Where Welders Make the Most Money

by Joshua Wright, EMSI

The emergence of in-demand jobs that require a community college education or less but pay well—sometimes extremely well—is a big story, and a timely one with President Obama unveiling a plan to make community college free for millions of students. USA TODAYstarted a major series on jobs, using EMSI data, by focusing on these middle-skill fields. And The Wall Street Journal wrote this week about a 24-year-old Texan who made $140,000 in 2014 as a welder after graduating from Texas State Technical College.

Stories of welders earning $140,000 or petrochemical processing operators taking home $100,000, as USA TODAY highlighted, make for compelling anecdotes to show it doesn’t take a four-year degree to land a good career and comfortable income. And to be sure, there are jobs to be had and money to be made in the rapidly aging skilled trades.

It’s always helpful, though, to ground a discussion in data, and EMSI’s wage data shows that the hourly earnings for most skilled trades workers—even for the top 10th percentile of earners—are more modest than these big, overtime-filled salaries indicate.

Consider the high-end hourly wages for welders across the country. Welders in the top 10th percentile make the most in Alaska, at $43.83 per hour. Hawaii and North Dakota are not far behind ($39.75 and $39.05, respectively).

Top-end welders in these states make $83,000 to $91,000 per year if they work full time (40 hours per week for 52 weeks). The really attractive salaries come after lots of overtime, as in the case of the young worker, Justin Friend, that the WSJ featured. Friend works 72 hours a week and makes $25 per hour in regular wages, the story noted. That’s way above the median hourly wage for welders in Texas ($17.29), and it’s not far from the top tier ($29.25).

From 2009 to 2013, Texas added 28% of all net new welding jobs, more than 7,300 in all. It also had nearly double the number of welding jobs as the state with the second-most welders, California (47,000 to 25,600).

Alaska and Hawaii are outliers. Median earnings in both states are above what the top 10th percentile make in 39 states. This is probably due to the scarce supply of welding talent in both states; fewer potential workers mean employers have to pay higher wages.

A scarcity of welders is also partly driving the huge amount of overtime that certain workers are getting. But since the oil and gas surge sparked so much of the demand for welders, among other skilled trades, it will be interesting to see what the plunge in oil prices does to the job prospects (and wages) of these workers.