Because you're literally dealing with an invisible entity that can kill you. So that's the biggest thing. You need to know the science behind it so that you stay safe. Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make? I'm your host, Mirav Ozeri. Today, I'm republishing a segment from last winter, my conversation with Eli the Electrician. It's a crowd favorite and one of mine too because it's packed with valuable and potentially life-saving information. Eli's experience runs deep, very deep. From industrial sites to residential and commercial work, he studied the trade for years and he constantly studies and brings real practical, hard-end insight into a well-paid but often underrated career. And by the way, it still feels pretty AI-proof. So let's jump into my conversation with Eli. Eli, thanks for doing it. Absolutely, no problem. I really, really appreciate it. Let's start by telling us how and when did you become an electrician? When I was young and in high school, two of my good friends were already in the electrical program in Boses, which is a secondary school that teaches trades here in Ulster County. I started there, went through, basically did a half day of school in high school and then left and went do another half day at the vocational school. So how long is the program for? I was for two years and it would basically take four courses of the day of high school. So four periods, you're there learning electrical theory. They also have automotive, carpentry. They have a lot of skills classes. Why did you choose electrician? I actually chose that. I thought it was the most interesting, but I also, two of my best friends were already in it. So right away, I knew they were good guys, so I just went right in. So you've been an electrician since when? When did you finish school? I finished that program in 2009. At that point, basically when you move from that program, when you graduate high school, you get a vocational certificate as well. I wanted to continue to go to trade school, so I went to Hudson Valley Community College. They have a full electrical construction and maintenance degree. So basically I went there for two years learning a lot. It was full-time classes. I jam-packed about, what was it, 65 credits per year. The first year is mainly like residential. The second year, steps set up to commercial and industrial applications and a lot of advanced stuff. One of my teachers there actually worked on programming and wiring jets for the military. Might have been Lockheed Martin, if I remember right. But yeah, a lot of great people there that had already been in the field, had been electricians went back to get their teaching certificate and then came back and taught us. So you chose the residential? Actually I started, residential came to me later on. I started in industrial. So right out of the associates program, I went to Utica to study electrical engineering at SUNY IT. But I slowly found out that that just wasn't the same type of physicality compared to the work that I was already ready to do. So I realized that I didn't want to be a part of that. I got hired with an outfit, an electrical outfit out of Utica. We transferred large quantities of machines from Rome, New York to Herkimer, New York. So a lot of my job was to take apart the electrical apparatuses, package them into a truck, bring them to the new facility and then rewire them 100%. Wow. So get the factory transplanted from A to B, which we did within a few months, actually about three months. And then we started working on large scale equipment. So yeah. So that was a very interesting gig, a lot of knowledge, a lot of conduit bending, a lot of wire pulling on large scale, a lot of high power, 480 volt power. Did you like that kind of work? I did. It did. It's the one thing I can say about it's very dirty. So you end up having a lot of kind of soot material and things like that get around. It's a dirty job, but it's well worth it at the end of the day. That's all I can say. Why? The pay is good for that? The pay? Not as much as I was hoping to. Never much. But it was my technical second electrical job coming out with the associate's degree at that time. So before that, during college, I had actually worked doing pools. I was an electrician putting together pool systems at that time with a pump repair service. And we would do all sorts of stuff like go to the top of one of the skyscrapers in Albany and fix a blower motor. Oh, wow. And then so later on at that industrial plant, that was total exposure of everything you could ever want as far as electrical goes. So but yeah, I worked there for some time and then I decided to come back. Started working residential. Got with another group here where we started doing a lot of commercial stuff and generators. And that's where I started learning generator installations for the most part, which I commonly do today. At this point, I think I'm like 400 generators deep. Whoa, that's a lot. Yeah, I couldn't even tell you how many like a lot of new services on buildings, a lot of commercial stuff for the town and the city of Kingston. Yeah, just just continuously doing those types of jobs. And did you see that you like the residential better than I'll just say the residential is less demanding. The industrial demanded a great amount from you and the mental work of it was a lot as well. So it takes a toll doing 12 hour shifts for five days a week. So that's stuff that, you know, as far as what I wanted for my life wasn't going to be a permanent fit. If somebody wanted to become an electrician, what kind of skills do you think they need to have? Well, I would say number one, you have to be ready to do a lot of physical labor. So it's almost entirely physical labor oriented. First off, I would say go to school. You to know what you're dealing with because you're literally dealing with an invisible entity that can kill you. So that's the biggest thing. You need to know the science behind it so that you stay safe. You know, the thing to do would I recommend go to school. You can get an associates in it. If you go earlier while you're in high school and get exposed to a Votek class, that's great. When you have around, you know, three and a half years experience roughly there, you know, start working, try to work that whole time as well. Work and go to school at nights, work for somebody during the day. That's a common thing that we see with some of the electricians here. Find an app that works for you. Use Jade education. That's a great online profile to learn more. But you know, you have to work and you have to do the time. And ultimately whoever you are working for has to have been licensed. That's one that I see a lot. Don't work for someone who's not licensed. That time doesn't count. Oh, really? So that's a trick that some people say. Yeah. Wow. That's a good point. Very good point. Yeah. So make sure you get with the right people. Make sure that they're teaching you and they're not just shoving you off to work and barely monitoring you. You want to learn. You want to be the best that you can be. And use that knowledge that they have. Double check yourself. Just get to a point where you feel comfortable in your trade and then study 10 times more. If somebody wants to learn and their father is an electrician and they go to work with him for a few years, would that be sufficient way to learn or do you still think people should go to school? I always advocate for school. I would never think that just one person's opinion was enough for me to learn off of. I've had good teachers. I've had great masters around me. But ultimately I would say it's the grouping of all that knowledge that has made me a better electrician. You need to get out there, you know, reach your uncomfortability zones and just claim that and I think you'll be able to do much better. And in school, that will teach you all the different kinds of jobs that are around. So school will teach you the main jobs that are around. I received a great sheet at the end of my two year program that basically stated all these jobs that I could do. And today I only do about three of them out of a huge list. You get to a point where you've saturated yourself and done everything that you really can pick and choose what type of jobs that you want to take. If you work for a bigger outfit, they'll probably be more inclined to have you on certain jobs for months at a time. And if you really want to get serious into the electrical trade, I would say study the code as much as you can. On top of theory, which is the number one thing, the actual science and theory behind electrical and so like electrophysics is something to really understand. You have a better understanding. A lot of guys go into the field without knowing any of that and they'll either end up getting hurt on the job or die or die. You know of cases of people that actually died. Yes. I took over a job once they call taps on the side of a building where your power connection comes from the street. Yes. Overhead lateral wire to the side of the building. The guy before me, I guess, tried to use an aluminum ladder to touch those and died on the job and I was there the next day finishing the job. So you carry with you a wooden ladder? No, we use fiberglass. Okay. Non-conductive. So there's a thing in electrical world and it's not grounded, not dead. So as long as you don't have a way for the electric to pass through you to earth because electric wants to significantly return to the earth, you should be safe on a fiberglass ladder and non-conductive ladder. Well that was because probably high voltage was coming in, right? Well really it's about if you look into the science, the current, any electrical that's made, it really wants to go back to earth. I worked with some electricians. They came to fix things in my house and they were doing light fixtures and they were not even turning off the breaker and I said turn off the breaker. Right. We have specialized breakers also that we install called arc fault breakers. That type of breaker usually stops any kind of trouble from happening. A lot of times we'll just turn a switch off which is equivalent to a turning the breaker off for the most part and then we'll install lights so it's not a big deal. We look at switches like breakers a lot of times. It is not the same. I always advocate to turn the supply off, turn the breaker off and just be safe. The code changes all the time. How do you keep up with the codes? So they have us take continuing education classes. There's a lot of online programs like Jade is a perfect online source. Usually it's about every three years so it's like new code came out in 2020 and then in 2023 another code comes out. So how much a beginner electrician can expect to earn? Let's say they work in residential. Right. We'll get into the more expensive in a second. The way that I grew up here, I started at about $14 an hour but that was with no experience at all at that time and then when I graduated I made around 18. Granted that was back in the early 2000s at this point. So today like City of Kingston they put a law into place. You have to pay a beginner $20 an hour. So seems like a reasonable rate with today's inflation and everything. And what is the potential? How much can they make? Well, it's really kind of infinite. You could specialize in certain machines and make $300,000 a year. Really? Oh yeah. I have friends of mine that make $250 an hour. I mean myself, most jobs I make about $125 an hour. That is fantastic. Yeah. So but it's all, you know, I always hear the, oh why is it so much? It only took five minutes but it took me 20 years to learn exactly. So yeah. So on that aspect, you know, it's just important that they stick with it. You know, you don't, if you're expecting high paying everything right off the bat but you can't show the work and you don't know what to do quite yet, you really need to do that background information first. How long do you think it will take from somebody making $20 when they start to making $100 and $150 an hour? So I would definitely suggest anybody looking for a six figure income or more would have to go out of their way to get licensed. So that's going to take seven years. Seven years? Yep, seven years. So I actually trained for 10 years before I went for my license. The school was two years. The school was two years. Yep. So before that you have to have some experience before you get to school? Not before school, no. Not before school. So school is two years then you have to apprentice with somebody for… Yeah, so if you go to, normally, so if you start off with no schooling, right? It would be four years working under somebody as an apprentice. Basically four years working as a journeyman. Okay. So it's apprentice, journeyman, master. Okay. All right. So in that respect, they're looking at, you know, somewhere between most of the time and most places it's five to seven years. If you're looking for a job and you think you're going to, you know, get a lot of money right away, this is not the field. You have to train your way up the ladder and you have to prove to the masters that you're that qualified. What is the most lucrative area? That would have to be, I would think, traveling industrial electrician. Maybe… Traveling industrial electrician. Yeah, they would be electricians that specialize in super expensive machines. So machines that, you know, a factory would use but it's multiple millions of dollars for that machine. Certain electricians have been hired by that company and trained in-house by that company to specialize and travel all over the world to fix those particular machines. So like a lot of us, we may not be internationally licensed, some of us, but you could, it's basically a language. So as long as you know that language and you could travel anywhere in the world and fix anything. You mean it's like a computer language, like coding or something? The electrophysics itself, knowing the theory behind electric, knowing how machines run as far as programmable logic is controlled. So that's basically electronics controlling a automated process. But you have to know everything in between that. You have to know the computer work, you have to know the physical work, the electrical connections and the machine. Whoa, those are guys that make 300,000 a year. Or more. I mean, it's, again, I don't think it has a limit to the bout of income you can make. Especially if you have the drive. I'm getting a little older now and I'm slowing down a little bit. But there's plenty of times where I'll be working multiple jobs a day. And as long as you get out there and continue doing it and your reputation gets out there, you won't have to advertise. You'll end up having clientele that talks to clientele, that talks to family. And at least that's what happens in this area and why I don't advertise myself. And you won't have time for new customers anyway. Yeah. So in a way, that becomes a ref too, because you don't want to deny people who are good clients, but you also can't find the time. So that's where, like, I operate alone. I'm just a sole proprietor. But a lot of guys will hire on five to 10 guys to 20 guys. We're doing it so that they can get around to everybody. What got me curious when you started to talk is about this machinery. I thought that they come out of the factory. They're all wired up. It will last for the year of years. What is there to do with electricity and heavy machines? Once they install those machines and they become in use, a lot of them have tendencies to break down components. And to understand how to fix that, you got to work in tandem between the mechanical assembler and the electrician to actually get those things properly fixed. If you looked inside of one of these control panels for just a basic operating machine, we have all sorts of wiring and components that unless you were highly trained, you would have no idea what you're looking at. You could actually open a laptop and you could see the circuit board. That's more or less what we're talking about with these control panels. It could take days to troubleshoot something. A machine could be down for two weeks, you know, and then there's other times where you can't shut down stuff. And this is more for the highline guys like linemen. There's plenty of situations. It is not okay to shut power off. So you have to do it live, which is really dangerous. So in those situations, you know, there's preventatives and... You mean the guys that we see on the road when they climb up to the top? Most of the time, I would say half the time that that power is on and they're fixing that live. Yeah, because they can't bring down people's houses, especially now in the middle of winter. Shut your house off for five hours. I don't think so, you know, so they have to do a lot of work. So the bucket that's sitting in is a fiberglass bucket. That's yeah. And those bucket trucks are isolated, so they're not touching ground in the same way. So they can, you know, come in contact with a live line and it'll be, they will actually be at the same potential as the line. So sitting at that potential, you are not getting shocked. So there's, you know, you can actively grab live lines as long as you're not grounded. Oh my God. Yeah, that's the, again, the knowledge behind it to keep yourself safe. It's very important. Yes, yes, yes. Especially when we come into things like something called a dead short, which would be like a hot touching a ground, very violent eruption from that line to line, which is actually the two powered wires touching at different phases. That is an extremely dangerous thing. And that stuff actively happens. And we see it a lot with trees on the lines overhead or on a house or even in a smaller scale like mice, but really it's a micro to macro scenario. So did you have a job like this that was very dangerous? I mean, I've done a lot of dangerous things as far as the taps on houses for the most part. I've worked on a lot of commercial panels live. You have to kind of throw that sense of I may die out the window and just deal with the problem at hand. That's another reason why our pay rate is higher and just being confident. You know, don't go in there scared. Know what you're talking about. Know what you're doing. Describe to me it's probably different every day, but what the typical day would look like for you. A power company is a lot different than owning your own company. So I would say half of my job is looking around at people's perspective projects that they're going to be doing another big portion of it. Giving estimates human giving estimates. Yeah. For smaller stuff, services, generators, you know, one of my favorite things that I get to do now is land development. So basically someone will come in and buy a piece of property and they have to figure out where to go from there. And so I work with the power company a lot of times, such a Hudson and or national grid. We work with them. We get how we can bring power transmission to their property. That takes a huge amount of back and forth between me and the commercial reps and the owner and perspective. Yeah. And neighbors, which is a huge thing that people don't even think about. What do you mean neighbors? As far as easements are concerned, you know, so putting a pole, getting power to a property is not necessarily on your neighbor's highest priority to make their property value go up or down, you know. So that's when we've had contested neighbors before that hold up projects for, you could say, you know, you're developing and building a brand new house here, but they won't allow you to move through their property. So you have no possibility of getting power. So you know that we have situations where they have to pay each other off, zoom each other, all sorts of stuff. But yeah, that's a basic days is driving, giving estimates. I usually work, you know, three quarters of my day at a job that's already lined up. I'm doing a lot of new houses recently. So that has been working out really beautifully, working three quarters of the day at the new construction, you know, a morning meeting, figuring out new kitchen or new bathroom or a new house coming in and not a lot of commercial recently, and at least in the past year, but I'll help commercial businesses if they call. If they have machines burned out, compressors burned out for mechanic shops, you know, I had another one, a couple alignment machines come in from a car dealership. So there's it's there's a lot of random stuff that comes in, you know, our insurance is allowed for anything under the sun there. Your insurance, what do you mean by your insurance? So you know, they want to be particular or what you can install sometimes. So yeah, so I have an unlimited plan, basically same thing because of my master's license in the Ulster County. We can do a lot of electrical work, any really any electrical work. So now I know that it's very hard to find an electrician that's available for a job. And my thinking is they're making so much money, they don't need me. I definitely think at least in our county, the county license has changed things a little. We used to have more electricians out here servicing things, but since the county says you are no longer allowed to until you get your license, they've a lot of people have gone elsewhere. So now it's down. If you look at the licensing list, I'm not sure how many there are today. Last I checked, I think there was around 500 electricians that were on that list. And our population in Ulster County is I think somewhere in the 500,000 range. So you're trying to get 500 people diverse over that. No, 10,000. Yeah. And that's at least half of them are doing work on their house or something. So what's your favorite kind of project to work on? Oh, I'm actually a lighting. I love lighting. If I could do that all the time, I would. But I love new homes and figuring out lighting spectrums all around the new home, making it a brand new, beautiful, glowing thing that you're seeing. Just design lighting is really interesting too. Working with designers and architects to make a space really unique. I really get a lot of joy out of that. I also really love doing generators because I know that when there's a crisis, those people have power at their house. Change my life having a generator. Absolutely. Change my life. The thing that I've been convinced of people is it's, I know it's a big expense, but you know, that mindset of your house is safe. It doesn't matter if the power comes back on for a few days. Just knowing that's what I think every time we have a storm is, oh, there's 400 people's houses that have power because I finished those generators. So that it's a very satisfying career on that end. What kind of job that you refuse to do that you would hate to do? I'm not a big fan of septic work. Unfortunately, that does come up quite a bit. Really? Electricity? Yeah, because we deal with pumps, which is an electrical motor. So pumps is a big part of it. As far as filtration goes, you see that more in small trailer parks, little housing projects, things like that. They'll have septic situations where it's like collective septics, and they use pumps that commonly get caught on things to run and change where that flow is going. A lot of times that is very disgusting. So I do not want to touch or be a part of that. And the smell is awful. So that would be one. I'm very afraid of fires. I always try to hire electricians with a lot of experience because I'm afraid the new wine, the new guy, or new woman, there are women today in the field. Absolutely. You know, we'll wire something differently and my house will burn down all of a sudden. That's why, you know, working with most outfits, their master who's overseeing and the supervisor role role will push in initiatives to just say, this is how we do it. This is the only way we do it. Do not, you know, diverge from that. And many times you hear that fires were electrical fires, even though there wasn't a new work done on the house. I mean, most electrical fires happen from a loose connection. So it can be as simple. So a little nerve wracking for people getting into the field here is you have to be 100% trusting what you've just done. So, you know, there was about the first four years that I started in the after going to school and started in the field. There was always sleepless nights thinking about, did I do that right? Did I make that connection? Is someone in danger because of the work that I did? And that does happen. You know, electrical fires do happen, even with seasoned professionals make mistakes. I know my friend's house burned down. They didn't do any electrical work. It was sitting there for a long time, I guess waiting to happen. Yeah. I mean, the most common thing that I see happen is that mice come into the home. So that doesn't usually happen on an industrial scale because everything's protected with metal. So the difference being that the code allows thermoplastics in the home, as far as like it's a cheaper version of wiring. It's still safe, but once mice get to it, mice are drawn to it. Apparently mice grow by just gnawing on things. So they have to continue to gnaw on things and they also need bedding for their nests. So they'll actually rip the wires apart, take the insulation off the wires, bring it back and shove it into a wall, which means you have open electrical conductors in your wall uninsulated. And that's usually where most fires start. Either the mouse will come in contact with it, a nail will come in contact with it, anything, and then start smoking and a fire will occur in the wall. Wow. Yeah. So they were so close to Kingston and I'm licensed in the city of Kingston and that is a debacle when it comes to electrical. They had some of the earliest electrical in all of the nation installed and it's still active today. Whoa. And some of the old Victorians. Send wires in every? Yep. Yep. And it's called knob and tube. It's one of the oldest forms of wiring that's out there. Isn't it dangerous? It is extremely dangerous. And yeah, you're, don't tell your insurance you have it in your house. But yeah, it needs to be removed. That's the biggest thing. And all this antiquated wiring that we see, especially in the city of Kingston and upstate New York needs to be updated. So that's part of the problem. Like when we talk about the governor's initiative for putting all electric everything in homes, we at the moment don't have a lot of infrastructure set up for that, which is what the state is asking. Correct, correct. So it's a lot, you know, trying to meet those demands. People now with the electric cars, that's a whole other thing. Oh, did you have to get into like charging stations? Yeah, charging stations come up a lot. The county just proposed a charging station thing for me to put a bid on, which I'm not interested. But yeah, the electric car apparatus, that's a total curveball to what we're normally dealing with. Most houses, the older houses can't support it. People buy an electric car. They don't even know that. And then they can't charge it. You mean what do you mean most houses not support because they're not 200m? Right, they're 100 amp. And a charger for like a Tesla can go up to about 70 to 90 amps. So you're asking for the entire house's demand of power on that charge. So but most chargers are about 50 amps. That would equal to about a quarter of a 200 amp service power supply. So you can see the problem going on here. Our demand is starting to increase too much for what you can get out of a basic home. So we are left with the situation where we have to put in 200 amp services before we do anything. And a lot of people can't afford that. What would you say is the biggest challenge of the job? The physicality. No doubt. Without a doubt. No, that's, yeah, I mean, the fear of being shocked is high in certain situations if you're working on live things. But yeah, that it's the physicality 100%. You know, you have to stay fit. You have to try to maintain a certain level of like aerobic activity. Wow. There's a lot to it with as far as pulling wire, you know, running wire overhead, you have to be good with heights. You have to be good with a lot. So the physicality just be ready. I mean, I've hurt myself many, many times. I'm actually just getting off a back injury as well. You mean just from falling or stuff like that? Just from work, just from the job. Yeah, just from doing my normal job. Yeah, there's a lot of the tools. Everything weighs a lot. Yeah, I would say you minimally have to be able to pick up 50 pounds 50 times a day, you know, and I mean, most of our tools just might just my tool bag alone is around 80 pounds. Whoa. So it's like you have, you have to think and if you're not going to work that way and you know, there's, there's many different parts of the electrical field that you could work with lesser, you know, like spectrum cable is a perfect example or networking like that. It's a lot safer. There's no high voltage. But it's not as lucrative. It's definitely not as lucrative. No, no, probably like a six to one. It is a fun career. All right. Just to make it sound a little nicer, you get to go many places all day, all the time. I'm never in the same location for more than maybe a few weeks. And the pay is really good. And the pay is really good. Yeah. So I called it at the beginning an AI proof job. Right. Do you think that's true? Do you think? 100%. Yeah. There's, there's no system AI that could do what we do at all, aside from full on robots that are physically taking our jobs. But no, that's electrician is not going anywhere. If anything, we're the ones that would be repairing and fixing all the AI coming forward, especially us and our networking colleagues there. But yeah, that's, that's one, we're, I'm not concerned about AI. What I am concerned about AI when it comes to production, that they're taking a lot of jobs on the production scale, which is what a lot of people. What do you mean production? Like packaging, shipping, factory work, things like that. They are doing a lot of automation there, which is inherently taking jobs from people. But yeah, when you're coming down to what we do, there is no machine that could perform those operations and everything that comes along with it as well. So. My last question. What is the reward of the job? I would say the reward is knowing that you will not have to suffer during your life financially, knowing that you can always fall back on something. You get to be wherever you want to be. You get to a new location every day. It's not the same day as yesterday. That's not an office job. You're getting exercise all the time. You can really just control your future. And that's what I think most people want in a career. Right. Great job. Yeah. Well, and on that note, thank you so much. I'm sure I read that Gen Z really want to be electricians and plumbers and stuff like that. You gave a lot of great information for somebody who wants to get in. They should really carefully listen to that. I appreciate that. That's all I can say is it is a good job. If you're interested, there's a lot of information online for the NEC, Jade Education, a lot of electrical training on there, and just continue to go to school. That's what I really suggest. You'll be safer. And that's what we want to do. By the way, have you ever been electrocuted? Oh, yes. You have? Yeah, not electrocuted. So technically, electrocution is death, right? So, but shocked. Yeah, I've been shocked probably a few hundred times. What? Yeah. So, yep. Did it scare you? Oh, yeah. No, and it hurts. It hurts a lot. Yeah. That's one thing I can advocate to people. Just be prepared. That will happen. Most 100% guarantee it's happened to every single electrician. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, but just play it safe. You know, like I said, turn the power off when you can. And never stand on an aluminum ladder. That's what I learned from you. Not grounded, not dead. There you go. No grounded, not dead. That's the rule of thumb. So. All right. Thank you so much. No problem. It's very helpful. Very helpful. Very nice talking to you. Thanks. That's it for today. I hope you agree with me that there was a very interesting and worthwhile segment. And if you like the show, please follow us or leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
