About TradeWages

Why BLS skilled-trade wage data deserves a public-facing home

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey is the federal authority on U.S. wages by occupation and geography. For skilled-trade occupations specifically — electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, welders, mechanics, carpenters, masons, the long list of construction and maintenance trades — OEWS produces twice-yearly state and metro wage estimates from a sample of more than a million establishments. The data is public and free.

The presentation problem is familiar. The BLS OEWS data is published as a series of state-and-metro tables organized by Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code, which is a federal-data convention that nobody outside government data uses in conversation. A high-school senior weighing a trade career, a working tradesperson considering a move, or a parent evaluating apprenticeship programs needs the same wage data, but presented as a per-trade page rather than as a SOC-code lookup. TradeWages builds that presentation layer. Every trade page shows the national wage band, the state-by-state distribution, the metro-by-metro detail, and the typical apprenticeship pathway. The data is the BLS data that has always been public; the value the site adds is the presentation.

How the pipeline pulls BLS data

The pipeline pulls from the BLS OEWS API on the twice-yearly OEWS release cadence — typically a spring release covering the prior November and a fall release covering the prior May. Each pull touches every covered SOC code at the national, state, and metro levels. The site stamps the OEWS vintage date on every wage value so readers can verify any figure against the BLS source.

A practical detail: OEWS reports the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th, and 90th percentile wages along with the mean. The site shows the full distribution rather than just the median because the spread tells the experience-and-specialization story. A 20-year master electrician with industrial experience earns at the 90th-percentile mark; a recently licensed residential electrician earns closer to the 25th. The distribution matters for any specific worker’s expected earnings far more than the median alone.

Where wage data has known caveats

Three things to know. First, OEWS reports base wage, not total compensation. Skilled-trade compensation often includes overtime — substantial in some trades and substantial only seasonally in others — plus union pension contributions and health-benefit values that can add 25-40 percent to take-home over the OEWS base. Self-employed tradespeople (a meaningful share of plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians) are excluded from the OEWS sample, which leans toward wage-employed workers.

Second, the SOC-to-trade mapping is sometimes coarse. OEWS may report Electricians as a single occupational code that combines residential, commercial, and industrial work; in practice these are different labor markets with different wage profiles. The site notes the SOC mapping on every trade page so readers understand which OEWS code feeds the figure.

Third, the apprenticeship-pathway content is editorial rather than BLS-sourced. Department of Labor Office of Apprenticeship data covers registered apprenticeship programs but does not cover the substantial non-registered programs that many trades run informally. The trade pages reflect what registered apprenticeship looks like; the actual entry path varies by state and by employer. Every page on this site links back to the originating federal dataset for verification; the BLS source is the authoritative current reference.