Calculator · BLS wages May 2025 + College Scorecard costs

Apprenticeship vs. trade school: the 5-year math

Both paths lead to the same license. One pays you while you learn; the other costs money up front but gets you working sooner. Pick your trade and state to see the comparison run on your state's real wages and average program costs.

Trade

State

Apprenticeship path

5-year net earnings

Trade school path

5-year net earnings

Year by year
Year	Apprenticeship	Trade school

Does the apprenticeship always win?

Running the same model across every state and trade in this dataset gives 150 combinations, of which 138 have a published trade-school cost to work from. Among those, the apprenticeship path finishes ahead in 135 and trade school in 3. The remaining 12 are left out of that count because their result would be decided by an assumed tuition figure rather than a real one. The median gap is $14,528 over five years, and the widest is $45,179 for plumbers in Rhode Island. The reason is structural rather than local: the school path gives up a year of earnings and pays tuition in the same year the apprentice is already being paid, and five years is rarely long enough to make that back at the wages either path leads to.

The exceptions are states where trade school is unusually cheap and entry wages sit close to the journeyman median, which compresses the head start the apprentice earns during training. A negative gap below means trade school finished ahead.

The five closest calls, five-year net earnings
Trade	State	Apprenticeship, 5 yr	Trade school, 5 yr	Gap
HVAC Technician	Maine	$230,571	$231,668	−$1,098
HVAC Technician	New Mexico	$183,486	$185,386	−$1,901
Plumber	Florida	$193,122	$190,263	$2,859
Electrician	North Dakota	$239,842	$236,158	$3,684
HVAC Technician	Arkansas	$175,602	$171,490	$4,112

Wages: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Program net price: US Department of Education College Scorecard, June 2026, averaged across the programs reported in each state for the trade's field of study. Where the Scorecard reports no program cost for a state, the calculator above substitutes $15,000 and says so on screen; those combinations are kept out of the table here, because an assumed tuition figure should not be what decides a close call.

Assumptions, stated so you can argue with them: Apprenticeship pays a standard progression of 50% → 60% → 70% → 85% of your state's median journeyman wage over years 1–4, then 100% of median in year 5; tuition ≈ $0 (registered apprenticeships are typically employer/union sponsored). Trade school: year 1 in a certificate program at your state's average net price (College Scorecard, average across programs in this trade's field), no earnings during that year; years 2–5 start at the state's 25th-percentile wage and reach the median by year 5. In licensed states, school graduates usually still need on-the-job hours for a license, so check your state's rules on the license pages. Figures are pre-tax and ignore raises beyond the median, overtime, and tool costs.

Sources

Wages: BLS OEWS May 2025, state-level percentiles per trade.
Program costs: U.S. Dept. of Education College Scorecard (June 2026), average net price of the programs reported in your state for this trade's field of study.
License hours: state licensing boards, verified July 2026.

Full computation details: methodology