Are the Trades Getting Oversaturated?

The worry behind this question is reasonable. Five years ago the trades were the thing nobody mentioned at parents’ evening. Now every guidance counsellor, podcast and uncle is pointing the same direction, and a parent can be forgiven for wondering whether their teenager is arriving late to a party that is already crowded.

The good news is that this question has an evidence base, and it is free. The bad news, if you want a single tidy answer, is that the evidence says something different about each trade.

Would oversaturation even show up in the federal numbers?

Partly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes employment projections for a ten year window, currently 2024 to 2034, built from its own assumptions about industry demand, technology and demographics. Those projections tell you whether BLS expects an occupation to add or shed positions nationally, and how many openings it expects each year.

What they cannot tell you is whether your metro area already has three qualified applicants for every apprentice slot. Labour markets for the trades are intensely local. Treat the national figures as the floor of your research, not the whole of it.

Which trades is BLS projecting to grow, and which are flat?

All figures below are BLS projections for 2024 to 2034. Openings are the average number expected per year across the decade.

Trade	Projected growth	Net change over the decade	Openings per year
Electricians	9 percent	plus 77,400	about 81,000
HVAC and refrigeration technicians	8 percent	plus 34,500	about 40,100
Electrical power-line installers	7 percent	plus 8,400	about 10,700
Plumbers, pipefitters, steamfitters	4 percent	plus 22,700	about 44,000
Welders, cutters, solderers, brazers	2 percent	plus 9,900	about 45,600
Solar photovoltaic installers	42 percent	plus 12,000	about 4,100
Wind turbine service technicians	50 percent	plus 6,800	about 2,300

That is a spread of 2 percent to 50 percent inside one category that everybody discusses as if it were a single thing. BLS calls the electrician, HVAC and line worker figures much faster than average, plumbing as fast as average, and welding slower than average. Anyone who tells you the trades as a whole are booming, or the trades as a whole are crowded, has not looked at this table.

Why is openings per year the number that matters?

BLS defines projected annual openings as net growth plus the openings created when workers leave the occupation permanently, through retirement or a change of career. It is not a count of new jobs, and it is much larger than the growth figure.

Welding is the clearest illustration. BLS projects 2 percent growth over 2024 to 2034, which is under 10,000 additional positions across the whole decade, and about 45,600 openings a year. Almost all of that is replacement. A teenager entering welding is not competing for a slice of growth, they are stepping into a chair somebody else is vacating, and there are a lot of chairs.

This is the single most useful habit to build before you read another career article, and it has its own page here: how to read a career growth statistic.

Is the fastest-growing trade the best bet?

Not on its own. BLS ranks wind turbine service technicians and solar photovoltaic installers among the fastest growing occupations in the entire economy on its fastest growing occupations table. Both deserve their reputation as real, skilled, well-paid work.

But size matters. BLS put solar installer employment at 28,600 in 2024 and wind technicians at 13,600. Forty two percent growth on the first is about 4,100 openings a year, and 50 percent growth on the second is about 2,300. Electricians produce roughly twenty times the annual openings of solar. Percentage growth on a tiny occupation is the most misused statistic in this subject, and it is misused in both directions.

What about the shortage headlines?

You will see two figures constantly: a claim that the country needs several hundred thousand more electricians, and a claim that a large share of construction workers will retire within a few years. Neither is a BLS statistic. The first is an industry hiring-need estimate, which measures something different from net employment growth and cannot be added to the BLS numbers without double counting. The second circulates with a horizon a decade past its own baseline year, and we could not trace it to a primary source at all.

You do not need either one. BLS annual openings already embed retirement and exit. That is what the number is for.

What does saturation actually look like locally?

Four questions will tell you more than any national article, including this one.

• How many applicants did the local apprenticeship programme take in its last intake, and how many applied. Programmes will often tell you if you ask directly.
• Is there a waiting list, and how long has it been since someone at the bottom of it started.
• Are the licensed contractors in your area advertising for helpers right now.
• If your teenager is aiming at a specific trade, does your state license it at all, which changes how quickly someone can start working independently. See licensing by state.

Nobody can tell you what a given employer, programme or licensing board will do. They vary by state, by local and by year. What you can do is ask them.

What this looks like in practice

Camille’s son wants to weld, mostly because a family friend does it and seems happy. Camille has read that welding is dying and also that welders make six figures, and both claims arrived with equal confidence.

She looks at the BLS page instead. Welding is projected to grow 2 percent from 2024 to 2034, which is genuinely slow, and to produce about 45,600 openings a year, which is genuinely a lot. The median wage was $51,000 in May 2024 and the top ten percent earned more than $75,850. The six figure claim is not in the federal data anywhere, and the dying claim does not survive contact with the openings figure.

So her conclusion is neither of the things she read. Welding is an occupation with steady replacement demand and a modest ceiling, where the interesting question is what he specialises in later. The figures here are illustrative of the method, not a recommendation. The method is the part worth keeping.

The short version

The trades are not one market. If your teenager is drawn to electrical work, the national numbers are on their side. If they are drawn to plumbing, the growth is ordinary and the money at the top is still good, which is the honest way to describe it and is covered in do electricians really make 100,000 dollars alongside the comparable electrical figures. If they are drawn to welding, they are entering a large occupation that mostly replaces itself.

None of those is a closing window. All of them reward asking a local programme a direct question about its last intake.