About
Pay transparency for the skilled trades
Trade Salaries publishes what skilled trades pay in 25 US metros, using official government data. Every pay figure traces back to a published source, and every source is named on the page where its figures appear.
Trades covered
10
electricians to landscapers
Metros covered
25
BLS metro areas
Pay combinations
250
trade x metro
Core dataset
BLS OEWS May 2025
median, percentiles, employment
What the site does
The core of the site is BLS OEWS May 2025 wage data for 10 skilled trades across 25 US metropolitan areas: median and mean hourly and annual pay, pay percentiles, employment counts, and five-year pay trends. Around that core, the site adds computed context from other official sources: estimated take-home pay after 2026 taxes, union vs nonunion earnings gaps, workplace injury rates, rent burden, apprenticeship counts, hiring demand, and cost-of-living adjustments.
Workers can also submit their own pay anonymously. Those submissions are shown separately from official figures and are reviewed before publication. The full dataset list, with vintages and computation methods, is documented on the methodology page.
Who it is for
Trade workers comparing a job offer or a raise. Apprentices choosing a trade. Employers checking that their pay is competitive. Journalists and researchers who need a citable, source-attributed pay figure for a skilled trade in a specific metro.
The site is maintained by the Trade Salaries data team. Pay figures are reference data, not job offers, and projections are not guarantees.