That’s about what I reckoned. 1/16th dual-shield is pretty easy going to lay down a bead all day, every day.
The guys up in the oilfields are usually running hot and hard on pipe. They’re out of doors most all the time, often down in a ditch in all kinds of weather, sometimes up to their butts in freezing mud, laying down X-ray quality weld after Xray quality weld on a big pipe with stick.
Part of what isn’t explained how they get to six figures is the brutal schedules they endure - 60+ hours a week. When the weather is good, these guys can work 80+ hours a week, making tracks to make up for the times when the weather prevents progress.
The guys who are really good don’t even have to look at what they’re doing. I’ve seen guys get their rod started, flip up their mask, light up a cig and carry on a conversation, all the while laying down a cover pass downhill. To the guys who have lots of experience, stick welding becomes a tactile skill with sound feedback - so they tell me.
For me, stick welding is something I have to pay only a little less attention to than my TIG welding.
The highest paid welders I’ve met are teams - they weld inside power plants and other high-risk environments (ie, the welds really better hold up, or really Bad Stuff[tm] happens) and in spaces so tight, you’d better be a contortionist to get in (and out) of these places. Most of that is scratch-start TIG on stainless. They’re a team because when one guy can’t get wrapped around to finish the weld, his buddy is on the other side to take the torch, filler metal (if any) and possibly a mirror and keep going around the joint - without breaking the arc.
The couple of guys I’ve met who did this (and were about ready to retire and do something else in their late 40’s) said their working relationship was better than their marriages.
Most of mu welding has been stick.
I was a commercial wall and ceiling contractor for over 40 years and my guys and myself had to be light guage certified.
Everything we did was 20ga. to 10 guage and almost all of it was with 3/32 7014 iron powder rod.
I started off when i was 8 and taught myself to weld and channeled the neighbors 32, 5 window coupe which by the way wound up on the cover of hot Rod magazine a few years later.