Choosing a trade and reading the job market

Maya Chen did not grow up planning to be a plumber. In her last year of high school she was good at math, liked building things and hated the idea of four more years in a classroom. A cousin who worked as a service plumber took her on a ride-along for a day, and by lunchtime she had watched him find a hidden leak with a moisture meter, replace a failed water heater and explain both jobs to the homeowners in plain words. Two years later she is a first-year apprentice with Northbridge Mechanical on Kingsway Tower, a 12-story residential building in Columbus, working beside her journeyworker mentor, Luis Ferreira.

This course follows Maya and the rest of the Kingsway Tower crew through the business side of a trades career: how apprenticeship works, how you get registered, how hours and skills are recorded, how school and exams fit in, how certification and licensing work, how to pay for it all, where a trade can lead and what it takes to run your own business. This first lesson starts at the beginning, with choosing a trade and learning to read the job market before you commit years to it.

What a trade is

A trade is an occupation learned mainly by doing the work under the supervision of a qualified worker, backed by classroom training and, in many trades, a final certification exam. The qualified worker is usually called a journeyworker, a word that comes from the French journée: historically, a person qualified to be paid by the day. Trades sit alongside, not below, other routes into skilled work. A certified electrician, steamfitter or millwright needs as much specialized knowledge as many university graduates, and often earns as much or more.

Trades are usually grouped into a few families. Construction trades build and renovate buildings and infrastructure: carpenters, electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers, ironworkers, bricklayers, painters and many more. Industrial trades install and maintain equipment in plants, mines and mills: millwrights, industrial electricians, instrument technicians and machinists. Motive power trades keep vehicles and mobile equipment running: automotive service technicians, heavy equipment technicians and truck and transport mechanics. Service trades work with the public in homes and businesses: hairstylists, cooks, and the service side of plumbing, refrigeration and electrical work.

In the United States, the line that matters is usually licensing. Many states or cities require a license to do electrical, plumbing or HVAC work, and the license usually requires documented experience and an exam. Other trades, such as carpentry or drywall, often need no individual license at all, although contractors may still need one to bid on work. Registered apprenticeship, covered in lesson 2, is a separate system that can lead to a nationally recognized credential in more than a thousand occupations.

Matching the trade to you

The most common reason apprentices leave a trade early is not that they cannot learn the work but that the work does not suit them. Before you choose, be honest about a few things. Do you like working with your hands for most of the day, or do you prefer a mix of hands-on work and paperwork? Are you comfortable at heights, in crawl spaces, in the cold and in the heat? Do you like solving puzzles, such as tracing a fault in a circuit or a leak in a wall, or do you prefer building something new from a drawing? Do you enjoy talking to customers, or would you rather deal only with your crew?

Different trades, and different parts of the same trade, answer those questions differently. A new-construction plumber like Maya spends her days on one big site with the same crew, working from drawings, often outdoors in the early stages. A service plumber like Grace Lin, who works out of Northbridge's service department, drives to a different home or business several times a day, diagnoses problems alone and talks to customers constantly. Both are plumbers; the days feel completely different. Sam Torres, an electrical apprentice with Brightline Electric on the same tower, chose electrical work partly because he liked the logic of circuits and partly because the work is mostly indoors once the building is closed in.

Physical demands deserve a hard look. Most construction trades involve lifting, carrying, kneeling, climbing ladders and working in awkward positions, often for hours. Good technique, proper tools and lifting aids make a big difference, and many trades are becoming less physically punishing as equipment improves, but the work is still physical. If you have a health condition, talk to people in the trade and to a doctor about how it might affect you. Many tradespeople with injuries or conditions find a niche, such as estimating, inspection or service, where the demands are different.

Trying a trade before committing

The cheapest way to find out whether you like a trade is to try it. Good ways to do that include:

• Job shadowing or ride-alongs: spending a day with someone in the trade, as Maya did with her cousin.

High school programs: career and technical education (CTE) courses, youth apprenticeship programs and dual-enrollment classes let students try trades and sometimes earn credit toward an apprenticeship before graduation.

Pre-apprenticeship programs: short programs run by community colleges, unions, employer associations and community groups that teach basic skills and safety and help graduates get into a registered apprenticeship.

• Entry-level work as a helper or laborer: many apprentices start as a general laborer on a site, show they are reliable and get offered an apprenticeship.
• Talking to people: ask journeyworkers and apprentices what they like and dislike, what a typical week looks like and what they wish they had known before starting.

Questions worth asking anyone in the trade: What does a normal day look like? How much of the year are you working, and how much are you laid off or between jobs? How physically hard is it after ten years? What do new apprentices usually get wrong? Where do people in this trade end up after twenty years?

Reading the job market

Choosing a trade is a career decision, and careers depend on demand. A trade that is booming in one region can be quiet in another, and demand changes as projects start and finish. Reading the job market means looking at a few kinds of information and putting them together.

National and state forecasts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Occupational Outlook Handbook, with job outlooks and pay for each occupation, and state labor market information offices publish regional versions. Industry groups add their own estimates: Associated Builders and Contractors estimated that the construction industry would need to attract about 349,000 additional workers in 2026. Retirements are a big part of the gap in many trades.

Local demand. National numbers tell you little about your town. Look at what is being built nearby: new housing, hospitals, transit lines, plants, data centers. Check local job postings and apprenticeship openings, and ask training centers and colleges how quickly their graduates find work. Talk to contractors about whether they are hiring.

Pay. Look at starting apprentice wages and journeyworker wages in your area, but also at how steady the work is. A trade with high hourly pay but long gaps between jobs can earn less over a year than a trade with lower pay and steady work. Ask about overtime, shift premiums, benefits and pensions, not just the hourly rate.

Trends. Some trades are growing because of technology and policy changes: electricians and refrigeration mechanics because of heat pumps, electric vehicle chargers and building electrification; instrument and control technicians because of automation. Others depend heavily on the housing market or on a few large projects. No forecast is certain, but a trade with steady demand from several sources is a safer bet than one tied to a single boom.

A rough comparison of paths

Apprenticeship is an earn-while-you-learn path. Instead of paying tuition for several years before working, an apprentice is paid from the first day, usually a percentage of the journeyworker rate that rises as they progress. Classroom training costs money and takes time away from work, but it is short compared with a full-time diploma or degree, and grants, loans and income support can cover much of it. The program below compares cumulative earnings over ten years for two invented paths: a four-year apprenticeship, and two years of full-time college followed by a job at a steady salary. The numbers are illustrative, not real wages for any trade or place, but the shape is typical.

# cumulative earnings over 10 years for two invented paths (illustrative numbers)
JOURNEY_RATE = 40.0          # per hour, journeyworker rate
HOURS = 1800                 # paid hours per year after time in school
apprentice_pct = [0.50, 0.60, 0.70, 0.80]   # share of the journeyworker rate, years 1-4
school_weeks = 8             # weeks of classroom training per year in years 1-4 (unpaid)

def apprentice(year):
    if year <= 4:
        work_hours = HOURS - school_weeks * 40
        return apprentice_pct[year - 1] * JOURNEY_RATE * work_hours
    return JOURNEY_RATE * HOURS

def college(year):
    if year <= 2:
        return -9000          # tuition and books, part-time earnings ignored
    return 30.0 * HOURS       # salaried job at an equivalent of 30 per hour

a = c = 0
for y in range(1, 11):
    a += apprentice(y); c += college(y)
    print(f"year {y:2d}: apprenticeship {a:9,.0f}   college path {c:9,.0f}")

year  1: apprenticeship    29,600   college path    -9,000
year  2: apprenticeship    65,120   college path   -18,000
year  3: apprenticeship   106,560   college path    36,000
year  4: apprenticeship   153,920   college path    90,000
year  5: apprenticeship   225,920   college path   144,000
year  6: apprenticeship   297,920   college path   198,000
year  7: apprenticeship   369,920   college path   252,000
year  8: apprenticeship   441,920   college path   306,000
year  9: apprenticeship   513,920   college path   360,000
year 10: apprenticeship   585,920   college path   414,000

The point is not that one path always wins. It is that an apprenticeship's earnings start immediately and grow, so by the time a college graduate starts working, an apprentice has often earned a substantial amount and carries little debt. The comparison changes with the trade, the region and the person: some college programs lead to high salaries, and some trades have long periods of unemployment. Run your own numbers with real local wages before you decide.

Maya's decision

Maya used a simple method. She listed three trades that interested her (plumber, electrician and refrigeration mechanic), spent a day with someone in each, and then scored each one out of five on the factors in the figure above: how much she liked the work, how she felt about the physical side, the work setting, local demand, pay and progression, and lifestyle. Plumbing and electrical scored almost the same. She chose plumbing because Northbridge was hiring first-year apprentices and her cousin could introduce her, which was a practical tiebreaker rather than a grand plan. She also kept her scoring sheet, because it reminded her why she chose the trade on the hard days of her first winter.