Open what is stuck, secure what is not, and learn a trade you can run out of a van.
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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 $51,320 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $35,530 at the lower end to about $79,400 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
1 to 3 years, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.
$300 to $6,000 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, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Virginia. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited 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
$51,320
Bottom tenth
$35,530
Top tenth
$79,400
The national median is $51,320 a year, the bottom tenth earn $35,530 or less and the top tenth $79,400 or more, in the 2025 survey. The survey counts locksmiths and safe repairers together. Self-employed locksmiths who run their own van are not counted in it.
$17.08 to $20.75 an hour
The bottom tenth and bottom quarter of locksmiths and safe repairers, 2025
Trainees and helpers in an established shop usually start in this part of the range. Almost nobody starts alone. You learn on somebody else's jobs for a year or two, cutting keys and riding along on service calls, and the rate climbs as you get trusted with harder work.
$43,160 to $64,560
Half of all locksmiths and safe repairers earn between these two figures, 2025
Automotive key programming and night and weekend emergency calls are the usual ways to earn more, along with a staff job at a university or hospital.
Roughly, all in
$300 to $6,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
There is no tuition bill in this trade: the low end is a basic pick and tool set plus a state registration and fingerprinting where your state requires them. The high end adds a paid training course and your own key cutting machine rather than borrowing the shop's. Automotive key programming software runs $2,000 to $10,000 with yearly subscriptions, and a van with stock and insurance costs far more again, but both belong to running a business rather than learning the trade. Most locksmiths buy tools a piece at a time out of what they earn.
There is no tuition bill here. The cost of this trade is tools, and you buy them a piece at a time out of what you earn rather than borrowing for them up front.
Shop wage
Steady hours, someone else finds the work and owns the van.
Institutional staff job
Universities, hospitals, school districts and city governments all keep locksmiths on payroll, with benefits and a pension.
Your own business
You keep the whole call-out fee, and you also pay for the van, the insurance and the slow weeks.
Call-out premiums
Many locksmiths charge more for nights, weekends and holidays.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Mostly learned on the job. There is no degree and, in most states, no exam.
High school diploma
Grade 12
Shop class, electronics and anything mechanical. Fine motor skill and patience matter more than grades.
Get hired by a shop
Weeks to months of asking
Start as a helper or counter person cutting keys. This is how almost everyone learns. Small independent shops are more likely to take on a beginner than a big franchise.
Learn the mechanics
1 to 3 years
Pin tumbler locks, rekeying, master key systems, door hardware, safes. Some people add a short trade course or the training ALOA (the locksmith trade association) runs at its conventions.
Get registered if your state requires it
Weeks
A background check and fingerprints in the states that license the trade. In others you can simply start working.
Certify and specialize
Ongoing
Take ALOA exams, add automotive key programming or electronic access control, or move into safe work.
Shop and metalwork
Drilling, filing and fitting are daily work.
Electronics
Half of modern security is wiring, card readers and electric strikes.
Computer classes
Key programming and access control both run through software now.
Business or accounting
A lot of locksmiths end up self-employed, and the ones who fail usually fail at the paperwork, not the locks.
There is no national locksmith license. 13 states license locksmiths, usually through a security agency: in California you register and clear state and FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) background checks, and in Texas even advertising without a license is an offense. Illinois plans to drop its license in 2029. Elsewhere, apart from a few cities such as New York, anyone may hang out a sign.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Certified Registered Locksmith
The entry certification from ALOA (the locksmith trade association): one mandatory exam plus two electives of your choice.
Certified Professional Locksmith
Twelve further elective exams on top of the entry certification.
Certified Master Locksmith
Nine more again. Getting there means passing more than twenty separate exams across the whole trade.
Safe and vault work
Opening and servicing safes is a specialty of its own, with its own association.
A clean record
Not optional. Nobody hands the keys to a building to someone who cannot pass a background check.
A driver's license
This is a job done out of a vehicle.
Electronic access control training
Card readers, keypads and networked door controllers. This is where the trade is heading.
Customer manner
You meet people locked out, robbed or frightened. Being calm about it is most of the job.
Every university, hospital, school district and large employer has locks, and someone has to manage them. Those staff locksmith jobs are steady, come with health insurance and a retirement plan, and involve no 2am callouts. The work is master key systems, rekeying after a lost key, door hardware repair and increasingly the card access system. The pay is a steady wage rather than whatever the van brings in that month.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Start at the shop, load the van, check the day's calls. A rekey at a rental property where the tenant just moved out. A stuck commercial door closer at an office. Lunch in the van. A car lockout in a parking lot, then programming a replacement key for the same customer. Back to the shop to cut a master key set for a small apartment building. Then the phone goes at 9pm and someone is locked out of their house, and you decide whether the fee is worth the drive.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Since the late 1990s most car keys carry a transponder chip that the vehicle has to recognize before it will start. That is why a spare key costs hundreds of dollars instead of two. Locksmiths who invested in the programming equipment can now do that work too.
A skilled safe technician can open many mechanical combination safes by manipulation: turning the dial and reading the tiny mechanical feedback from the wheels inside, no drilling and no damage. It takes years to learn.
O*NET OnLine (the Department of Labor's occupation database) projects employment of locksmiths and safe repairers to decline between 2025 and 2035, and fewer buildings use purely mechanical locks every year. The work has not vanished, it has moved: card readers, keypads, networked door controllers and smart locks all need someone who understands both the hardware and the wiring.
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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