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Wow the job market is absolute shit. (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/chat@hexbear.net
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Started applying today to put my feelers out there to see if anyone even responds. Like the best I can find is $18 an hour factory work. This was the same kind of work that existed during covid, nothings changed! It's still shit!!

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[–] 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Big shrug. I live cheap AF in an old home I bought during covid that's from the 1800s and along the river in Pittsburgh, where our cost of living is one of the lowest in the whole country. I've been renovating it for years now, the kitchen is coming along pretty nicely, it's going to be huge soon.

We split our bills three ways between me my fiance and our roommate, I have no debt other than the mortgage, paid off car. Total bills out the door is like $400/mo including utilities. There's things you can do but luck and a combination of devoting yourself to work and things is a big part of it.

There's something about blue collar work and getting jobs done on time and things running smoothly in heavy industrial settings (specifically electrical) that drives me to put in the hours and work behind it. It's not like office work that can wait til tomorrow

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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Nah fam you good. A lot of people here are crabs in a bucket because they don’t have the disposition to succeed in the workplace and have been disenfranchised by bad luck, poor decisions, or starting out from a bad home situation.

    And that’s okay, it’s not like that can be controlled. We should build a society where that doesn’t stop someone from living a respectable life.

    But that doesn’t mean some of us didn’t work our fucking assess off starting from dirt poor for our salaries against a strong headwind the entire time. People here act like anyone making more than $0 an hour just simply lucked into it and was born with a golden spoon.

    There are plenty of professionals kicking around here, we just tend to not butt in.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    I hear ya. Last week I did back-to-back 12 hour days that turned into 14 or 15s to meet a planned outage for a steel mill. It's basically the only time they allocate to changing equipment since they run 24/7. This was also as water was coming thru the walls due to extremely bad thunderstorms and the sump pump failed resulting in 3 ft of water in the basement next to the main electrical feed for the building lol. Then after doing that I tore out my whole subfloor and replaced it over the weekend, got drunk, burned it all, woke up and did it all over again.

    I don't see me continuing this forever. It's just not sustainable. But I do take some pride in this lifestyle especially as it makes things materially better for my partner and I. I'd do anything for him, he's the love of my life and we've been together thru thick and thin for 12 years at this point.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago

    You gotta keep in mind that not a lot of people have opportunities like that. You seem to have hit a rare sweet spot of decent job within a low COL area and an ability to save enough money to buy a home straight up. That's just not the case for the vast majority of people. Pittsburgh, for example, has that absurdly low COL for a city and the housing market really hasn't exploded there either. Or at least not for areas outside of the immediate suburbs.

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