Hello again Aspirate, you're right about the weather to some degree. We have a lot of liquid sunshine and a bit of snow on my side of the state, but the eastern half of the state actually has some definite seasons and quite a bit of sunshine. As far as the work goes it's kind of dual-tiered, there are the union jobs and non-union ones that compete with the union work, these pay some pretty decent wages and then there are a whole lot of smaller operations and non-union outfits that pay a pretty low-end set of wages. The other work that is available covers a pretty large range of offerings. There are of course, shipyards, structural, chemical and petrochemical, generation systems, manufacturing both heavy and light, pulp and paper(on the decline somewhat), woods and sawmills(also on the decline,unfortunately), aerospace and defense(Boeing related), farming and dairy, rail, ocean, and river ports, and still some nuclear with Hanford. Overall our state economy is doing fairly well and the wages and job availability are pretty good. In my local area the shortage of skilled tradespeople has helped to boost the base wages quite a bit in the last few years, the folks are finally realizing that they have to pay a bit more to attract and retain skilled workers. Worker shortages have also fueled the need for many more apprentices within the various unions in our state and the region. We are noticing a much more agressive move to take on more apprentices with all of the unions.
     I mentioned in a prior post that we do various types of upgrade training at our school. One of the things that has allowed this to occur is the varied experience of our faculty, my background has been in equipment manufacturing, structural steel fabrication, maintenance welding and millwrighting, general fabrication shop experience catering to the sawmill, papermill, and various manufacturing industries in the area, and a certain amount of limited pipe welding under various conditions, along with a number of years as a mechanic on farm and industrial equipment. My partner has had experience in the logging industry, is a journeyman boilermaker, has recently received his CWI/CWE credentials and has also had many other varied experiences in industrial mill environments and fabrication shops. We have a night welding instructor who has many years in the nuclear pipewelding environment and is currently employed fulltime with BNSF railroad in their repair and maintenance yard. We have a few other adjunct faculty members who have other experiences within the welding industry and are able to cover some of the other areas that are a consideration for our perspective students. Not all schools operate as ours does, however I would bet that there are a lot out there that do and it is a matter of finding the ones that will work with you when you are looking to better yourself or make some additions to your personal abilities within this trade. Almost all of the welding faculty members in our state at the community/vocational/technical college level are encouraged to continue to ply the trade and are rewarded for doing so. Which I believe is a benefit to the folks that we work with and train.
     Just remember Aspirate, you and your family are the ones that make the decision where you want to be in regards to where you live and what you do, so definitely go for it if the times right, the skies the limit. Best regards, Allan