You CAN Make 6 Figures As A Welder (... if you work 80 hours a week)

While skimming the headlines this morning I saw this article from the Wall Street Journal :
The $140,000-a-year welding job

And I figured it was another one of those articles touting high paying jobs that don't really exist.   Or if they do exist are special cases.    But I had to read 2/3 into the article to find the real answer on this one and its simple, the welder in question Mr. Friend : "... typically works 72 hours a week" and "His base pay is more than $25 an hour..."

I think its a bit misleading to have a title for an article like that and then bury the detail that he works 72 hrs a week.     Thats like working 2 jobs.     Most people working hourly jobs with overtime can make a lot of money but few jobs have that kind of opportunity for overtime.  

Then theres also this little detail, his employer "sent Mr. Friend to work for a month on an oil project in Ghana".    People willing to travel can often find better compensation.  I don't know much of anything about Ghana but it doesn't appear to either much of a hot tourist destination nor a warzone.
  
Welding can be a pretty good job.   Its got pretty fair wages and it can be  in fairly high demand.   Overtime can be common as well.   So I don't fault the idea that welding can be a pretty well paid job, I think that the fact that you'd have tow work 72 hrs a week to get that $140,000 is very key and shouldn't be buried in the 2nd page of the article.

I think the real message of the article is that : If you work a ton of overtime then you can make good money.    But thats not news.

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