Carpenter

What carpenters make

The national median is $60,580 a year, the bottom tenth earn $40,410 or less and the top tenth $99,910 or more (2025 federal wage survey).

Where pay is highest

Illinois ($79,000) and California ($75,920) come next. Oklahoma is the lowest, at $46,910. Apprentices are paid from week one: registered programs set your wage as a percentage of the fully qualified rate in each program's wage schedule, and it climbs toward the full rate by the end. No tuition, no debt.

The middle half

The top tenth earn $99,910 or more. Overtime adds to your pay on long weeks. Running your own small remodeling business is another route, with all the risk of a small business.

What it costs to get there

Filing the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) can bring the cost of a community college certificate close to nothing, but you do not need one. Most carpenters are hired as a helper and taught on the job.

How carpenters get paid

• Hourly, with overtime

  Time and a half past 40 hours in most states. Long weeks are normal when a job is behind schedule.

• Union scale

  A local agreement sets the rate, plus health coverage and a pension paid on top of the hourly wage.

• Piece rate

  Some framing crews pay by the square foot. It rewards speed, and punishes anyone slow or careful.

• Your own contracting business

  Quoting jobs, buying material before you get paid, chasing customers for the last check.

The path to becoming a carpenter, step by step

Nobody needs a degree. The question is whether you learn in a registered apprenticeship or just on somebody's crew.

1. 1

   High school

   Grades 11 and 12

   Shop, geometry and drafting. A summer as a laborer on a site tells you more than a year of reading about it.

2. 2

   Get on a crew, or apply to an apprenticeship

   0 to 6 months

   Either get hired as a laborer or helper, or apply to a joint apprenticeship program run by a union local or a contractors association.

3. 3

   Registered apprenticeship

   4 years

   The standard shape is about 2,000 paid hours on the job each year plus at least 144 hours of classroom time, over four years.

4. 4

   Journeyman carpenter

   Year 4 or 5

   You can read a set of plans, lay out a building, run your own section and be left alone with it.

5. 5

   Lead carpenter or foreman

   Year 6 onward

   Running a crew, ordering material, dealing with the general contractor and the inspector.

High school courses that help you become a carpenter

• Woodworking and shop

  The most useful class in the building for this job.

• Geometry and trigonometry

  Roof pitches, stair rise and run, square corners. You will use it every single day.

• Drafting or computer-aided design

  Plans are how the whole job gets communicated.

• English

  Contracts, safety rules and building codes are all written documents.

Time and money, at a glance

Nobody licenses a carpenter, but states license contractors

You do not need a license to work as a carpenter for somebody else in any state. The moment you want to contract directly with a homeowner, that changes. Most states require a contractor license, and several are strict: California, Nevada and Arizona all make you document years of experience, pass a trade exam and a business and law exam, and post a bond before you can bid a job. What travels with you as an employee is not a license at all. It is a record of training, like the craft credentials from NCCER (the National Center for Construction Education and Research), logged under your own number.

Skills that open more work

• Concrete formwork

  Building the molds that hold poured concrete. Commercial work, with more union jobs.

• Finish carpentry and trim

  Doors, casing, crown, stairs and built-ins. Slower, cleaner work that rewards precision.

• Layout

  Using a laser and a total station to set out a whole building. The person who does layout is the person who becomes foreman.

• Welding

  Useful on commercial sites, where it puts you on more jobs.

• Scaffold and fall protection training

  Short courses that let you work where other people are not allowed.

Nice-to-haves

• A driver's license and a truck

  Sites move. Crews expect you to get yourself and your tools there at 6:30 in the morning.

• A 30 hour construction safety card

  Required on a lot of commercial and public sites before you can set foot on them.

• Spanish

  On a huge number of American job sites it is the language of the crew.

• Photographs of everything you build

  This trade hires on what you can show and who will vouch for you.

Going out on your own

A lot of carpenters end up running a two or three person remodeling outfit. The carpentry is the easy half. The hard half is quoting a kitchen accurately, carrying liability insurance and workers compensation, buying lumber before the customer pays you, and holding your nerve when somebody changes their mind after the walls are open. The people who make it usually spent five or ten years on somebody else's crew first, learning how long things really take.

What a carpenter does day to day

Tools on site by 6:30 or 7. A stretch and a short talk about what is dangerous today. Then layout lines snapped on a deck, walls built flat and stood up, sheathing and windows in. Lunch out of a cooler at 11:30. Afternoon is whatever the crew is behind on, plus cleanup, because a messy site is how people get hurt. In winter, in a cold state, you do all of that in gloves. In July in the South you do it by 2pm and then drink water.

The honest pros and cons of being a carpenter

Work life

Similar paths

• CabinetmakerBuild kitchens, furniture and millwork out of wood, in a shop, with machines and your hands.
• General ContractorYou do not swing every hammer. You price the job, hire the trades, hold the schedule, and carry the risk.
• Drywall InstallerHang the boards that make a building into rooms. Often paid by the sheet, so speed counts.

Half a million carpenters carry one union card

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America says it has over half a million members, which makes it one of the largest building trades unions in North America. It runs its own international training center and a network of local training funds.

Construction training is tracked like a transcript

NCCER (the National Center for Construction Education and Research) has logged more than 26.2 million successful training completions. Your credentials sit under a personal number that any contractor can verify.

Falls are the thing that kills people

Falls from roofs, ladders and unguarded edges are the biggest single cause of death on American construction sites. That is why harness and guardrail rules are enforced so hard, and why a fall protection card is worth having.

A big trade with steady hiring

The federal career profile counts about 889,700 carpenters in 2025 and projects average growth, 3% to 4%, from 2025 to 2035. It still expects roughly 62,800 openings a year, because openings include people who retire or leave the trade.