The life of an electrician is an interesting one; you may think that your career would be limited to construction or a department in a power company. But the careers of electrician goes beyond that, they may travel the world as the electrician of a ship, or explore exotic places as the electrician of mining operations working in projects deep in the jungles or wastelands far in remote area. Or even working on a few projects for the government that could be as boring as some new dam somewhere or possible a secret military installation in an undisclosed area (though unlikely). The point is, if you are interested in the career there are a lot of things you can do, and they can become a bit more exciting than you would expect to work as an electrician.
Salary
There are a few things when it comes to any career and salary, one is experience, when you are inexperienced, fresh out of school or training, there is a game of how low will you go ( of course without breaking minimum wage laws), this certainly does kind of suck, but that’s just the way how the world works at the moment. You can escape this just by simply waiting for you to graduate from being a neophyte, where they will raise your salary, or you renegotiate your contract, at this point, you should join a union, they are pros at negotiating contracts for union members.
Another thing that affects your salary is how good you are, though this can only be proven through time, showing how valuable you are to the company you are working in will be the best leverage you have when it comes to salary negotiations.
When it comes to blue collar jobs like Electrician though, you tend to get a pretty good starting salary. According to a study done May 2016, the median hourly wage of an electrician is $25.35 with the lowest being $15.29 and the highest at 43.47, making $52,720.00, or $31,800.00, or $90,420.00 a year respectively. Pretty good, considering that according to a study done in 2015 show that this salary puts you in the middle-class category (depending on the size of your family). In the study done, a one-person household needs a minimum of $24,000.00 a year to be middle class, while a five-person household requires a minimum of $54,000.00 a year to be considered middle class. Considering that you will most likely to start as a one-person household during the start of your career, as time progress the potential growth of your household will be provided for as long as you maintain a good and steady progress in your career. The salary greatly depends on the state you live in, no surprise that some electricians are moving due to big disparities between states.
Employment Opportunities
While I am tempted to write the data here on the growth of opportunities, it is simpler to state it in a way with fewer numbers. We are living in a world that is slowly becoming more and more technologically dependent, while the complex computers and machinery may be something beyond a simple electrician, the electrical infrastructure needed to power it definitely is not. Each day a job that used to be done by human hands are replaced with machinery that can do it much more efficiently and cost effectively, but these machines wears down, there will always be a place for those who maintains them, those who build them, and those who builds and maintain the infrastructure that powers them.