A boomer tradie has shared a blunt message after young Aussies revealed they were turning down jobs because they didn’t pay six figures.
The 61-year-old revealed he spent four and a half decades in the gritty plumbing industry, earning $180,000 a year before retiring.
He said he only reached the six-figure mark after years of hard work and urged young Aussies to roll up their sleeves if they wanted a comparable salary.
His message comes after a young Australian went viral for claiming that workers should quit their jobs and look for work elsewhere if they only earned $60,000.
Many social media users claimed that they would never have a job that paid less than $100,000, arguing that this was necessary to keep up with the cost of living crisis.
The 61-year-old tradie argued that many young people were unwilling to invest the time needed to grow their careers and salaries.
“Put the hard work in the beginning and reap the rewards at the end,” he told the Jobs App Go forward.
“A lot of young people today don’t do hard work, and to get ahead, man, you gotta get through hard work.”
A retired Australian plumber said young people need to work harder at the start of their careers
He described his work as fantastic and said it was not as ‘dirty’ or ‘disgusting’ as many people think.
New career research from NCVER found that there were about 2,000 fewer students last year than the year before.
It was also found that there were 25,000 fewer workers in non-commercial jobs, such as labor.
Andrew Sezonov, Group General Manager of apprentice training center WPC Group, said the industry needed more workers.
“If this trend continues, we can expect project delays, higher costs and reduced work quality,” he said Yahoo.
‘To tackle and possibly avoid these risks in the future, we need sufficiently trained workers [to] provide more viable programs for students.”
MIGAS apprentices and trainees revealed that Australian wages for apprentices in 2025 were surprisingly low.
Those under the age of 17 can expect to earn approximately $581.32 per week, which works out to approximately $14.53 per hour over 40 hours per week.
Seventeen to twenty-year-olds typically earn $635.63 per week, about $15.89 per hour.
Those over 21 earn about $954.10 per week, about $23.85 per hour.
Many have argued that junior salaries for apprentices in the construction industry are unfair.
Young apprentices can earn as little as $581 per week, while a fellow worker aged 17 can earn as much as $32 per hour.
Last November, the Reserve Bank of Australia predicted a decline in wage growth over the next two years.
The news offers no comfort to Australians who continue to struggle amid the cost of living crisis.
Rental housing affordability remains at record lows in almost every capital city, while interest rates have yet to fall, adding extra pressure to budgets strained by supermarket inflation and high bills.