Highest paying jobs you can learn through an apprenticeship
Trades where the federal classification lists apprenticeship as the training route — you are paid while you learn. Ranked by median pay. Wages are Bureau of Labor Statistics medians for May 2025; entry requirements come from the federal Employment Projections classification.
| Occupation | Median | Top 10% | Training | Employed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers | $109,910 | $158,890 | Apprenticeship | 23,790 |
| 2 Millwrights | $65,700 | $93,600 | Apprenticeship | 40,330 |
| 3 Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters | $63,800 | $108,420 | Apprenticeship | 465,840 |
| 4 Electricians | $63,190 | $108,510 | Apprenticeship | 757,220 |
| 5 Structural Iron and Steel Workers | $62,780 | $108,260 | Apprenticeship | 68,380 |
| 6 Brickmasons and Blockmasons | $62,120 | $100,010 | Apprenticeship | 52,550 |
| 7 Sheet Metal Workers | $61,800 | $105,650 | Apprenticeship | 119,770 |
| 8 Carpenters | $60,580 | $99,910 | Apprenticeship | 670,090 |
| 9 Insulation Workers, Mechanical | $58,340 | $100,220 | Apprenticeship | 25,660 |
| 10 Glaziers | $57,080 | $89,790 | Apprenticeship | 58,480 |
Reading this ranking
Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers tops the list at $109,910. The midpoint of this ranking is $62,120, so the leader pays 77% more than a typical entry on it — a gap wide enough that the top row is better read as an outlier than as a realistic target.
10 of the 10 listed reach competence through apprenticeship. That is the actual entry route for this group — the qualification is not what gets you in, the training is.
Pay inside a single occupation varies more than people expect. For elevator and escalator installers and repairers, the bottom tenth earn $59,270 and the top tenth $158,890 — 2.7× apart. A ranking like this shows the middle; the band is where your own outcome sits.
All 10 matching occupations with meaningful national employment are shown.
Other entry routes
Where these jobs pay most
Every figure above is a national median. The same occupation can pay two or three times more in one metropolitan area than another — the salary guides break each one down by metro.
About the data
Two federal datasets are joined here. Wages come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey of employers. Entry requirements — education, training and prior experience — come from the Employment Projections programme, which assigns each occupation the level typically needed to enter it. “Typically” is doing real work in that sentence: individual employers set their own bars, and plenty hire above or below the classification.