Monday, tough all over.
Jobs are difficult to find even for experienced and talented people. San Francisco may have your heart, but not your job. But even they do better than Hickory, North Carolina a furniture manufacturing Mecca for the past several decades. One of the more precise and prestigious jobs in that area has been as a skilled patternmaker for furniture and to make molds. Apparently no longer. The people are getting older, young people won't spend the time to learn, machinery has replaced most hand/eye functions, and foreign imports have done their damage. So the question for today is relatively simple. What can a skilled traditional pattern maker expect as a salary in Hickory, North Carolina these days? The number is between $10K and $100K. Within a thousand bucks will do.