About Blue Collar Career Path

We built this site because we believe trade careers deserve the same quality of data and career resources that white-collar jobs get.

If you're a 17-year-old deciding whether to go to college or learn a trade, a 35-year-old considering a career change, or a journeyman wondering if you'd earn more in another state, you deserve clear, accurate, no-BS answers.

Blue Collar Career Path provides salary data for 30+ skilled trades across every US state and 380+ metro areas. Every number on this site comes from federal data sources — not job postings, not surveys, not estimates.

Salary data: We download the full BLS OEWS dataset annually when new data is released (typically each May for the previous year). We filter to our 30 target trade occupations using Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes, then extract median, 10th, 25th, 75th, and 90th percentile wages at the national, state, and metro levels. Current data year: 2024.

Cost-of-living adjustment: The BEA publishes Regional Price Parities (RPPs) for each state, which measure how much prices differ from the national average. A state with an RPP of 110 is 10% more expensive than average. We divide the nominal salary by the RPP factor to show what your paycheck is actually worth in purchasing power. This is the "COL-adjusted salary" figure you see on each page.

Growth projections: 10-year employment growth estimates are derived from historical salary trends and BLS employment data. These are approximations intended to show general direction, not precise predictions.

Content generation: Page summaries, career guides, and FAQ answers are generated using AI (Claude by Anthropic) based on the actual data for each trade-state combination. All generated content references specific data points from BLS and is reviewed for accuracy.

Update frequency: Salary data is refreshed annually when the BLS releases new OEWS data. Content is optimized monthly based on Search Console performance data.

Annual data: BLS OEWS data is collected over a three-year cycle and published annually. Salaries shown reflect the most recent survey year, not real-time market rates. Your actual pay may differ based on experience, employer, union status, and local conditions.

Suppressed data: The BLS suppresses salary data when sample sizes are too small to report reliably. This means some trade-state-metro combinations may not have data available. We show "Data Coming Soon" for these cases rather than displaying inaccurate estimates.

Metro coverage: BLS metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) don't cover every city. Rural and small-town workers may not find their specific area represented.

Not career advice: This site provides data for informational purposes. We are not licensed career counselors. Salary figures should be one factor among many in your career decisions.