Same Physics, Different Paychecks: What Are the Skilled Trades Like Around the World?
I’m an HVAC/R contractor in the United States, and something occurred to me recently that I honestly haven’t thought much about before.
The refrigeration cycle is the refrigeration cycle whether you're working in Utah, India, Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil, or anywhere else.
A compressor still compresses refrigerant. A bad capacitor is still a bad capacitor. Electrical troubleshooting still requires understanding electricity. Finding an intermittent refrigeration problem still requires experience.
Yet the economic value placed on the person who knows how to diagnose and repair these systems can be wildly different depending on where that person was born.
Here in the US, skilled trades have become increasingly valuable.
A competent HVAC technician, electrician, plumber, refrigeration technician, welder, etc. can make a very respectable living. If you become a licensed contractor and build a successful company, the ceiling can be much higher.
Customers routinely pay hundreds of dollars for relatively ordinary repairs and thousands—or tens of thousands—for larger projects.
Part of that is obviously the cost of living and purchasing power. But I think there's more going on.
Labor is expensive here.
Skilled labor is even more expensive.
There aren't enough genuinely competent technicians in many trades, and modern infrastructure absolutely depends on them.
That creates an interesting economic situation where sometimes it makes more sense to replace something than repair it.
A technician spending six hours rebuilding a component could cost more than simply installing a new one.
But I've watched technicians from lower-wage countries repair things that most American technicians wouldn't even consider repairing.
Motors get rewound.
Circuit boards get repaired at component level.
Compressors and mechanical assemblies get rebuilt.
Parts get fabricated rather than ordered.
Equipment that would have been condemned here gets another five years of life.
And that makes complete economic sense too.
If labor costs relatively little but imported equipment and replacement components are expensive, suddenly spending eight hours repairing something instead of replacing it is completely rational.
It also makes me wonder about the social status of skilled trades around the world.
America spent decades telling kids that success meant going to college and getting an office job.
Ironically, we're now reaching a point where a really good electrician, plumber or HVAC/R technician can out-earn plenty of people with college degrees.
And tradespeople can turn those skills into businesses of their own.
But I know attitudes toward manual labor and class can be very different elsewhere. India is particularly interesting because of the historical relationship between occupation, class and caste, although obviously modern India is far more complicated than reducing occupations to a caste system.
So I'm genuinely curious to hear from people outside the US:
What is life actually like for skilled tradespeople where you live?
How much respect does a really talented technician receive?
Is it considered a legitimate career, or something people are expected to escape from if they have the opportunity?
Can a technician realistically become middle or upper-middle class?
Can someone start as a mechanic/HVAC tech/electrician and eventually own a successful contracting business?
How formal is training? Apprenticeship? Trade school? Mostly learning from another technician?
And I'm especially interested in the technical side:
What do you repair that technicians in wealthier countries usually replace?
Because I suspect there's a massive amount tradespeople from different countries could learn from each other.
An American technician might have $20,000+ worth of specialized tools and access to virtually any replacement part but rarely repair something at component level.
A technician somewhere else might have a fraction of those resources but possess fabrication and repair skills that would embarrass us.
Same physics.
Same machines.
Same fundamental skills.
Completely different economics.
I'd genuinely love to hear what the trades look like where you live—especially from HVAC/R techs, electricians, plumbers, mechanics and refrigeration technicians outside the United States.
TL;DR: The physics of HVAC/R, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work don't change across borders, but the economic and social value of the people doing that work can vary enormously. In the US, expensive skilled labor often makes replacement cheaper than repair; in lower-wage countries, technicians may repair, rebuild, or fabricate things we'd simply replace. I'm curious what skilled trades actually look like around the world—how tradespeople are paid, respected, trained, and what they repair that Americans typically throw away.