There is a familiar narrative about skilled trades: they pay well, they are in demand, and they do not require a four-year degree. All of this is true. But it is also vague. What do trades graduates actually earn? How quickly do those earnings grow? And how much do outcomes vary within the same program?
The U.S. Census Bureau's Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) dataset allows us to answer these questions with unusual precision. PSEO links institutional graduation records to federal wage data, providing earnings at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles at 1, 5, and 10 years after completion. It currently covers 25 states and more than 500 institutions. The figures below are unweighted medians: for each CIP code, we take the median of all institution-level values across the dataset. The Year 1, Year 5, and Year 10 pools differ in size because suppression removes more programs at longer time horizons.
The answers are striking.
The steepest ladders in the credential landscape
Across all short-term certificate programs in the 25 PSEO states, skilled trades stand out for the slope of their earnings trajectories. Not just for high starting wages, but for sustained, compounding growth over a decade.
Consider the numbers. A plumbing certificate holder earns a median of $58,346 at Year 1 after graduation. By Year 5, that figure reaches $76,958. By Year 10, it is $100,721. That is a 73% increase over the decade, and plumbing is the only core trade where the median crosses the six-figure threshold.
What makes plumbing particularly notable is that the growth does not decelerate. Most programs, including most trades, front-load their earnings gains in the first five years. Plumbing actually accelerates: $18,600 of growth in Years 1 through 5, then $23,800 in Years 5 through 10. This pattern suggests a career structure where the real economic returns come with licensure, specialization, and business ownership, rewards that take time to materialize.
Automotive technology is worth noting. It starts at the lowest point in this group, just $33,582 at Year 1. But it matches plumbing's growth rate at 73%, reaching $58,019 by Year 10. For a student choosing between trades, the Year 1 number alone would make automotive look modest. The trajectory tells a different story.
Heavy equipment operation presents the opposite pattern: high starting wages ($58,659) but relatively flat growth (+25%). The career economics are different. Equipment operators are well-compensated early, but the wage structure has a lower ceiling than trades with a clear path to independent licensure and business formation.
How trades compare
Across the full PSEO dataset, trades programs average $22,372 of absolute earnings growth from Year 1 to Year 10. That matches engineering technology ($22,683) and exceeds healthcare by roughly $6,000.
But the comparison to healthcare is especially instructive. Healthcare certificates (nursing assistants, medical assistants, phlebotomy) are the most common short-term credentials in the country. They start at a median of $32,333 and reach $48,844 at Year 10, a 52% gain. Trades start higher and grow to a higher level. A welding graduate at Year 10 earns $13,000 more than a healthcare certificate graduate. An electrician earns $30,000 more.
This is not an argument against healthcare credentials. It is an observation that trades and healthcare serve different labor markets with different wage structures, and the trajectories diverge substantially over time. Students weighing these options deserve to see that divergence clearly.
The spread widens: what variance reveals
Raw trajectory is only part of the picture. Equally important is how much outcomes vary within a program. In workforce data, the spread between the 25th and 75th percentile is a measure of both opportunity and risk.
Trades programs show the widest spread growth of any category. At Year 1, the average P25-to-P75 gap in trades is about $27,000. By Year 10, it widens to $41,000, an increase of more than $14,000.
Electrical installation is the most dramatic example. At Year 1, the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is $31,000. By Year 10, it reaches $59,000. The top quartile of electricians is pulling far ahead of the bottom quartile over the course of a decade.
This divergence is particularly pronounced in trades with clear licensing and entrepreneurship pathways. Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC all show dramatic spread widening. Construction and carpentry, where independent business formation is less structured, show more modest widening.
For a prospective student, this is significant. A wide and widening spread means that the median is not the whole story. The upside is real, but so is the gap between top and bottom outcomes. The question is what drives the divergence, and whether a student can position themselves on the upper end through licensure, continued training, and entrepreneurship.
The invisible ceiling: self-employment and what the data cannot see
Everything described above comes with a significant caveat. The PSEO dataset is built on Unemployment Insurance (UI) wage records. These records capture W-2 employment. They do not capture self-employment.
In most fields, this is a minor gap. In skilled trades, it is a structural blind spot.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2015, unincorporated self-employment rates were highest for workers in construction and extraction occupations, at 14.8%. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and welders frequently transition to independent contracting or business ownership as their careers mature, often precisely in the period (Years 5 through 10) where the PSEO data shows the steepest growth.
We cannot assume that self-employed trades workers necessarily earn more than their W-2 counterparts. Some do; some do not. But the earnings ceiling in skilled trades belongs to the self-employed: the master plumber who owns a firm, the electrician who takes on commercial contracts independently, the welder who opens a fabrication shop. These highest earners are invisible in PSEO.
The Year 10 median of $100,721 for plumbing, $79,345 for electrical, $61,898 for HVAC, and $62,075 for welding all represent the outcomes of graduates who remained in W-2 employment. The distribution above the 75th percentile is truncated by design: the workers most likely to have broken through to the highest income levels are the ones the data cannot see.
What the data does and does not tell us
It is worth being precise about what we can and cannot claim.
We can say, with confidence, that skilled trades certificates produce some of the steepest observed earnings growth of any short-term credential. We can say that the variance widens over time in ways that suggest real career divergence. We can say that trades start at higher wages than healthcare and the gap grows wider with each passing year.
We cannot say what the self-employed cohort earns. We can say that roughly 15% of trades workers are missing from the data, that this group includes the highest earners in the field, and that their absence truncates the observed distribution. The magnitude of the gap varies by trade, by region, and by the structure of local labor markets.
The policy implication is direct. When states evaluate workforce programs using earnings data, trades programs are assessed on outcomes that exclude roughly one in seven of their graduates. If even a fraction of those graduates are among the highest earners, the observed medians are lower than the true medians. Accountability frameworks built on administrative wage records should account for this asymmetry. They rarely do.
For the prospective student
If you are considering a skilled trades certificate, the data supports several conclusions.
First, expect your earnings to grow substantially over time. This is not a static wage. Trades graduates at Year 10 earn 50% to 73% more than they did at Year 1. The growth is not hypothetical. It shows up consistently across programs and institutions.
Second, understand that the range of outcomes is wide. The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is large and growing. Licensure, specialization, and the decision to pursue independent work will shape where you fall within that distribution.
Third, know that the reported earnings figures do not include self-employed workers. About 15% of the trades workforce is self-employed, and that group includes the highest earners in the field. If your long-term plan involves starting your own business or working independently, the data is not capturing what people on that path will earn.
Data: U.S. Census Bureau, Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO), 2025Q4 release. Earnings in 2023 dollars (CPI-U adjusted). Short-term certificate programs (<1 year), all graduation cohorts, 25 PSEO states. Figures are unweighted medians across all institutions with reportable data at the CIP 4-digit level. Individual institution-level data available in the earnings explorer.