You cut, form and hang the metal that moves air through every building. Paid to learn from the first week.
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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 $61,800 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $38,630 at the lower end to about $105,650 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.
$400 to $1,200 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 Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Rhode Island. 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.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$61,800
Bottom tenth
$38,630
Top tenth
$105,650
The national median is $61,800 a year. The bottom tenth earn $38,630 or less and the top tenth $105,650 or more (2025 federal wage survey). The federal wage survey counts shop fabricators and site installers together under one occupation, so both ends of that range are real jobs in the same trade.
$24.18 an hour to start
A first-year apprentice in the Illinois Valley area of SMART (the sheet metal workers union) Local 1, half the journeyman's $48.36
Benefits worth $26.35 an hour come on top. Each local sets its own scale, and your rate rises on a published schedule as your hours and classes are signed off.
$98,550 a year
The median for sheet metal workers in Washington state, the highest of any state
Hawaii ($96,350) and Alaska ($94,600) come next. The lowest is Arkansas, at $45,820 (2025 wage survey). Overtime on shutdowns pays time and a half on top.
Roughly, all in
$400 to $1,200
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Apprenticeship training is funded by the employers and the union, so there is no tuition at either end and you earn a wage for the full four to five years. The low end is a basic set of hand tools, snips, hammers, seamers, tape and a bag. The high end adds boots and protective gear at $200 to $400 and the small application or testing fee some training centers charge. Nobody finishes this route with student debt. The hard part is not the money, it is getting accepted into a training center, because places are limited and intakes are competitive.
This is one of the few careers on this site where nobody finishes with student debt. If you do take college classes first, file the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) so you are not paying cash for them.
Pension and annuity
Construction locals still run defined-benefit pensions, which have mostly disappeared from private work.
Health coverage earned by hours
You bank hours toward coverage rather than waiting for a salaried benefits package.
Overtime and shift premiums
Shutdowns and fast-track jobs run long days and pay for them.
Travel and subsistence pay
Data centers, hospitals and plants are often out of town.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
An apprenticeship, not a degree. Roughly four days a week on the job and classroom time in the evenings.
High school diploma or equivalent
Grade 12
A diploma or a GED (high school equivalency credential) plus solid math is what most training centers ask for. Shop classes help your application.
Apply to an apprenticeship
Weeks to a year of waiting
A SMART (International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers) local training center, or a contractor running its own registered program. Expect a math test, an interview and a physical.
Work and learn
4 to 5 years
Paid work beside a journeyman, plus classroom instruction in layout, welding, drawings and duct systems at a training center.
Certifications along the way
During the apprenticeship
Welding qualifications, rigging, and in many programs a specialty such as testing and balancing air systems.
Journeyman
After your hours
Full rate, a nationally recognized apprenticeship credential, and the option to run crews or move into detailing and estimating.
Geometry and trigonometry
Flat metal has to be laid out so it folds into a shape that fits. That is geometry, every day.
Shop or metalwork
Cutting, bending and welding practice is the single strongest thing on an application.
Drafting or technical drawing
You work from shop drawings and building plans, and reading them wrong wastes expensive metal.
Physics
Airflow, pressure and load all show up in duct design.
Five states license sheet metal workers themselves: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Rhode Island. Elsewhere what states license is the business: in much of the country a company installing heating and cooling systems needs a licensed HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) contractor, which matters if you ever run your own shop. Your own credentials are your welding tests, safety training and the certificate you earn at the end of a Registered Apprenticeship.
Union training centers
SMART (the sheet metal, air, rail and transportation workers union) locals run training centers across the country, with no tuition for apprentices.
Contractor apprenticeships
Non-union employers register programs with the federal or state apprenticeship office too.
Community college pre-apprenticeship
A semester of welding, blueprint reading and shop math that makes your application stand out.
Helmets to Hardhats
A program that routes people leaving military service into construction apprenticeships.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Certified welder
Tested to a code and a position. A core skill in this trade.
Testing and balancing
Measuring and tuning the air in a finished building. Technical, and always short of people.
Detailing in CAD (computer-aided design)
Turning an engineer's drawings into the exact shapes the shop will cut. An indoor branch of the trade.
Architectural metal
Roofs, flashings, cornices and custom panels. Closer to craft work, and visible when it is done.
Real fitness and steady hands
Sheet metal is light per piece and heavy per day, and a lot of it goes up on a ladder or a lift.
A driver's license and a reliable car
Jobs move, start early and are rarely on a bus route.
Comfort on a roof
Rooftop units are a big share of the work. You can find out how you feel about heights cheaply.
Basic computer skills
Modern shops cut with machines driven by drawing files, not by hand layout alone.
Shop workers run the cutting and forming machines indoors, in a controlled place with regular hours. Field workers hang and connect what the shop made, on site, in whatever weather and at whatever height the building has. Service technicians go back afterward to fix and balance systems. Most apprenticeships expose you to all of it, and a lot of people move between them over a career: field work when young, shop or detailing later when the ladders stop being fun.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
On site around 6:30am or in the shop by 7. In the shop you read a drawing, mark out flat metal, run it through a shear and a brake, and build the piece. In the field you carry duct up to a ceiling, hang it on rod and strap, seal the joints and connect the units on the roof. Lots of overhead work, lots of ladder time, hands in gloves against sharp edges. The job is measured in how much you got installed before the end of the shift.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Everything starts as a flat sheet. Getting a round duct, a tapered transition or a curved roof edge out of it is a layout problem solved with geometry before anyone picks up a tool. That is why the trade tests your math before it tests your hands.
SMART (the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers) represents both sheet metal workers and railroad crews. Two very different unions merged into one in November 2011, which is why the name is so long.
Sheet metal workers are still called tin knockers, from the sound of a hammer setting a seam by hand. The metal is usually galvanized steel or aluminum now, and most seams are made by machine, but the name stuck.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Metal and machining 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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