In his TV show "Dirty Jobs," host Mike Rowe is famous for promoting work that most people don’t want to do, such as septic tank cleaner or snake wrangler. He has exposed audiences to roles that are essential to our society but often avoided, especially by Americans who pursue a college education. Employers find it difficult to recruit people to these positions. Usually the drawbacks to the “dirty jobs” are obvious, even if the pay is high, as it can be for plumbers.
In contrast to the vital roles of maintaining a sewage treatment plant or catching rattlesnakes, tech jobs are comfortable in a physical sense, and they are not low-status. Why does it seem like tech workers are in short supply, along with plumbers?
For the past decade, tech companies have been fiercely competing over a small pool of talent. This competition has increased wages for experienced computer engineers. In 2020 the median income for computer occupations was $88,240, which is more than twice as large as the median income for all occupations in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
