55+ and now i get to the point…….
Young Working class people are not taking work that young working class people of previous generations took..
It is too easy to ”get by” in other ways like Family, claiming sick or benefits. A old mate of mine who worked with me for a few years now earns about 2500 a month not including getting his rent payed for by the dole, he told me the other night in the Local, afterwards i was telling him why do i bother working if you have slightly less money but every minute of the day to yourself and he sort of laughed it off and was like ”why the fuck do i care where the money comes from Im sorted”… and yes hes a pisshead and smokes dope all day ”sorted”… Honestly it is what i would be doing if I could live comfortably but knowing Im useless to anyone.
Dont get me wrong i know plenty of people in years gone by were claiming benefits for life but i realized the other day people in the 80s and 90s took benefits but also worked cash in hand to make ends meet No young lads on the sick or UC i know do that, So somehow Ironically consecutive Governments have solved alot of the ”benefit fraud” by making it so easy to get the money (my mate has never had a face to face sit down at the dole for 4 years) and increased the amount you can get through PiP and other exemptions that the new generations of young working class kids dont even start their working /contributing life just diagnose themselves with something and brush their hands with hard graft and say fuck it.
INB4 ”Not everyone is like this” I know but its is more prevalent then ever i feel and it correlates with higher probability of ”mental health problems” and lower rates of Marriage and Childbirth the further into the future we go, Honestly more and more young in’s i speak to that start work or i see around in life they are so anxious and depressed about everything and they haven’t done anything yet These fucking Phones are ruining lives and its gonna implode the workforce especially when AI takes white collar jobs away more and more everyday.
A 22 year old lad came in for 3 days and never came back after the weekend the first week of December the warehouse manager took 3 interviews last week the youngest applicant was 38 this is fast pace and hard physical work. Im worried about this and my eyes and ears are confirming my ideas about it more everyday.
LenzaRNG on
This was starting to happen many many years ago.
My ex’s grandfather, who was called Percy, was a trained welder, he worked his whole life at Ransomes in Ipswich, helping make lawnmowers.
The time came for Ransomes to downsize, so they needed to make some workers redundant. Percy went to the management and demanded that he be among those made redundant, since he was near the age of retirement and he wanted to save a younger worker’s job. It apparently took him quite a bit of pushing to be allowed to do this, because Ransomes didn’t want to lose a welder.
37 Comments
[removed]
Young guy on our street been learning to weld for the last couple of years. He told me that there are a lot of jobs available, and on good money. He also told me that most don’t even stay on the course for more than a few weeks, or even days. Those who leave say its because it’s often cold or it’s hard, heavy work.
Could become a problem in the near future.
Tecforce are a great company. Anyone around Derby looking for a solid trade, I recommend looking into this.
Fibre Laser Welder – once these become mainstream in a couple of years anyone with five minutes experience will be able to do the job better than most experienced mig/ tig welders today
The only skill will be ability to read drawings
It doesn’t help that apprenticeships are still chaotic. You simply don’t know if the training you get from one company will make you employable by another.
Whatever happened to “AI will take all the jobs” in news Today?
I guess we’re assuming robots will do all the trade skills and with no tea breaks.
It’s the same problem as every other industry. Companies want experienced people only and they’re unwilling to take people who can weld but don’t have two years experience.
Just to highlight the ludicrousness, I did a welding night class for three months, mig, tig and mma welding. I also have verbal agreement that a local community development fund are willing to pay my entire wage at a welding job for some amount of time. But the companies I’ve contacted with help from someone at Enable are yet to take us up on this offer of a free welder.
Scotland btw.
If it’s needed, wages will rise until the jobs can be filled. More people will train and it’ll balance out.
I work in the welding industry. The vast majority of fabricator shops are abysmal, freezing cold, absolute garbage air quality, miserably dirty work and overall crap working conditions. As a man in my 30s I’d rather stack shelves in asda for half the wage than work in a fab shop. Nobody will do the job until conditions improve.
Unfortunately a lot of bigger companies gave next to no opportunities to people for a decade or two. Despite being warned the management done nothing and are now playing catch up for skills and experience depletion that’s happening to their work forces
My nephew just got a job in this- lucrative. He’s not going to be far off higher tax band as a teenager
I hope in the future more companies offer shorter weeks, I found it really physically demanding full time plus companies always want you to do overtime and work Saturday’s which is just depressing, don’t think I would go back into it unless it was part time, the amount of hazards you are exposed to aswell, is it really worth it?
if schools didn’t push UNI so much then people would go to trades , being told apprenticeship aren’t worth it and UNI is the best option constantly doesn’t help
It’s easy to see this as being the problem of a “soft” generation, but the job is inherently dangerous, physically demanding, and the wages at the entry level are pitiful if not insulting – nowhere near enough to be liveable.
> A welding firm in Derby has launched an in-house training facility in an attempt tackle a declining and ageing workforce.
This is the way it was up until the 90s.
Employers needed staff, they trained them up to do their job and many jobs were for life.
If you went back in time no one would believe that in the future it would be a revolutionary idea.
I work in this field and our production manager was complaining about not being able to hire apprentices or young, qualified welders,
I put it like this – you could get into welding but even in a decent fab shop it’s cold in winter, roasting in summer, noisy, dirty, loud and full of fume (even with good LEV system there’ll be residual fume despite what people think) or you could work in a call centre on better money, AC in the summer, heating in the winter, no H&S issues (not in comparison anyways).
The only way we can get younger people into the industry is more pay (overtime is a necessity to get decent money), better work life balance and overall better conditions.
Just go slinging and lifting,it’s the same money and much easier to learn.
Was a welder, 5 year pipe fitting apentiship, I looked my instructors , middle age men coughing up there lungs , and realised there are no old Welders , good ones yes , but no old ones ..so I swapped over to domestic central heating service, repairs…fiberglass is as bad
Indeed have the average salary for welders at £18.37 in the UK and £22.90 in London. I wouldn’t be falling over myself to work for that much in a physical job likely to shave years of my life
My brother in law was a welder. Earned good money, but shit working conditions. Also repeatedly made redundant and rehired as needs of business kept changing. He’s now a part time janitor and much happier, even though much poorer.
From my perspective a lot of the problem is this country is there’s people out there willing to do the work but employers are extremely selective for no real reason and opportunities to start from the ground up are limited. Whenever a vacancy crops up they expect a perfect candidate with decades of experience who can work at lightning pace.
I went back to college and got qualifications in joinery in my 20’s whilst working with my mate who’s a joiner during that time. He couldn’t keep me in work forever but he enabled me to gain some practical experience whilst gaining the relevant qualifications. After gaining those qualifications I spent three years getting knocked back from god knows how many jobs before eventually moving to Australia and within a couple of days I’d secured a job working as a metal fabricator. I did that for 9 months, picked up a lot of new skills and felt my experience in joinery helped in that job. My employer was all for sponsoring me but unfortunately covid arrived and I had to return home. After coming home I applied for joinery and metal fabrication jobs and didn’t get a single interview. I now work as an engineers assistant for a large company in warehousing, it pays fairly well and it’s not a bad job but I don’t make much use of the skills I’ve acquired and the ‘engineering’ aspect of it is very limited. Every now and again I’ll apply for something closer to what I’m qualified in and never even get an interview.
I’ve said this for years now but one of the best things this country could do would be to set up something similar to Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps in America back in the day. Employ people on a low to reasonable wage, provide training in key trades this country needs and use said workforce for infrastructure projects and house building. A double edged sword that could help fix infrastructure issues whilst also upskilling the nations workforce. It won’t happen though because the political class of this country are short-termist, vision-less morons.
40 years ago, when I was studying electrical and electronic engineering, the old guy who ran the program recommended we choose a career in high voltage systems: transformers, power grid… that sort of thing… as, he said, although microelectronics was the popular choice, the country needed high voltage engineers to replace the old guys.
I wonder if that’s still the case…
Welding pays somewhat decently but damn if it isn’t a job I’d ever do – too easy to break yourself from burns to inhaling gas, to metal shavings. Too dangerous.
I work in construction and there is a huge disparity in native welder quality compared to import. Part of this is becuase construction wages are not the same as nuclear, offshore etc, but the majority of the welders on my site (70 or so at peak) have been and will be foreign sourced.
We’re a few years a way from reaping the reward for going the American route of companies not training. Until they do then there’s nothing that’s going to help
Aircraft industry is the same we are struggling to find young people with good hand skills ( except their thumbs of course) Schools need to go back to teaching basic skills. There are loads of educated idiots out there with a degree and no basic hand skills.
I work in health and safety consulting. I have many different clients. I work predominantly in workplace monitoring which includes steel fabricators. I’ll go in and monitor operators exposure to welding fumes by affixing monitors to them. Results can be pretty high compared to their WELs especially if there are little controls in place. Fumes are tiny particles containing many different metals plus ozone. The best way to minimise the risk to health from inhalation is using a combo of RPE (PAPR) and local ventilation extraction (LEV). Also admin controls will help.
My neighbor has been a fabricator / welder since leaving school ( 50 now). I hear him every morning coughing his lungs up. I asked him once if he regretted his career path. Guess the answer ?
I’d love to learn to weld, however I can’t financially justify leaving my current job to trade up. Prison officer on £40k with a family, dying to leave to earn a trade and live a happier life.
Maybe we should see this coming and expand training before it happens.
Companies used to have in house training where new hires could learn from the existing pros, and (if they picked it up which most did) they’d have a job at the end of it. This scheme sounds great, but it’s problematic that it’s newsworthy, not the norm.
I work in this industry. Two things to add to the discourse.
1) the HSE require ventilated air fed masks now when welding steel. So if you work for someone who isn’t providing that then you can push to have it provided.
2) The Welding Institute allows “time served” welders to complete the European Welding Engineer course meaning you can (for a fair cost) switch to an office based Engineer job mid career without doing a degree. Welding engineering is a role that really likes to see practical experience more than,say, civil eng.
Nice one
I got out of welding when still young a time served welder warned my Dad about the health effects he suffered. Typically at the end of a shift even if you were wearing a protective mask and using fume extraction the inside of the protective gauss was lined with a brown sludge. Many welders never reached retirement suffering dehabiltating respiratory problems leading to early death.
The youngsters will stand around looking confused and asking why there isn’t a metal joining app.
The problem with welding is it tends to be done outside, frequently in the cold and wet, but setting aside the health hazards presented by the welding process, there’s some physical issues to deal with, not all welds will be easy to get to, some contortions will need to be entered into all while maintaining a steady hand for considerable periods of time in order to lay down a good weld, none of this is going to appeal to most people born in the last 30 years, but there’s one more problem, experience!
Most people leaving college now and for the last 30 years have been told that their skills will enable them to earn a veritable fortune, unfortunately employers know the differences between college experience and real world experience and that sometimes your college skills while quite impressive are not that relevant to the modern workplace, so no, you won’t be on 86,000 a year in you first year, you’ll be on little more than minimum wage because for a few months you’ll be little more than a liability with a shit ton of attitude.
Cause honestly it’s not a great job youre spending your health to make good money and even then you need to be a really really good welder if you want the really good money. You need to be able to grt x out of y welds perfect according to x ray machines for a lot of the high end welding jobs and honestly its not ducking easy as someone who’s only had some tangential education in engineering.
Not easy, not great conditions and as someone else mentioned theres a lot of hazardous materials involved that take years off your life.
This problem is tradewide and nationwide… I work in a Food Service / delivery Warehouse that supplies schools, Hospitals, Councils and many private businesses we have about 60-65 members of staff, I was the second youngest person to work in the warehouse at the time when i joined i had just turned 20 the youngest being 18 he left about 3 months later, average age was around 35-40, I am now 35 and I am still the second youngest apart from 1 warehouse worker who is 22 and one of their parents is a Director (wonder how they go the job haha) The average age of the staff now is about 50-55+ and now i get to the point…….
Young Working class people are not taking work that young working class people of previous generations took..
It is too easy to ”get by” in other ways like Family, claiming sick or benefits. A old mate of mine who worked with me for a few years now earns about 2500 a month not including getting his rent payed for by the dole, he told me the other night in the Local, afterwards i was telling him why do i bother working if you have slightly less money but every minute of the day to yourself and he sort of laughed it off and was like ”why the fuck do i care where the money comes from Im sorted”… and yes hes a pisshead and smokes dope all day ”sorted”… Honestly it is what i would be doing if I could live comfortably but knowing Im useless to anyone.
Dont get me wrong i know plenty of people in years gone by were claiming benefits for life but i realized the other day people in the 80s and 90s took benefits but also worked cash in hand to make ends meet No young lads on the sick or UC i know do that, So somehow Ironically consecutive Governments have solved alot of the ”benefit fraud” by making it so easy to get the money (my mate has never had a face to face sit down at the dole for 4 years) and increased the amount you can get through PiP and other exemptions that the new generations of young working class kids dont even start their working /contributing life just diagnose themselves with something and brush their hands with hard graft and say fuck it.
INB4 ”Not everyone is like this” I know but its is more prevalent then ever i feel and it correlates with higher probability of ”mental health problems” and lower rates of Marriage and Childbirth the further into the future we go, Honestly more and more young in’s i speak to that start work or i see around in life they are so anxious and depressed about everything and they haven’t done anything yet These fucking Phones are ruining lives and its gonna implode the workforce especially when AI takes white collar jobs away more and more everyday.
A 22 year old lad came in for 3 days and never came back after the weekend the first week of December the warehouse manager took 3 interviews last week the youngest applicant was 38 this is fast pace and hard physical work. Im worried about this and my eyes and ears are confirming my ideas about it more everyday.
This was starting to happen many many years ago.
My ex’s grandfather, who was called Percy, was a trained welder, he worked his whole life at Ransomes in Ipswich, helping make lawnmowers.
The time came for Ransomes to downsize, so they needed to make some workers redundant. Percy went to the management and demanded that he be among those made redundant, since he was near the age of retirement and he wanted to save a younger worker’s job. It apparently took him quite a bit of pushing to be allowed to do this, because Ransomes didn’t want to lose a welder.