Lay ceramic, porcelain and stone tile on floors, walls and showers. A 3 to 4 year paid apprenticeship that rewards fast, precise hands.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
An apprenticeship: you are hired by a sponsor, paid while you learn on the job, and go to class for a few weeks at a time. Every fact here is from Skilled Trades Ontario (STO) and the Ontario government. See every Ontario trade side by side
You are paid from your first day. Over the 4,780 hours on the job, even at the minimum wage you would earn at least $85,801 before tax while you train, and most sponsors pay more as your skills grow.
The trade on Skilled Trades Ontario's site(opens in a new tab)
Still in high school? In Grade 11 or 12, with at least 14 credits and age 15 or older, you can start an apprenticeship through co-op placements and earn credits at the same time. Ask your school's OYAP recruiter, guidance counsellor or co-op teacher. Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program (OYAP)(opens in a new tab)
Not ready to find a sponsor? Free pre-apprenticeship programs (up to a year at a college or community agency, tools and books covered, with a work placement) get you ready and in front of employers. Employment Ontario helps you apply. Pre-apprenticeship training(opens in a new tab)
Ontario sets no percentage of full pay for apprentices. Your sponsor agrees your wage with you, and it can never be below the minimum wage: $17.95 an hour from 1 October 2026. Source (opens in a new tab)
The median pay is about $72,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $50,000 at the lower end to about $92,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
3 to 4 years, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.
$800 to $7,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Quebec. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$72,000
Lower end
$50,000
Upper end
$92,000
Job Bank's national median is $34.76 an hour, about $72,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The low is $24.04 and the high is $44: the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group.
$27.96 to $30.11 an hour
First-period apprentice on Quebec construction sites, by sector (August 2026)
These are the CCQ (Commission de la construction du Québec) collective agreement rates. Apprentice pay is a share of the journeyperson rate and rises each period. Your first year is a lot of hauling boxes of tile and mixing thin-set. In Ontario no share is set in law: your sponsor agrees your rate, often in a union or company agreement, and it can never be below the minimum wage.
$36.18 an hour
The median in Quebec, about $75,000 a year, the highest of the provinces Job Bank reports
Ontario's median is $31.92 and British Columbia's is $30.00. Much residential tile work is paid per square foot, not per hour, so a slow day, a bad layout or a callback comes out of your pocket.
Roughly, all in
$800 to $7,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
This is a paid apprenticeship, so there is no tuition to find. The low end is somebody whose employer covers the classroom blocks, who builds a hand tool kit slowly, and whose first certificate exam try is free in Ontario once the apprenticeship is complete. The high end is paying for all three school blocks yourself, a fuller set of hand tools, and buying your own wet saw when you start working independently. Employers supply saws and mixers while you are an apprentice, and the Canada Apprentice Loan charges no interest on up to 4,000 per school block.
Employers supply saws and mixers while you are an apprentice. The federal Apprenticeship Incentive Grant closed in March 2025. The new federal Red Seal Completion Bonus pays $5,000 if you finish your apprenticeship and get certified in a Red Seal trade on or after April 1, 2025. Applications open November 16, 2026.
Union pension and health plan
BAC (the bricklayers and allied craftworkers union) covers tile, marble and terrazzo workers on many commercial jobs.
Indoor work
Bathrooms and lobbies do not care that it is minus 20 outside.
Easy path to self-employment
A truck, a wet saw and a few builders who trust you.
Visible, finished work
You leave every job looking at something you made.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A paid apprenticeship: mostly on the job, with short college blocks.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Grade 12. Math and shop classes help. Ontario students can start early through OYAP (the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program).
Find a sponsor
Weeks to months
A tile contractor, a flooring company or a union hall that will register you as an apprentice. Many people start as a helper first.
Register the apprenticeship
Days
With your provincial trades authority, such as Skilled Trades Ontario (where the trade is called Terrazzo, Tile and Marble Setter) or SkilledTradesBC.
Work and study
3 to 4 years
About 5,500 hours in Ontario: 4,780 on the job plus 720 hours in class, usually three blocks of about 8 weeks at a college.
Certificate of Qualification and Red Seal
After your hours
Pass the provincial exam. Add the interprovincial Red Seal endorsement to work in any province.
Math
Layout is geometry: centring a pattern in a room, working out cuts, calculating square footage.
Shop or technology classes
Comfort with saws and measuring tools.
Art or design
Pattern, colour and grout lines are the visible part of the job.
In Ontario, tilesetter (registered as Terrazzo, Tile and Marble Setter) is a voluntary trade, as it is in most of Canada: you do not need a licence to set tile for pay. Quebec is the exception: on construction sites you need a competency certificate from the CCQ (Commission de la construction du Québec). The Certificate of Qualification and the Red Seal endorsement are proof of training that union and commercial employers look for, and that clients can check when you go out on your own.
In Quebec you take a short vocational diploma first, and the CCQ (Commission de la construction du Québec, the Quebec construction commission) decides who can work on a site.
Secondary III courses
From age 16
The DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies) in Tiling takes a high school diploma, or age 16 with Secondary III language, second language and math. From 18, the general development test is another way in.
DEP in Tiling (5300, or 5800 in English)
About 6 months
690 hours of surface preparation, thin-set and mortar-bed tiling, slabs and terrazzo. Offered in Quebec City, Mauricie, Montérégie, Montreal and the Outaouais. The English version runs at the École des métiers de la construction de Montréal.
Apprentice competency certificate
Weeks
Issued by the CCQ. You need the DEP, an employer registered with the CCQ who guarantees at least 150 hours of work within 3 months, the 30 hour site safety course and a $100 fee.
Work as an apprentice
About 4,965 hours
Three periods of 2,000 hours, 6,000 in all. The DEP counts for its hours plus a 50% bonus, about 1,035, which leaves about 4,965 hours of paid site work.
Qualification exam
Near the end
Set by the CCQ, multiple choice, up to 3 hours. You can sit it once 85% of your apprenticeship hours are done. Pass and you become a journeyperson (compagnon).
In 2025 the CCQ (Commission de la construction du Québec, the Quebec construction commission) counted 2,823 tile setters on sites and admitted 280 new apprentices. Apprentices earned $27,249 on average that year, and journeypersons who worked at least 500 hours earned $69,080. Those averages include overtime and premiums. Collective agreement rates in August 2026 run from $27.96 to $50.18 an hour.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Large-format porcelain and slab
Tiles and slabs the size of a door. Hard to handle and in demand.
Natural stone and marble
Expensive material, so builders want someone who will not waste it.
Waterproofing systems
Shower membranes and shower pans. A failed shower is a costly callback, so this skill is valued.
Terrazzo and mosaic
Lobbies, transit stations and restoration work.
Pre-apprenticeship or flooring program
A short college program that gets you sponsored faster.
Driver's licence
You carry heavy material between sites.
Good knees and a strong back, and the sense to protect them
Knee pads and a kneeling stool from day one, not after the pain starts.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
7am on site. Check the floor is flat, then snap chalk lines so the pattern is centred and the cuts are hidden at the edges. Mix thin-set, spread it with a notched trowel, set tile, check level, repeat for hours on your knees. Cuts go through the wet saw. Next day you grout, clean and caulk. On a subdivision you might do a full kitchen floor a day.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Red Seal tilesetter exam has 100 questions, and 21 of them are about layout: planning where every tile and cut goes. Only setting the tile itself gets more, at 24.
Tilesetter became a Red Seal trade in 2001. It is designated in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces, but not in Alberta, Manitoba or the territories.
Job Bank counts about 10,100 tile setters in Canada in 2023, and 30% are 50 or older. It rates 3-year prospects moderate in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta, but very limited in Quebec.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Construction first, then the rest of the field. See every career in skilled trades.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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