Do You Need College to Make Good Money? The Wage Data

Nobody ever defines “good money” before they argue about it.

That is the whole problem with this question. A 17-year-old asks whether they need a degree to make good money, and they get an answer built on somebody else’s number. So before any of the data below means anything, pick a bar and hold both paths to it.

I will use $60,000 a year. That is the blended starting salary our model gives a bachelor’s graduate, sourced from NACE first-destination survey data and listed with every other constant on the methodology page. If a trade clears the number a fresh grad starts at, the honest answer to the headline question is no.

Nine of the thirteen trades we track clear it at the median.

What the Thirteen Trades Actually Pay

These are BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics figures for May 2025, national, wage and salary workers only.

Trade	National median	90th percentile
Elevator installer	$109,910	$158,890
Lineworker	$95,320	$128,690
Aircraft mechanic	$79,870	$128,890
Wind turbine technician	$64,120	$92,460
Plumber	$63,800	$108,420
Electrician	$63,190	$108,510
Diesel mechanic	$61,770	$88,740
HVAC technician	$61,010	$95,210
Carpenter	$60,580	$99,910
Heavy equipment operator	$59,850	$101,090
Truck driver	$58,640	$79,380
Welder	$53,750	$77,530
Auto mechanic	$50,620	$81,790

Six of those thirteen have a 90th percentile above $100,000. Carpenter, my own trade, misses the six-figure top end by $90, which I find funny in a way that only a carpenter would.

The median is the middle worker, not the beginner and not the star. Half of every trade on that list earns more than the number in that column.

The Part the Wage Table Cannot Show You

Here is what a wage table hides: the timing.

A bachelor’s path spends four years earning nothing and paying tuition. Our model charges $15,000 a year in blended tuition and fees, so that is $60,000 out the door plus $37,850 of debt at graduation at 6.39 percent, the federal undergraduate rate for the 2025-26 award year.

A trade path is earning in year one. Not much, but the sign in front of the number is different, and that flip is the entire argument.

Run both paths ten years from an age-18 decision point on national medians, with living costs and taxes stripped out of both sides so neither gets an unfair edge:

Path	Cumulative net at year 10
Elevator installer	$1,022,324
Lineworker	$881,720
Aircraft mechanic	$767,285
Electrician	$593,232
Carpenter	$578,778
Auto mechanic	$503,448
Bachelor’s degree	$321,441

The college path is still $2,419 in the red at year five, one year after graduation. It does not cross into positive territory until year six. Meanwhile the lowest-paying trade on the whole list, auto mechanic at a $50,620 median, is $182,007 ahead of the degree at the ten-year mark.

That gap is not a statement about intelligence or ambition. It is four years of zero income and $11,568 of loan interest doing exactly what compounding math does.

Ten Years Is a Short Window and I Am Going to Say So

The model stops at year ten on purpose, and that choice favors the trades.

Some degrees pull ahead after that. Engineering, nursing, computer science and finance graduates often have a raise curve that a journeyman wage scale does not match, and by year twenty the picture can invert. Our model grows the grad’s salary 3.5 percent a year and ramps the tradesman from the state median toward the 75th percentile in years eight through ten. Both of those are documented assumptions, not measured outcomes, and they are written out on the methodology page for you to argue with.

What the ten-year window captures honestly is the early-career hole. That hole is real, it is where most people quit or default, and almost nobody shows it to a high school senior.

Where the Money Actually Comes From

Twenty years of running remodels has taught me that the guys pulling top-quartile money are not the ones with the most talent. They are the ones who stacked four specific things.

Geography, first and biggest. Oregon electricians have a state median of $101,310. Arkansas electricians have a state median of $49,070. Same code book, same conduit, a $52,240 gap on the median. Those are state figures, not national, and the difference between them is worth more than any career advice I could give you.

A license, second. Most states require electricians and plumbers to pass an exam and hold a license, often with continuing education attached. That exam is the wall between helper pay and journeyman pay, and it is the cheapest raise available in the trades.

A specialty, third. High voltage. Industrial pipe. Certified welding on an elevator crew, where NEIEP notes that certified-welder apprentices usually earn more while they are welding. Narrow skills pay because the pool of people who have them is small.

Owning the work, fourth. BLS OEWS counts wage and salary workers only. The guy who owns the van, carries the license, and bills the homeowner directly is not in the dataset at all, and as the general contractor who writes those checks, I can tell you he is not the low earner on the job.

The Union Number Nobody Believes Until They See It

Abstractions are easy to dismiss, so here is one real, published wage scale.

IBEW Local 110 in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the 2025-26 contract year, pays a journeyman inside wireman a $56.80 base hourly rate with a total package of $94.89 an hour once benefits are counted. Apprentices start at 45 percent of scale, $25.56 an hour, on day one with no tuition bill, and step up through 45, 55, 60, 75 and 85 percent with a 1,560-hour minimum at each level. The fifth-year rate is $48.28 an hour.

That contract window closed on April 30, 2026, so treat it as a 2025-26 snapshot rather than today’s rate. It is still an 18-year-old getting paid $25.56 an hour to learn a trade instead of paying $15,000 a year to sit in a lecture hall.

The Floor, Because Somebody Has to Show It

If I only showed you the 90th percentile column I would be doing the same thing the college brochures do.

• Auto mechanics at the 10th percentile earn $34,660 nationally. Welders sit at $39,240, HVAC techs at $40,050.
• Elevator installing pays the best and has the smallest door. BLS counts about 24,200 jobs in the occupation nationally with roughly 2,000 openings a year, and our May 2025 snapshot only has publishable state wage data for 36 states.
• BLS characterizes HVAC work as having one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations. Burns, strains, on-call nights, seasonal overtime. That is BLS language, not mine, though mine would sound similar.
• Your body is in the cost column. Tools, boots, license renewals, and twenty years of crawling under houses do not show up in anybody’s wage table.

I have watched good tradesmen get squeezed out in their fifties because they never moved into a lead, an estimator seat, or their own business. The trades pay well and they also charge you something. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with a 22-year-old who feels lied to.

So, Do You Need College to Make Good Money?

No. You need a paid path into a licensed or credentialed skill, in a state that pays for it, and the patience to spend three to five years getting good before the money shows up.

That is a narrower answer than “skip college,” and it is the honest one. A degree is not a scam and a trade is not a lottery ticket. They are two different cash flow shapes, and one of them starts paying at 18 while the other starts paying at 22 with a balance attached.

The national numbers above are a starting point, not your answer. Your state moves them by tens of thousands of dollars, and the wage spread inside a single trade moves them again.

Drop your state and your trade into the ROI calculator and run your own numbers. Then go argue with the output instead of with a headline.