Considering a trade? Here's what the data actually says about pay in 2026

The skilled trades are not one paycheck. They run from $36,900 a year at the bottom — the median for a construction laborer in Alabama — to $141,180 at the top, the median for an elevator installer in California (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Same broad world of work. A four-times spread.

So when someone tells you "the trades pay well," that's true, but it's not the whole story. The trades pay across a huge range, and which trade you pick — and which state you do it in — moves you up and down that range more than almost anything else. If you're thinking about getting in, that range is the first thing to understand, before you ever pick up a tool.

We pulled the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) figures — the May 2025 release, the most recent full dataset — for the trades we cover. Here's what the numbers say, and what they don't.

The floor is real. So is the ceiling.

Two numbers anchor everything.

The floor is $36,900 — a construction laborer in Alabama (BLS OEWS, May 2025). That's an entry-level, lower-skill, lower-cost-of-living combination, and it's a real wage real people earn. Anyone who tells you every trade is six figures is selling something.

The ceiling is $141,180 — an elevator installer in California (BLS OEWS, May 2025). That's a specialized, licensed, heavily-unionized trade in a high-wage state. It's also real, and it's reachable, but it's not where most people start.

Most of the work — and most of the workers — sit in between. The honest way to think about a trade is: where does its median land, how wide is the range above and below, and how much demand is there for the work? Those three things, not the headline number, tell you what a career actually looks like.

The solid middle: where most trades workers actually land

The biggest trades cluster around a livable, no-degree-required median in the low $60,000s (all BLS OEWS, May 2025, national median annual wage):

Trade	National median	Employed nationally
Plumber	$63,800	465,840
Electrician	$63,190	757,220
Sheet-metal worker	$61,800	—
HVAC technician	$61,010	—

These are the trades you've heard of, and the numbers are steady across them. A median in the low $60Ks is a real, livable wage that you reach without a four-year degree or its debt. That's the core case for the trades, and the data backs it.

A note on what that median means: half of workers in the trade earn more, half earn less. So $63,190 for electricians isn't a cap — it's the middle. The top quarter of electricians nationally clears well above it, and in the right state the ceiling runs into six figures. We break that state-by-state spread down in what 25 states of BLS data reveal about electrician pay. The point for someone just starting: the median is the floor of your ambition, not the limit of the trade.

The high end: specialized trades pay more, and there are fewer of them

A handful of trades pay well above the middle. They tend to be more specialized, more heavily licensed, and harder to get into — which is exactly why they pay (all BLS OEWS, May 2025, national median):

Trade	National median	Employed nationally
Elevator installer	$109,910	23,790
Line worker (powerline)	$95,320	131,070
Telecom installer	$74,330	—

The elevator installer number is the headline of the trades: a $109,910 national median, and a $141,180 median in California. But look at the employment count — 23,790 people do it nationally (BLS OEWS, May 2025). It's a small, tightly-controlled trade. The pay is high partly because the door is narrow.

Line work sits in a sweet spot worth noticing: a $95,320 median with 131,070 workers nationally. That's high pay and a lot of jobs — a rarer combination than it sounds.

How to read "demand" honestly

You'll see a lot of trades content throwing around growth percentages — "X trade is growing 12% by 2030." We're not going to do that, because we don't have projected-growth data, and we won't invent it. A made-up growth rate is worse than no number.

What we can show you is how many people already do each job, which is a fair proxy for how much work is out there. More workers means more job sites, more employers hiring, and more churn as people retire or move up:

• Construction laborer: 1,096,780 employed (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
• Electrician: 757,220 employed (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
• Carpenter: 670,090 employed (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
• Plumber: 465,840 employed (BLS OEWS, May 2025)

These are big, durable labor markets — hundreds of thousands of jobs each. On top of that, the trades workforce skews older across the board, which is widely understood in the industry to mean a steady stream of openings as experienced workers retire. We'll state that as context, not dress it up as a statistic we don't have.

Where the data goes quiet

Here's where we keep ourselves honest, because what isn't in the data matters too.

We have no growth projections. Every demand signal in this post is an employment count or a known industry fact about an aging workforce — not a forecast. If you see a "% growth by 2030" anywhere on this site, it's a bug; report it.

These medians aren't cost-of-living adjusted. The $141,180 elevator-installer figure is California, where the rent is California too. BLS gives us the nominal wage; it doesn't tell you what your housing will do to it. We don't have a cost-of-living dataset ingested yet, so we won't pretend to adjust for it.

BLS blends union and non-union. The OEWS median is one figure covering both. In a heavily-unionized trade like elevator installer or line work, the union scale pulls that median up — worth knowing as you compare trades.

The median is the middle, not your number. Where you actually land depends on your state, your sector, your overtime, and whether you're union. The medians here are the map, not the destination.

What to do with this

If you're deciding whether to get in at all, the case is straightforward: a low-$60Ks median with no tuition debt, big stable labor markets, and a real ceiling above six figures in the right trade and state. Start with the honest version of the question — is a trade right for you — which walks through fit, not just pay.

If you're trying to pick a trade, weigh the three things together: the median, the spread above it, and the employment count. A high median in a tiny trade (elevator installer) is a different bet than a strong median in a huge one (electrician, plumber). Neither is wrong — they're different doors.

If you're ready to start, the lowest-debt path in is almost always an apprenticeship — earn-while-you-learn, no tuition bill, paid from day one. It's how most of the workers in the tables above got their start.

And once you're in the trade and earning, add your own pay. We publish anonymously, never with a raw email address, and every submission sharpens these numbers for the next person trying to figure out whether the trades are worth it.

Data: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Figures are national and state median annual wages and employment counts. See how we build these numbers.