Economic biographies (2 of 2): Architect.

Like a month ago at the local brewery when the weather was decent, I went to go grab a beer and drink on the patio, and I heard some (nerdy) (white) guys who I'd never seen before talking labor stuff at the bar, so when the one was leaving and walking past where I was sitting outside, I said hello and asked him what his involvement with labor was.

And, it turns out that he's an architect who always teaches some side classes at universities near where he lives, and he actually was teaching at the one art school that I used to teach at way back when, back when I was heavily involved with a unionization drive there!

Overall, he says that an architect might get $40-45K off the bat after graduating with a BA, and then with an MA you might get to $60K, but then you have all that debt to pay off.

"I warn the students at the beginning of every class," he was like, "But they don't listen."

He also said that he was making about as good pay as you can get in the city where I used to live, and some colleagues of his at the art school told him to stick around since there was a new unionization drive  happening and after that happened "things would be different," but he said he couldn't wait any more, and  so he picked up stakes and moved this fall to the college town where I now live.

"A few thousand dollars more in four years isn't really going to help much," he was like, meaning possible contract gains by the time a union was put in place and a first contract was negotiated. "The numbers just don't add up."

And, he said that with home prices being what they are, any chance of him buying in the city evaporated, though where we live now, it's still feasible.

And, he was saying that unionization just isn't worth it on a cost-benefit basis for an individual, though I got him to agree that you're better off with one than without one, and he said he was tapping into what activism he could down here around those issues.