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TRADEWAGES

Editorial Policy

Last updated: June 2026

This page explains who is behind TradeWages, how our pages are produced, and the standards every page on tradewages.org is held to. We publish it so readers, journalists, and search engines can judge our work by a clear, stated process rather than guesswork.

Who runs TradeWages

TradeWages is an independent publication built and maintained by the TradeWages Team. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored rankings, or fees to add, alter, or remove an entry. Our editorial judgment is not for sale.

How our content is produced

TradeWages covers U.S. skilled-trades wages and employment. We build our pages from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program: we gather the primary records, process them with documented, repeatable methods, and present them as pages a non-specialist can read. We pull BLS OEWS wage data for every skilled-trade SOC code — electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, HVAC techs, ironworkers, and more — at national, state, and MSA levels, and surface wage percentiles, employment counts, and projected growth against BLS Employment Projections.

We are upfront that this is a data-publishing operation, not a wire service of on-the-ground reporters. Where we add narrative, that narrative describes and interprets the underlying public data — it never invents facts the data does not contain. Every page is checked against the source, and the methodology behind any score or ranking is documented and linkable.

Editorial standards

  • Primary source only. Every figure traces back to the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, cited and linkable on the page where it appears.
  • No invented numbers. If a value is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on tradewages.org. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
  • Documented methodology. Rankings, grades, and composite scores are editorial calculations derived from public data using stated, repeatable formulas — not certifications or endorsements.
  • Dated and refreshed. Refreshed twice a year to match the BLS OEWS May and November release schedule.
  • Corrections welcome. When a reader or the source identifies an error, we fix it — see our Corrections Policy.

Verification and fact-checking

Because our numbers come straight from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, our verification work is about faithful processing rather than re-reporting. The detail of how we check figures before publication is described in our Fact-Checking Policy.

Ownership and funding transparency

TradeWages is part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. The site is free to read and carries no display advertising. We do not sell personal data. Where an outbound link is an affiliate link, it is disclosed and never changes our editorial judgment.

Contact

Questions about how a page was produced, or about these standards? hello@tradewages.org. See also our About page and our Corrections Policy.