As I am done with woodworking college at the end of the year, I was wondering where the woodworking job are? Any job in the states or in New Brunswick Canada?
Thanks for the help.
As I am done with woodworking college at the end of the year, I was wondering where the woodworking job are? Any job in the states or in New Brunswick Canada?
Thanks for the help.
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Replies
In this economy? Not good, not at all… With construction at a standstill and consumer spending frozen even at the upper income levels there is not much to look forward too for the next 16-24 months, or longer.
I consult in the commercial/industrial construction sector and all most all of my work for the past year has been in company shut downs. Many owners are going out of business or severely consolidating to conserve what assets they have. Thirty years in this business and I have NEVER seen anything like this.
Not great news I know and I wish you the best of luck but be ready for a lot of negativity out there.
One word my man :
China
(they have all the bucks and all the work. Thanks to the unpatriotic a$$hole business leaders here. The Chinese want to be western and modern. They are tearing out their culture by the roots to replace it with sky scrapers. Heck they are lending the USA money by the billions so we can keep our country running. More like crawling.)
One of my customers, a Mercedes mechanic, regularly travels to china. To look at him you would never guess he speaks various chinese lingo.
OK I got it out.
Good luck with your woodworking where ever it takes you.
roc
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln ( 54° shaves )
Edited 11/11/2009 4:21 am by roc
Hi Wood ,
Your best bet is placement from your woodworking college or maybe they can point you in the right direction , have any offers been made for employment yet to any students ?
What marketable skills do you posses ?
So far the Canadians who have posted on this forum will not admit there are any slow downs in the economy , in fact a few thought if we Americans would just stop complaining it is not that bad .
So maybe somewhere in Canada , I know it is a big country lots of jobs they tell us , or have things changed there ?
regards dusty, boxmaker
Dusty were starting to get some slow down.Lots of betting on commodites has not worked well.
Big pork producer just filed for backrupcy.No one is buying potash for fertilizer not even the localsAs for getting a job. might start trying cabinet shops and see if you can get your foot in the door, or try striking out on your own. Which school did the OP graduate from? What does he want to do?
Hiya Shoe ,
I hope your world will not get quite as bad as ours has .
Not sure which school the OP attends nor of his desires or ability .
There are few available cabinet shop job openings in the majority of the U.S. to my knowledge in this housing downturn .
Often times the schools get jobs for special students and can supply a steady stream of workers with skills to the market place when there is one .
hang in there dusty
How slow the Canadian economy is depends on where you live. In SW Ontario which relied heavily on manufacturing the unemployment rate in places like Windsor and London is about the same as in the US, upwards of 10%, with more closures to come. There have been a few auctions of kitchen and woodworking shop contents. One bright spot for the last few months has been a govt. program that gave a healthy taxbreak to anyone having home improvements done, but that's now ended.
Jim
What type of training did you receive?
Are you fluent with computers and CAD?
Is this some type of industrial degree or more of a liberal arts?
What exactly are you looking for? Some type of manufacturing position or maybe design? Or possibly a small one off furniture shop?
A little more info may help.
F.
Wood,
What type of research have you already done in locating a job? that is, prior to asking if anyone here knows of jobs.
What type of education do you have? I have never heard of "woodworking college". What is that? What skills did you get there?
Did your college give you any help in job placement? Do they have job listings? Do they provide assistance in developing a Resume, in searching for jobs, in preparing for interviews?
What type of work would you like to do? Do you do period furniture? modern furniture? Trim carpentry? kitchens and bathrooms?
Any info like this might be helpful to folks who might help you.
Like you have heard so far, jobs are scarce. I hope your are flexible and creative. It would also be good if you are also wealthy. :-)
Think about teaching woodwork -- giving lessons. Is there a Woodcraft or a Rockler near you? Maybe you could give lessons at such stores. This would only be something to tide you over to when you get a "real" job.
Why not prepare a Resume and a portfolio of some of your work, and post it here in this thread. I would be happy to give you feedback on your resume. You will get many comments on your portfolio.
I wish you the best of luck. You have something I wish I could have.
Youth.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Listen to Mel--great advice.
Patrick,
"Listen to Mel--great advice."If you keep talking like that, I'll get a swelled head. I told my wife what you said. She laughed. Damn. My ego is deflated again. :-)I have three kids, who are now adults (sort of). They have finished school, got jobs,gotten married, and live in different States than my wife and I. They seem happy and fairly well adjusted (at least I think so, but I know I am biased.)By the time they got to college, I had figured out that they don't do everything I say. Ha ha ha ha ha. But that didn't stop me from giving a little advice on things I think are important. All three ended up with advanced degrees (one PhD and two Masters degrees -- two in engineering and one in "business information technology").When they became Freshmen at college, I urged that they take summer jobs that would help them create a resume for finding work when they graduate. I said that if a summer job gave them good experience and made them more employable, it didn't matter if it didn't pay well - or at all. REMEMBER - 0ne main goal of going to college is to prepare to get a job. Summer experiences are important. I suggested that they look into the employment office at their college to find out, even when they were freshmen, what services the office offered -- bringing in employers, having job fairs, helping with resumes, educating about job searches, etc. I URGED them to try to find summer employment with companies which had "summer Interns", which used those programs to look over candidates early. I urged them to go on a number of job interviews, just to practice doing job interviews. I urged them to PREPARE for each interview by looking for info about the company, by figuring out some of the questions that would be asked, by reading about job interviews - what to do, what NOT to do, how to avoid trick questions, and how to try to look at things like the interviewers do. The worst thing a kid can do now in college is to NOT think about getting a job until they graduate. Students should use the full four years to aim at getting prepared for getting a job. I am not saying they shouldn't have any fun. Now my daughter is doing job interviews at her alma mater for the company she works for. WOW, how times have evolved. Now she does some recruiting, and she loves it. Her husband's brother is a senior in college, and he said he was going to call and ask an employer to delay an interview by a week, because he had relatives coming to the college for a visit and a football game. SHE EXPLODED, and gave him the lecture of his life. (I am very proud of my daugher.) He took her advice, and just went to the interview. She gave him advice on how to dress, and about the interview process. Once, a year ago, this kid missed a job fair at the university. My daugter found out about it, and did some screaming. I don't know if screaming works, but at least she is trying, and she doesn't take any **** when it comes to excuses on preparing for employment.I guess, we have had decades of job security, in which if you went to college, you could be sure of getting a bunch of job interviews, and then you could take your pick of the jobs. Those were great times. But that was then, and this in NOW. In the past, I have given advice on Knots and at my local woodworking guild, to woodworkers seeking employment, and I have been loudly criticized for being too much of a hard-nose. I was told I should be more understanding, and realize that they are just kids, and they aren't fully mature yet, and I should just give them encouragement, and not be firm in urging "good practices" in job seeking. Luckily I have thick skin, and pay no attention to such pap. If someone wants a coach for a job search, I am always ready to help. If they want to be cuddled, and coddled, and have their excuses answered with "don't worry about that." , well, they need to go elsewhere. I don't think that there is anything that we do here on Earth (or elsewhere) which is more important than helping our kids adjust to REAL life, and to prepare for dealing with the REAL world. Wow. I haven't ranted in a long time. That felt good. Maybe I'll do it again in a year or so, if someone else tells me that I did good. That'll show you. Thank you for the kind words.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
MelWell said and top advice.I am bequeathing you the sign from my wall.Rule 1 Dad knows bestRule 2 See Rule 1wotI started out with nothing...and I still have most of it left!
Mel said " prepare for the REAL world"..... Amen.
Hoiwever,the reality is, that we've placed our kids future in dire jeopardy, regardless of education/experience/or talents. jobs aren't gonna open up until the economy picks up DRASTICALLY...that includes woodworking jobs. until we, as a nation, get a grip on the job issue(which is multi-faceted) employment will continue to fall. Like a previous poster commented, we're borrowing at never-heard-of amounts, and no country, no business, no home can survive un-repayable debt. I worry about my Grandkids future...where are they gonna work? what jobs, even medial ones, will be available and at what competetive level?.. or at what payscale....
my advice: cater soley to the RICH with your WW knowledge. build outlandishly expensive, handbuilt furniture, and concentrate soley on those who make 7 figures, to furnish their mansions. many will disagree with that, but any level that's lower than that has enormous competition in this economy. and more competetion equals lower profits
And yet the productivity numbers just posted by the department of labor show that Americans are at their highest levels ever during this recession. We will never be able to, or need to, employ people like we once did that era is long over. <!----><!----><!---->
ButchI agree with a lot of your sentiments, however I’m not sure how well your advice would work. There are not all that many (statistically) of those high flyers and wouldn’t provide such a big market and it would be for a very small number of suppliers. I think a solution lies more in our hands if you consider some of the following.• Small business (in the US, under 500 employees) provides more than half the employment and around half of the GDP. Of these businesses, 79% employed less than 10 people, in other words the biggest employer in the US.
• Big corporations who export jobs overseas get enormous amounts of Government money in grants, aid, loans, bail outs and what ever other handouts that the pork barrelling pollies can arrange. The lobbyists for big business/corporations work this brilliantly. Small business could and should get more of this funding and there is no way the government should be supporting those that are essentially gamblers.
• Small business lobbyists pale into insignificance when compared to those of big business/corporations. Small business needs a bigger voice. A word of caution here, $100,000 could employ 2-3 people as against part fee for a lobbyist.
• Small businesses need to support each other in preference to big business. The little extra you would probably pay for goods and services would be less than the extra you would pay big business/corporations via tax as government handouts to them. Supporting big business is like feeding $100 bills into a shredder.
• Think smarter.People need to be made aware that support for small business gives better, long term benefits for our kids future than big business. In reality there is not much that big business can do better or cheaper than small business.Think Smarter : Just one idea for woodworkers is to form a co-op with others of a similar ilk but different disciplines ie potters, glassblowers, painters etc. in your locality, divide the costs of an outlet between you, Take turns to run the shop while the other carry on with their production Worked well at home.wot
I started out with nothing...and I still have most of it left!
Edited 11/13/2009 2:56 pm ET by wotnow
I understand what you're saying, but in reality, money talks... and the little guys cabinet making shop can't compete, pricewise, with what big companies,like American Woodmark can sell cabinets for. look around here, where we had many small cabinet makers doing fine selling to local home builders/home owners. not so today..why? because of mass production. it started with Henry Ford..it's what help defeat #### Germany and end WW2...it's the now-thought process of huge developers throughout America... build in numbers(forget the quality, but most Americans didn't mind the trade-off). carpenters/bricklayers/plumbers/electricians used to be the local guy in your hometown who you knew, and supported whenever their craft was needed. not today... most are from as far as 100 miles away( and many don't speak very good english) ,they work in gangs, and for less money than the local contractors charge.there's many reason why this is happening, but overall, it's killed the "small guy". those #s that the Feds put out are very misleading, as to TRUELY un-employed people(those that don't have jobs, or less than supportable jobs), and as far as production #s go, if we were doing THAT good, unemployment would be shrinking....the do-more-with-less attitude doesn't feed American families(or pay taxes!!!)From some reason, everyone thinks that hi-tech will carry the country.... I don't believe that. the higher-tech we get, the less we need people doing "jobs"... and the spiral continues. I totally agree with your reference to big business getting lobbyists to fight for their share of the pie from Uncle Sugar... but like I started this response with "$$ talks, BS walks"...the Unions found out about that saying all to recently thru the auto makers... same goes for many other union-protected jobs. we have ..or rather HAD, 3 American Woodmark factories up in Hardy County(Moorefield,WV) all doing 2 shifts... now theres' only 1 running with 1 shift. if THEY couldn't keep going, then the small guy was in bigger trouble...and most likely now outta business altogether.
"think Smarter"... is ok, except when it puts more than 17 million+ outta work....
Mel,<!----><!----><!---->
As a former owner and employer I can’t tell you the number of times I had people show up unprepared for an interview, dressed like crap, late etc, etc. I got to the point that any of those items would either end the interview before it started or cut it very short.<!----><!---->
I did find quite often that young folks believed that the act of matriculating alone was enough to guaranty a position, nothing could be further from the truth and your comment about school as a four (or five) year job prep is right on. Most were taken back by a sign that hung on the wall behind my desk:<!----><!---->
“A students work for B students who are employed by companies owned by C students” (Companies that are usually funded by investors who never graduated)<!----><!---->
Since I never went to college (but wish I had) I tend to place its value as part of a continuum not an end unto itself. <!----><!---->
Napie,
I am glad you found some truth in my advice to the OP. You are a straight shooter. I fully agree that too many students graduate believing that the degree entitles them to a job. EEEEHHHHHAAAAAAAA! A rude awakening is coming!MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
I fully agree that too many students graduate believing that the degree entitles them to a job. EEEEHHHHHAAAAAAAA! A rude awakening is coming!Mel,Smartest advice I've read from your keyboard in quite some time. My daughter, just last week, was telling me a story of a college grad with an accounting degree that interviewed at the very large accounting firm she works for down in Florida. The kid was dressed like crap, with his underwear hanging out his rear-end, with his pants around his hips. He was wearing fancy sneakers, and had a metal hoop through his eye lid. He had an attitude, to boot. He's got a 3.7 gpa, and can't figure out why no company will hire him.Jeff
Jeff,
Glad you agreed with my thoughts on preparing for a career.
Thanks for writing. Your daughter's story about the job applicant is sad but all too common.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
If you can keep the job part of it out of whatever woodworking path you choose to follow you will be happy/successful.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
You haven't said what your speciality is - framing/new construction, interior trim/cabinetry, or custom cabinets/furniture, or where you are located. I live in Moncton (Riverview) NB & we still have a building boom going on here - new houses going up everywhere. Moncton set some kind of personal record last Spring for building permits issued - 2 months in a row! We left May 1st to stay at our cottage & arrived back at the end of October - lots of changes. 2 neighbours work in construction (2 different companies), paving, foundations, complete sub-division infrastructure (streets, sidewalks, water/sewer, foundations, etc.) & with this weather they are still working all the daylight hours they can & plan on working well into December. Should be some jobs around, but the outdoor season is winding down. A few large cabinet companies in the area also.
I see Olddusty is still preaching his doom & gloom, indicating Canadians must have their heads in the sand or refuse to acknowledge our "dire straits". Tried to explain to him (last Spring) why Atlantic Canada is in pretty good shape but it obviously didn't sink in. When our poor, 'ol Canadian dollar reaches par in the New Year (or before), we will nip down to Florida again for a couple of weeks to compare life styles & snow shovel prices.
Hi piker ,
The rest of your country from what we hear is slowing and parts do have unemployment rates similar to parts of the states , according to the limited info we get .
It is good to hear your area is a strong hold . there are pockets or areas of the states perhaps in each state that are still prospering , but in general the level of activity and commerce is down.
Sorry , I am not well versed first hand on Canadian economics , and wonder how enlightened you are first hand on the state side conditions or is your real info limited like mine ?
Millions of jobless , those words are statistics and mere bylines , seeing the massive list locally of foreclosures really hits close to home for me .The for lease and empty store fronts and closed businesses .
I suppose my words may sound like " doom and gloom " but the truth is I have only told you the way it really is for many of us .
The administrations have pretty well sold our economy and the sad thing is the citizens of the country had little to do with this wamboozelment but are now faced with paying for it , one way or another .
regards from paradise dusty
Sorry guys it took me so long to get back to you all. I went to the University of Rio Grande majoring in Fine Woodworking & Industrial Technology. I have done some work in theatre carpentry, framing, and finishing carpentry. I am hoping to find some work in New Brunswick.
Mel
Check out
Mel
Check out http://www.woodconstruction.org they will allow you to recieve a Associates in Applied Science. You can take those college credits to put towards a four degree if you wish.
Taigert
Wood,
Didn't you go to Rio Grande?
I'm not sure if you are from Canada or the US but I do know it ian't easy in this economy to get work permits from the country you are looking at moving to. I was lucky in the fact that I have dual citizenship/
My youngest daughter lives in Ottawa Ontario, she claims the economy is still doing all right. My son in law is in the construction industry (sales)and is still working. My oldest is a Real Estate Agent in Picton, Ontario & her husband is a Electrician. They are both doing well in their fields. Bottom line is it just depends on where your at and what skills you have. Both my son in laws are not greenhorns. they both have over 15 years exp. under their belts.
Good luck, I hope the New Year allows us all to make a decent living. I would just like a steady work load instead of this boom & bust crap we have dealt with in the recent past. All we can do is keep trying and not give up. This has been my hardest year trying to survive that I have lived through.
Taigert
I am from the us, and I did go to Rio Grande.
Is there a way to up load pictures to the site or forum?
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