Trade School Enrolment Is Booming. Five Years Out, The Earnings Data Splits In Two.
Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist
Enrollment at America's trade and vocational colleges climbed to roughly 871,000 students by spring 2025, a cumulative increase of nearly 20 percent since spring 2020, according to enrollment data compiled by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Over that same recent stretch, bachelor's degree program enrollment nationally grew just 0.9 percent in a single year, compared with 2.2 percent growth in associate degree programs and 1.9 percent growth in undergraduate certificates, the Clearinghouse's own final fall enrollment data show. The direction of the shift is not in dispute. What happens to a graduate's paycheck five years later depends enormously on which trade they picked.
"Trade school" functions in most conversations as a single category, as if a welding certificate and an elevator-repair apprenticeship lead to comparable outcomes. Federal wage data say otherwise.
The Enrollment Reversal Is Real And Accelerating
Vocational-focused two-year institutions grew enrollment by 2.8 percent year over year as of the most recent Clearinghouse count, adding roughly 24,000 students, a more moderate pace than the sharper growth of 2021 through 2023 but still outrunning enrollment growth at most four-year institutions. Separately, higher-education market research firm Validated Insights projects trade school enrollment will keep growing about 6.6 percent annually through 2030, driven heavily by Gen Z; the firm's data show trade school enrollment among people born between 1997 and 2012 rose more than 1,400 percent over the past eight years, off a small starting base. Community colleges have absorbed much of this shift, with certificate and associate programs now outpacing bachelor's program growth nationally.
"Trade School" Covers Wildly Different Wage Ceilings
Among occupations that typically require trade-level training rather than a four-year degree, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2023 wage data show elevator and escalator installers and repairers earning a mean $48.11 an hour, worth just over $100,000 annualized, the highest of any occupation typically entered through an apprenticeship rather than a bachelor's degree. Electricians averaged $32.60 an hour and plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters averaged $32.62, both comfortably above the $31.48 mean for all U.S. occupations. At the other end of the same BLS list, musical instrument repairers and tuners averaged just $22.24 an hour, the only trade occupation BLS tracked with a mean wage below the $24.87 average for all jobs typically requiring only a high school diploma; terrazzo workers and finishers averaged $26.07, and stonemasons $27.37.
What Five Years Out Actually Looks Like
The trades near the top of that list share structural features the ones near the bottom mostly lack: mandatory multi-year apprenticeships that function as a licensing ladder, strong union representation in many regions, and demand tied to construction and infrastructure spending that has stayed elevated through the mid-2020s. A graduate who becomes a licensed electrician or joins an elevator-constructor apprenticeship is moving up a defined wage scale for years after certification. A graduate of a nine-month cosmetology or massage therapy program, by contrast, typically enters a market with a much flatter wage curve, fewer licensing-driven raises, and earnings that depend heavily on tips, clientele and local demand rather than a scheduled progression. Both are routinely marketed under the same "skilled trades" umbrella. Their five-year earnings trajectories rarely resemble each other.
Location Widens The Gap Further
Wages within a single trade also vary considerably by region, driven mainly by local construction activity and union density rather than cost of living alone. Elevator-constructor apprenticeships, for instance, run through a small number of union locals concentrated in dense metro areas with a lot of high-rise construction, so access to the highest-paying rungs of that trade depends heavily on where a graduate lives, not just which program they completed. Electricians and plumbers in regions with active data-center or infrastructure construction have seen faster wage growth in recent years than those in slower-growth metro areas, according to BLS regional wage data, even when both hold identical certifications. Two graduates of the same electrical program can end up on meaningfully different earnings trajectories purely based on where they chose to work.
What This Means For Someone Choosing A Program
None of this means trade school is a bad bet relative to a four-year degree; the strongest-performing trades post wage ceilings that rival or beat many bachelor's degree fields, without the four years of tuition and foregone income a degree requires. But "trade school enrollment is booming" describes a category, not an outcome, and the category contains both six-figure apprenticeship ladders and flat, tip-dependent service work. A prospective student comparing two trade programs is making a more consequential choice than the shared marketing language suggests, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics' occupation-level wage data, not the enrollment growth figures alone, is where that difference actually shows up.
