Join metal to metal so it holds. A trade you can learn in under a year, tested by whether the weld passes, not by what you say.
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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 $53,750 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $39,240 at the lower end to about $77,530 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
Up to 2 years after high school, on the usual route.
$800 to $9,900 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no license 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.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$53,750
Bottom tenth
$39,240
Top tenth
$77,530
The national median is $53,750 a year. The bottom tenth earn $39,240 or less and the top tenth $77,530 or more (2025 federal wage survey). The survey counts welders, cutters, solderers and brazers together. Traveling pipeline and shutdown welders chase the work and can be out of work between jobs.
$39,240 to $46,790
What the bottom tenth to bottom quarter of welders, cutters, solderers and brazers earn, 2025
Shop work is the normal first job: steady hours, indoors, a lot of repetition, and somebody watching your welds. Training for this trade runs from a few days to about a year.
$80,840 a year
The median in Alaska, the highest of any state
Hawaii is close behind at $79,000, then Connecticut at $64,880. The lowest is Arkansas, at $47,970. State medians from the 2025 federal wage survey, before overtime and travel pay.
Roughly, all in
$800 to $9,900
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a registered apprenticeship: paid work from the first week, so you buy only a hood, jacket, gloves, boots and hand tools, plus a performance test at an accredited test facility. The high end is a six to twelve month community college welding certificate at in district rates with a fuller kit and the test fee. Private trade schools charge over $20,000 for the same skills and very few welders need that route. Filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid first matters, because a Pell Grant often covers a community college certificate outright. Apprenticeship openings are limited and competitive, so the cheap door is harder to walk through.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) before enrolling anywhere. A Pell Grant covers a community college welding certificate outright for many students, and this is a trade where borrowing $25,000 makes very little sense.
Hourly, with heavy overtime
Shutdowns and outages run long days, and the overtime is a large part of the year's income.
Per diem for travel
Traveling jobs pay a daily allowance for food and lodging on top of the hourly rate.
Union locals
Ironworkers, pipefitters and boilermakers all run welding work with posted scales, pensions and health plans.
Harder weld tests
Passing a harder weld test, in a harder position, on a harder material, opens jobs that others cannot take.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Short, cheap and practical. You are judged on a test coupon that gets cut apart and inspected, not on a transcript.
High school diploma or equivalent
Grade 12
A diploma or a GED (high school equivalency credential) is enough almost everywhere. A school metal shop is a real head start.
Learn the processes
6 to 12 months
Stick welding, MIG (metal inert gas) welding and TIG (tungsten inert gas) welding, plus blueprint reading and weld symbols. Community college, trade school, or on the job.
Pass a weld test
One afternoon
Employers test you before they hire you. You weld a coupon, they bend it or cut it and look at the inside. That is the whole interview.
Get certified
Year 1 to year 2
A performance certification from the American Welding Society is taken at an accredited test facility, with no prerequisite courses, and travels with you between employers.
Specialize
2 to 10 years
Pipe, pressure vessels, aluminum, stainless, aerospace or underwater. Each one narrows the field of people who can do it and raises your rate.
Metal shop or welding class
The single most useful class. Many high schools will get you to a first certification before you graduate.
Math
Measuring, angles, fit-up and material calculations, every day.
Drafting or blueprint reading
Reading a drawing and weld symbols is half of being trusted with a job.
Physics and chemistry
Heat, metallurgy and why a weld cracks when it cools too fast.
No state issues a welder license the way it issues an electrician license. Instead you are qualified for a specific process, position, material and thickness, and the proof is a test you passed. The American Welding Society runs the best known personal credential, its Certified Welder program, which is purely performance based with no prerequisite courses and is tested at an accredited test facility. Employers also run their own qualification tests to their own codes. Keep the paperwork for every test you pass, because it is your record.
Community college
Six month to two year welding technology programs, at in-district prices, usually with job placement help.
Private trade schools
Schools like Lincoln Tech run diploma and certificate welding programs covering arc, MIG (metal inert gas) and TIG (tungsten inert gas) processes. Faster, more expensive, check what employers locally actually think of them.
Registered apprenticeships
Union and employer apprenticeships registered with the federal apprenticeship office pay you while you learn.
On the job
Plenty of shops hire helpers and teach them to weld. Slower, but you earn the entire time.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Pipe welding qualification
Welding pipe in a fixed position with the joint at an angle is the standard hard test, and passing it changes which jobs you can take.
Certified Welding Inspector
One of the most recognized credentials in the industry. With prep courses and fees it can run into several thousand dollars, and it is the usual way off the tools.
Certified Welding Supervisor
The route into running a crew rather than being on one.
Robotic arc welding
Shops are automating. Being the person who sets up and programs the robot keeps you employed as the hand welding shrinks.
Steady hands and good eyes
A shaky hand or uncorrected vision will show up in the weld before it shows up anywhere else.
Physical fitness
Overhead welding in a crouch, in a hood, in summer, is genuinely hard on the body.
A driver's license and willingness to travel
A lot of shutdown and pipeline work is somewhere else, usually for weeks at a time.
Your own truck and rig
Rig welders own their truck and welder and bill far higher rates. It is a business decision, and a loan.
Welding is hard on shoulders, knees, eyes and lungs, and most welders plan an exit from full-time hand welding by their forties. The usual routes are inspection, supervision, quality control, welding engineering, teaching at a community college, or running your own fabrication shop. All of them are built on years on the tools, so the time is not wasted, but the people who thought about it at 25 land better than the people who thought about it at 45.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Start at 6 or 7am. Check the drawing, cut and fit the pieces, tack them, then weld. Grind, inspect, weld again. It is hot inside the jacket and hood even in winter, and you cannot see anything except the puddle in front of you. A quality inspector checks the work and sometimes tells you to cut it out and do it again. Shop work is indoors and repetitive, field work is outdoors and different every day.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
About 437,700 people work as welders, cutters, solderers and brazers (2025). The federal projection has the job growing only 1% to 2% to 2035, yet about 40,300 openings come up each year as people retire or leave.
When O*NET (Occupational Information Network) surveyed welders, 54% said a new hire needs a high school diploma and 21% said less than that.
OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) says welding on stainless steel is a major source of exposure to hexavalent chromium, which is known to cause cancer. Ventilation and respirators are not optional.
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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