One of Marco Rubio's big applause lines in Tuesday night's debate was this one: "For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers." Never mind that he's talking about higher education and doesn't know when to use "less" versus "fewer," the audience ate it up. It was a such a big applause line, he's now fundraising off of it.
Here's the problem, though.
Using data from the Web site PayScale, we can look at the introductory and median incomes of both professions. In 2008, philosophy majors started at about $40,000 a year—about the same as what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says first-year welders make.
But over the longer term, philosophy majors make more. Mid-career welders make $22 an hour, according to PayScale, compared with over $80,000 for philosophy majors.
In annual salary terms, that $22/hour welders are getting is roughly $44,000 annually. So there's that. Maybe he should be arguing that that in addition to needing vocational schools to train welders, we also need to make sure that welders are getting wages that reflect not just their training but their skills and experience. Which of course a Republican is never going to argue.
This quip from Rubio apparently didn't fly with actual welders any more than fact-checkers. The Union they belong to, the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry just endorsed Hillary Clinton.