Quote (Sankturio @ Jan 13 2026 05:54am)

That is totally not true.
Roughly ONLY 1/3 of its entire population have the equivalent on a highschool diploma.
The coastal cities r shiny - the rest is living in brutal poverty.

Quote (ferdia @ Jan 13 2026 12:45pm)

I thought of replying but note that refuting you would be off topic. The US has jobs, not everyone can get the 6 digit jobs though.

Quote (chum @ Jan 13 2026 12:59pm)

Can you stop being sensible and get back to ai art.

Thank you kindly.

Quote (T3XBOT @ Jan 13 2026 04:43am)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics would have very skewed numbers on many of these fields as half of these people don’t even report a lot of their earnings. Why would they? They get paid in cash and check most of the time from individuals. The government has to rely on them filling out an honest 1099. Sure, we can say the thousands of people I’ve known over my years working with such people are outliers, I definitely don’t represent everyone in the US but I find it very hard to believe guys going around house to house getting paid in cash and personal checks are reporting 100% of their wages and I for sure have known many who openly admitted to not doing so. It’s a huge part of our SNAP fraud situation in Texas for sure. You got guys with kids and a family making 6 digits but only reporting 20-30k and getting food stamps.


You can’t exactly “oversaturate” a handyman. They do everything. You’d have to oversaturate every trade in existence nearly.


Most legitimate (non tweaker) Handymen are charging AT LEAST $50/hr (a lot are more like $100 but we will go with $50). If we are to assume they are pulling full time hours (although again most pull more than 40 actually) they are pulling in 2k a month. That’s 96k a year at bare minimum. Sure you get the tweaked and felons just doing odd jobs once a week for their fix but they definitely don’t represent a legitimate handyman.

Quote (SBD @ Jan 13 2026 08:55am)

No they're not. Again we all know people but that's not what average people are doing. They're buying a case of beer and not doing any significant amount of side work. Your average handyman is a 60k earner sitting in lower middle-class. Sure we all know the one with toys with debt to their eyeballs and we all know the one that's the intelligent hustler but somewhere in the middle sits an average.

And I'm not shitting on 60k. If the wife works and earns 60k you can have a decent life in the mcol or lcol place. But it's not some path to middle upperclass for the average. For the outlier who really wants it, sure. But that's not what we're talking about when we're talking general labour workforce.

Quote (RedFromWinter @ Jan 13 2026 08:51am)

The multi hat handyman scenario actually is a leading indicator of the downshift in US society across more segments. More and more Americans are cross disciplined now to simply survive. You don't see it manifest as side hustle, but an increase in self service. The success of independent contract service work is also a function of if said work makes more sense for an individual to contract out.

Bigger picture, even historically well off specialized fields now require the individual to be much more self reliant.

Was told this by an old timer engineer when I started in the field. So far he has been spot on.

Anyways, if hardships increase these self starters in service work will lose clients IMO.


The only up side I see in short view US jobs is this push for datacenters all over the place. High tech jobs but short lived industry likely (the data center builders, not keeping lights on)

Quote (RedFromWinter @ Jan 13 2026 09:51am)

The multi hat handyman scenario actually is a leading indicator of the downshift in US society across more segments. More and more Americans are cross disciplined now to simply survive. You don't see it manifest as side hustle, but an increase in self service. The success of independent contract service work is also a function of if said work makes more sense for an individual to contract out.

Bigger picture, even historically well off specialized fields now require the individual to be much more self reliant.

Was told this by an old timer engineer when I started in the field. So far he has been spot on.

Anyways, if hardships increase these self starters in service work will lose clients IMO.


The only up side I see in short view US jobs is this push for datacenters all over the place. High tech jobs but short lived industry likely (the data center builders, not keeping lights on)

Quote (SBD @ Jan 13 2026 10:13am)

Data centers have not exactly been ideal either for the surrounding residents once the initial build boon is over. Power and water hungry resulting in increased electricity rates for everyone else and once built there's not actually a ton of people directly employed from those towns.

Future employment, outlook not so good says the 8 ball.

Quote (RedFromWinter @ Jan 13 2026 09:56am)

I agree on your small town takes but it seems like an inevitability. Not sure what the future holds but at least if the nation built massive data centers we be fostering technological competence and experience as opposed to subsidizing some stem college degrees that have no jobs.

If you got good prediction skills though I'm wondering what the next big technology product is going to be that pushes a nation back into a top spot? I'd argue the iPhone takes the last big leap spot. Next going to an actual physical robot that isn't laughable. Then we screwed IMO

I think US could still Hail Mary pull a win in this regard. Where AI supposed to help in this effort.