I think thats a load of crap thats not even half of what i make an hour. how can they call it a skilled trade down there. What do gas station attendants make down there 8 bucks an hour. So after serving a 5 year apprenticeship you make twice what the gas station guy makes. LAME , move north .
I don't know about now but back when I lived there (Sanford) cost of living was cheap, most groceries and milk and meat was way lower then up here, because of no snow you cars lasted way longer, and the roads for the most part were like they just paved them as they didn't deteriorate as they do up here so your not beating them to death from pot holes, and they stayed clean so you might have to wash them once every two months, here being by all the steel miles you can wash your car one day and the next is like you never washed it, also there is no state tax coming out of your pay check in Florida, as long as you stayed away from the tourist areas you could rent a house for very little, even electric was about a quarter of what it cost here, I remember when I moved back here I couldn't believe how much the utility here was charging for a kwh, there it was about 4 cents a kwh and when I moved here it was around 11 cents, now we are about 16 cents, although back then NG was rare in most places so you either had to use electric heat or propane, but with maybe two weeks of cold weather it really didn't add up to much.
I agree the wages were somewhat less there unless you specialized in a field like I did with industrial controls, back then most industrial type company's would have to hire the manufacture of the equipment and fly the tech and provide them with a room on top of paying out 150 dollars an hour to get their equipment back going as there wasn't many in that field down there skilled in industrial controls, so I did great picking up work from these company's besides my regular job, back then when I moved there there wasn't any work up here and me and the wife decided to give it a try as they were so short handed, we left here on a Friday and got there on Sunday, and I went to work that Monday for a contractor in Fort Myers, but even with my experience and J-card I started out at $9.00 an hour, which was about $5.00 less then I was making up here at the time, I think minium wage was about 2.75 an hour back then, the company that hired me in Sanford and payed me to move up there started me at $500.00 a week salary which back then was great money, and in two years they were paying me $840.00 a week, plus providing me a car and gas, plus I did side work for other company's so I did great down there, but I worked hard to build up, they paid for me to go back to school and even before I was done at school they got bought out by a larger company out of Georgia, the new company wanted me to move to Georgia but I declined and after working for an Aluminum extrusion and remelt plant (Florida Extrusion) I went on my own doing just industrial repairs and design builds, which I was doing great at, just built my first house outside of Sanford in Osteen off Maytown road out in the country where I had 50 Acres with a lake on it, but after the wife wanted to leave and move back up here I sold everything and my one leadman who was great and ran allot of jobs for me took over the company as he was as much a partner in it so he just bought me out.
The only reason I moved back here to Indiana was because of the devoice and I wanted to be close to my children and see them grow up.
But you can make money there, but you just got to find that niche that no one else does and fill it.
