Build and maintain the machines that move millions of people a day, for the highest median pay of any construction trade.
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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.
The median pay is about $109,910 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $59,270 at the lower end to about $158,890 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 5 years, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.
$1,000 to $3,200 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a license, certificate or registration in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Good demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$109,910
Bottom tenth
$59,270
Top tenth
$158,890
The national median is $109,910 a year, the bottom tenth earn $59,270 or less and the top tenth $158,890 or more, in the 2025 federal wage survey. That is the highest median of the construction trades in the same survey: boilermakers, for example, have a median of $76,410 and electricians $63,190. You enter it straight from high school with no tuition.
50% of the mechanic wage
What a first-year apprentice earns, rising by a fixed step every year
Apprentices are paid a set percentage of a qualified mechanic's rate under the local agreement, and the percentage rises as you pass each stage of the training program.
$135,720 or more
What the best paid quarter of elevator and escalator installers and repairers earned in 2025
Adjusters tune a finished elevator until it stops and levels perfectly. Overtime and night callouts are paid on top of the base rate.
Roughly, all in
$1,000 to $3,200
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The classroom training comes with the apprenticeship rather than as a tuition bill, and you are paid from your first week, so both figures are tools and fees only. The low end is a starter tool kit built up over the apprenticeship, the union joining fee and a modest state license and exam where your state has one. The high end is a fuller kit, a higher joining fee and a state that charges more to license you. Ongoing union dues are a small percentage of your pay rather than an up front cost.
No tuition, no loans, and a wage from your first week. If you compare this to four years of college, the elevator apprentice has four years of wages and no student debt by graduation day.
A defined-benefit pension
One that pays a set amount every month for life, run through the union, on top of your wages.
Family health coverage
Included from early in the apprenticeship, not after a waiting period of years.
Overtime and callout premiums
Elevators break at night and on holidays, and that work is paid as overtime or callout time.
Work that cannot be sent offshore
The machine is in the building. Somebody has to stand in the shaft.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Get in, and you are set. Getting in is the hard part, because lists open rarely and everybody wants a spot.
High school diploma
Grade 12
A diploma or equivalent is required at hire. Algebra, physics and shop all help. You must be 17 to apply and 18 to register as an apprentice.
Apply when a local list opens
Months to years of waiting
Applications go through a local of the International Union of Elevator Constructors, and some locals open the list only every year or two. There is an aptitude test and an interview.
Apprenticeship
4 to 5 years
Four to five years, with about 2,000 hours of supervised full-time work a year plus 100 to 200 classroom hours a year through the National Elevator Industry Educational Program.
Mechanic exam
At the end of the apprenticeship
After finishing the curriculum and accumulating 8,000 working hours, you become eligible to sit the mechanic exam.
State license
After the exam
37 states and DC (the District of Columbia) require a state license for this work, and many accept the national mechanic exam toward it.
Algebra and geometry
The aptitude test is mostly arithmetic and mechanical reasoning.
Physics
Counterweights, hydraulics, motors and braking are the whole machine.
Shop or welding
You will be rigging, bolting and cutting steel in a shaft.
Electronics
Modern elevators are controlled by circuit boards, so half of a modern callout is electrical.
37 states and DC (the District of Columbia) require a state license to work on elevators. In Idaho and Wyoming it is a limited electrical license for elevator work. The rest, including Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona, license only the company or the inspectors. Some states accept the national mechanic exam, others run their own, so check before you move.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Adjuster
Tuning ride quality, speed and door timing on a new installation. The most technical role in the trade.
Modernization
Ripping out 40-year-old equipment and replacing the controls. Steady work in every older city.
Escalators
A different machine with different faults, and a specialty in airports, transit stations and malls.
Elevator inspector
A separate certification, and a way out of the shaft and into inspection and code work later in your career.
Aptitude test practice
The entrance test is mechanical reasoning and arithmetic. Weeks of practice genuinely change who gets a spot.
No fear of heights or tight spaces
Be honest with yourself. You work in a shaft, on top of a car, hundreds of feet up.
A driver's license and a clean record
Service routes cover a lot of buildings.
Any construction experience
A season of general labor on a site makes an application stronger when hundreds are competing.
This trade is unusual: the median pay is $109,910 a year, there is no tuition, the work is stable, and almost nobody talks about it. The result is that when a local union opens its apprenticeship list, far more people apply than there are places, and the list may not open again for a year or two. Sign up for notifications from your local now, even if you are still in high school, and apply every time it opens.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
On a construction job, you are in a shaft installing rails, cables, motors and cars, working off scaffolding with a crew. On service, you drive a route: a stuck car at a hospital, a door sensor at an office tower, scheduled maintenance in a machine room that is either boiling or freezing. A lot of the diagnosis is now electrical, reading fault codes off a controller. When a car is stuck with people inside, everything else waits.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In 1854 Elisha Otis stood on a platform at a New York exhibition and had the rope cut. The brake caught. Once people believed a falling car would stop, tall buildings became possible, and the trade was born.
The International Union of Elevator Constructors has represented this trade since 1901, across the United States and Canada.
The federal career profile counts 24,700 elevator and escalator installers and repairers in 2025, with about 1,900 openings a year. That small number is why apprenticeship lists fill so fast.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Industrial and mechanical 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 United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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