Highest Paying Trades Without a Degree, Ranked 5 Ways

Every “highest paying trades” list you find online ranks one thing: the median wage. Elevator mechanic lands on top, lineworker comes second, and the list ends there.

That ranking is real. It is also only one way to measure a career, and it hides most of what a 17-year-old or a 30-year-old career changer needs to know before picking a trade.

So I ranked the 13 trades we track five different ways. The winner stays the same at the top, but the middle of the list moves around a lot, and a couple of trades that look average on a median table turn out to be some of the fastest money on the board.

All wage figures below are BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national, wage and salary workers only, unless I label a state.

Ranking 1: What the Middle Worker Makes

This is the standard list. The median is the worker in the exact middle, so half the people in that trade earn more and half earn less.

Rank	Trade	National median
1	Elevator installer	$109,910
2	Lineworker	$95,320
3	Aircraft mechanic	$79,870
4	Wind turbine technician	$64,120
5	Plumber	$63,800
6	Electrician	$63,190
7	Diesel mechanic	$61,770
8	HVAC technician	$61,010
9	Carpenter	$60,580
10	Heavy equipment operator	$59,850
11	Truck driver	$58,640
12	Welder	$53,750
13	Auto mechanic	$50,620

Notice the cluster. Plumber through truck driver, seven trades, sit inside a $5,160 band.

That means on median pay alone, picking between plumbing, electrical, HVAC, carpentry and diesel is close to a coin flip. The things that actually separate them show up in the other four rankings.

Ranking 2: The Floor

The 10th percentile is the number I would look at first if I were new or nervous. It tells you what the bottom tenth of a trade earns, which is roughly where a greener worker, a slow market, or a low-paying region puts you.

Trade	10th percentile
Elevator installer	$59,270
Lineworker	$51,470
Wind turbine technician	$49,230
Aircraft mechanic	$48,780
Diesel mechanic	$44,530
Plumber	$44,150
Electrician	$42,640
Heavy equipment operator	$42,190
Carpenter	$40,410
Truck driver	$40,140
HVAC technician	$40,050
Welder	$39,240
Auto mechanic	$34,660

The bottom tenth of elevator installers out-earns the median welder, the median auto mechanic and the median truck driver. Read that twice.

Wind turbine technician also climbs here, from fourth on the median to third on the floor. A tight floor means fewer people stuck at the low end, which matters more than a big top number if you have rent due next month.

Ranking 3: The Ceiling

The 90th percentile is the top tenth of the trade. It is the number that tells you how far skill, a license, a specialty and a willingness to work the hard jobs can carry you.

Trade	90th percentile	Spread (p90 minus p10)
Elevator installer	$158,890	$99,620
Aircraft mechanic	$128,890	$80,110
Lineworker	$128,690	$77,220
Electrician	$108,510	$65,870
Plumber	$108,420	$64,270
Heavy equipment operator	$101,090	$58,900
Carpenter	$99,910	$59,500
HVAC technician	$95,210	$55,160
Wind turbine technician	$92,460	$43,230
Diesel mechanic	$88,740	$44,210
Auto mechanic	$81,790	$47,130
Truck driver	$79,380	$39,240
Welder	$77,530	$38,290

Aircraft mechanic passes lineworker by $200 at the top. Electricians and plumbers, tied on the median, are tied again at the ceiling, both just over $108,000.

The spread column is the one I care about. A big spread means the trade rewards getting better at it, and I have seen that play out across 20 years in remodeling: the carpenter who keeps learning and takes pride in the work behind the walls does not stay at the median. Carpentry, my own trade, has nearly a $60,000 gap between the bottom tenth and the top tenth.

Welding and truck driving have the narrowest spreads on the list. That is not a knock on either trade. It just means the pay is more predictable and the top end is closer to the middle.

Ranking 4: Ten Years of Actual Dollars

Wages are a snapshot. What you really want to know is how much money you have made after ten years, counting what training costs and how long you earn apprentice pay before you hit full scale.

Our ROI model does exactly that. It starts at age 18, charges each trade a documented training cost, applies an apprentice wage schedule, ramps the worker toward the 75th percentile in years eight through ten, and strips taxes and living costs out of every path so none of them gets an unfair edge.

Trade	Cumulative net at year 10 (national)	Rank on median
Elevator installer	$1,022,324	1
Lineworker	$881,720	2
Aircraft mechanic	$767,285	3
Wind turbine technician	$628,126	4
Plumber	$599,750	5
Truck driver	$596,496	11
Diesel mechanic	$596,038	7
HVAC technician	$595,594	8
Electrician	$593,232	6
Heavy equipment operator	$580,253	10
Carpenter	$578,778	9
Welder	$529,208	12
Auto mechanic	$503,448	13
Bachelor’s degree (for comparison)	$321,441	n/a

Truck driver jumps from 11th to 6th.

The reason is speed. Our model prices CDL school at $5,000 for a 3 to 7 week program and puts a new driver at 90 percent of the state median in year one, so a driver nets $47,776 in the first year while an electrician apprentice at half of journeyman scale, after a $7,500 school cost, nets $24,095. Those are model assumptions with sources listed on the methodology page, not a promise about any one carrier.

Aircraft mechanic goes the other way in year one. The model charges $30,000 for an FAA Part 147 program, so the first year nets only $21,916, and it still finishes third because the pay after that is so strong.

Look at fifth through eleventh again. Seven trades finish within $20,972 of each other after a full decade, which is less than $2,100 a year. Pick the one you would actually show up for.

One honest caveat: ten years is a short window, and it favors the trades. Some degrees, like engineering or nursing, can pull ahead later in a career. I wrote more about that in Do You Need College to Make Good Money?.

Ranking 5: How Many Doors Are Open

A high-paying trade does you no good if you cannot get in. This is the ranking almost nobody shows you.

Trade	People employed (May 2025)
Truck driver	2,062,040
Electrician	757,220
Auto mechanic	704,640
Carpenter	670,090
Heavy equipment operator	478,090
Plumber	465,840
Welder	416,210
HVAC technician	409,670
Diesel mechanic	289,960
Aircraft mechanic	138,090
Lineworker	131,070
Elevator installer	23,790
Wind turbine technician	9,980

The top two trades on pay are near the bottom on headcount. BLS projects about 2,000 openings a year for elevator installers nationally, compared with about 81,000 a year for electricians, 44,000 for plumbers and 40,000 for HVAC techs.

Getting into an elevator apprenticeship usually means passing the NEIEP aptitude test and competing for spots in a trade with fewer than 24,000 workers nationwide. I covered that process in the elevator mechanic apprenticeship post. Lineworker apprenticeships can require an aptitude test, a physical fitness test and a year of high school algebra.

The big-headcount trades are where the shortage hits hardest. My biggest frustration in construction right now is how hard it is to find good workers, because young people keep getting told college is the only path. That is a door wide open for you.

Where You Live Can Matter More Than Which Trade You Pick

National medians blend every state together. Once you split them out, geography swings pay harder than trade choice does.

• Hawaii heavy equipment operators have a state median of $115,860. That beats the national median for elevator installers.
• Washington lineworkers have a state median of $133,060, about $38,000 above the national lineworker median.
• Oregon electricians have a state median of $101,310. Arkansas electricians have a state median of $49,070. Same trade, a $52,240 gap.
• Washington carpenters, where I run my remodeling business, have a state median of $74,190, about $13,600 over the national carpenter median.

I have lived and worked in Hawaii and Alaska, both of which show up near the top of several state lists here. A bigger median in an expensive state is not the same thing as more money left over. Our model leaves living costs out on purpose, so weigh rent and groceries yourself.

Every trade hub on this site has a page for each state, like electricians in Washington, with that state’s real BLS numbers.

How I Would Use These Rankings

I spent five years as a B-52 crew chief in the Air Force before I settled in the Pacific Northwest. That job taught me to follow the checklist and not skip steps, and picking a trade deserves the same treatment.

Here is the checklist I would run:

1. Start with the floor, not the ceiling. Ranking 2 tells you what a rough year looks like. If you can live on that number, the rest is upside.
2. Check the doors. If your top pick is elevator or wind, have a backup from the big-headcount trades in case you do not get a spot right away.
3. Look up your state. A national median can be off by tens of thousands of dollars where you actually live.
4. Pick the trade you will stick with. Fifth through eleventh are almost tied over ten years. The person who stays and keeps getting better climbs toward the 90th percentile, and that spread is bigger than the gap between most of these trades.
5. Work for a good outfit first. This is the advice I give every young tradesman. Learn from someone who does it right before you try to run your own show.

Third-generation carpenter here, so I am biased toward the trade my grandfather and dad handed down. The numbers do not care about my bias, though, and they say almost any trade on this list beats a four-year degree over the first ten years.

Want to see the math for your trade in your state? Run your own numbers in the calculator. It takes about a minute, and every assumption behind it is on the methodology page.