An apprenticeship pays you to learn. Trade school costs tuition and replaces the wage years.
Over four years, the gap can be $100k+. Pick a trade and state below — we run both paths
side-by-side using the BLS state-level median wage as the journeyman benchmark.
Earn-while-you-learn. Wage scales from ~50% of journeyman in year 1 to full journeyman by year 4-5.
Path B
Trade school
Tuition + opportunity cost in years 1-2. Graduates enter as helpers/apprentices, scale to journeyman by year 4-5.
How the model works. Apprenticeship wage progression follows the standard registered-apprenticeship
tier schedule: year 1 = 50% of journeyman, year 2 = 60%, year 3 = 70%, year 4 = 85%, year 5+ = 100%. Trade-school
path assumes 2 years of school (tuition + ~$25k/yr opportunity cost from working a non-trade job),
then helper-rate (60% of journeyman) in year 3 scaling to 95% by year 4. Both paths converge at journeyman by year 5.
Real numbers vary — apprenticeship wages depend on local CBA, trade school graduates may take longer to make
journeyman without on-the-job hours, and tuition financial aid changes the math.