Real talk on
the trades.
The trades pay six figures, change your life, and nobody's telling you the truth about them. We are. Verified pay, real apprenticeship paths, every state's license rules, and the stuff the recruiter's brochure left out.
Pick a trade.
Pulls wire, bends conduit, makes everything that uses electricity work. The flagship trade.
Installs, modernizes, and repairs elevators and escalators. The highest-paid construction trade in the BLS data.
Builds and repairs the high-voltage grid. Climbs poles, rides bucket trucks, works storms. Highest-paid common trade.
Installs and repairs water, drain, gas, and steam systems. The 'recession-proof' trade.
Installs, maintains, repairs heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration. Year-round demand, climate-change tailwind.
Joins metal. Everything from your car frame to nuclear submarines. The trade with the highest variance in pay.
Maintains and repairs wind turbines. Fastest-growing trade in BLS projections. Climbs 300+ feet for a living.
Erects the skeleton of buildings, bridges, stadiums. Walks the iron. Highest-paid construction trade in many metros.
Fixes the trucks that move America. Steady demand, transportable skills, growing complexity with modern emissions systems.
Six families.
One straight guide.
Power, light, data — the trades that make modern life work.
Pipes, ducts, machines. If it moves fluid or air, this is the family.
Wood, brick, concrete, steel, glass — the trades that build the building.
Heavy iron, pressure vessels, big machines. The trades that build the things that build things.
Moving freight, passengers, and equipment. CDL, fleet, logistics.
Repair, diagnose, maintain. Auto, diesel, and the work-with-your-hands service trades.
Which trade, is it worth it, can I get in
Pre-app programs, aptitude test prep, what to expect
Step pay, transfer rules, hazing, what to know
License renewal, pension, going independent, leadership
Calculators that don't lie.
Year-1 pay on 40% scale. Your trade, your market, your family size. See the monthly math before you sign anything.
Ten questions. Real answers. Which trades actually fit you — and which ones don't.
TEST69 questions. NJATC format. Stanine scoring. Pass it on the first try.
$/DAYEvery active market ranked by net monthly earnings after per diem, CoL, and state taxes.
PENSIONNEBF + local + Social Security. The disability math nobody shows you before you sign your indenture.
CECE hours by state and trade. Countdown to your renewal deadline. Don't let it lapse.
What the brochure
left out.
Construction workers die by suicide 4× more often than the average American. More deaths than all workplace accidents combined. Nobody put this on the recruitment brochure.
Job Corps, YouthBuild, Helmets to Hardhats, and MC3. The back door most JATCs actually prefer — and why people who come through it complete the program at higher rates.
Workers' comp pays roughly 66% of your wages. The first 30 minutes determine how your claim goes. Here are the five plays employers run to minimize your payout — and how to counter them.
Open
Right Now.
The only place on the internet that tells you which apprenticeship programs are actively accepting applications — in states where trades workers are desperately needed. Verified manually. Updated regularly. No middlemen.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans walk into a for-profit trade school and walk out with $30,000 of debt and a certificate worth maybe two thousand. They believed the brochure. Nobody told them community college does the same thing for $3,000, or that the union apprenticeship up the street would have paid them to learn the same job.
Every year, hundreds of thousands more take a trades aptitude test cold, get rejected, and never try again — because nobody told them you can prep for it. Or that you can apply to multiple locals. Or that there are pre-apprenticeships that walk you through the whole thing.
And every year, real journeymen — the ones who actually built the country — are watching kids make the wrong call for the wrong reasons because they got their information from someone whose paycheck depends on lying.
That's what PlumbSquare is for.
Plumb. Square. True.