As a high school graduate, you're at an exciting crossroads with endless possibilities ahead of you, including the chance to build a successful and rewarding career. If you’re still exploring your options, take a closer look at welding—a skilled trade that offers strong earning potential and steady demand for those who enjoy hands-on, practical work. This path could be the perfect fit for shaping your future.
Welding is a skill you can build a solid career on, with nearly 500,000 job openings expected by 2026. It's a field full of employment opportunities, offering a median entry-level salary around $40,000 per year. Starting a career in welding is quite accessible because it doesn't require a college degree. All you need is a high school diploma and a certification from a reputable welding trade school.
What Is a Welding Trade School?
A trade school is a post-secondary school in which its students are trained to do a specific job but not required to participate in any kind of general education studies. This is one of the major differences between trade schools and colleges. While college offers a four-year curriculum full of humanities and sciences, in which students choose electives to round out their academics, trade school offers a streamlined, hands-on learning and training center, designed to prepare students for potential jobs in the fields in which they are training.
Welding trade schools are those that focus on the many attributes of the craft of welding. There are different types of welding schools because there are different types of welding. The four main types of welding are gas metal arc welding, Gas Tungsten Arc Welding, shielded metal arc welding and flux cored arc welding. Each employs tools and techniques that are somewhat unique from the others.
What Are Some Examples of Welding in Practical Application
Welding is a vital aspect of metalwork that plays a crucial role in numerous industries, including automotive, construction, and aviation. It ensures the logistics behind the creation of various components that form essential structures, such as joining vehicle body parts and constructing skyscrapers. Welding is also indispensable in crafting everyday items like fences, benches, and kitchen appliances. Moreover, the expertise of welding is essential even in space travel. In fact, more than 50 percent of US products necessitate some form of welding.
What Type of Person Would Make a Good Welder?
Welding may look pretty intense, and it surely can be. However, it's like most other jobs in that you train and practice and you steadily improve your craft until you're a dynamic presence that's capable of working in lots of different scenarios. A good welder can be a woman or a man. In fact, about six percent of the nearly 500,000 welders in America are women.
A good welder will tell you that whether you're pipe welding or shielded metal arc welding, the job is as much mental as it is physical, and the physical rigors are plain to see. With that said, welders don't have to be massive physical specimens, but they have to be tough and capable of dealing with large pieces of equipment.
As an illustrative example, the person who makes a good welder is the one who can tolerate welding in an uncomfortable position on a hot day, pouring sweat into their gloves, which then causes dangerous and unsettling electric shocks. This person evaluates the situation and makes changes and decisions, accordingly, never losing the soft feel that they must have for the pieces of metal that they are working with. If you are calm in the face of difficult circumstances and are highly motivated to do a good job, welding may be for you.
What Types of Skills Do Welders Need To Develop?
Welders must be familiar with lots of different types of equipment, such as chipping hammers, framing jigs and, of course, MIG welding pliers. They don't just need to have their auto-darkening welding helmet, but they also need to know why they have it. A good welding school will prepare you with the hands-on training that familiarizes you with the tools and equipment that you'll need for various welding processes.
Welding is much more than pointing a flame at metal until it gets hot. It also requires some intangibles, which are the kind of skills that you use in all kinds of situations. Focus and patience are two examples of the kind of skills that welders must have to perform their tasks efficiently and safely, and to produce a professional result.
Welders must also be proficient at blueprint readings. Welding blueprint symbols are used as a means of communication between a designer, such as a shop foreman, welding engineer or supervisor and the welder. A welding trade school will certainly spend time learning the meanings behind these symbols, helping students to learn the welder's shorthand code for the type of weld, its size and other processing or finishing information.
What Are the Different Kinds of Welding Schools?
There are thousands of welding schools and programs across America that cater to the various welding certifications that are offered. Some common welding certification courses include:
- 6G pipe welding
- Flat, overhead, horizontal and vertical welding positions
- Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (TIG)
- Flux Core Arc Welding (FCAW)
- Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW)
Welding schools teach the five essentials for proper welding procedures, which include:
- Correct electrode size
- Correct current
- Correct arc link or voltage
- Correct travel speed
- Correct electrode angle
It should be noted that the American Welding Society certified welder program is designed to provide transferable credentials to professional welders who have demonstrated a skill level wanted by the industry. Volunteers, representing all sections of the welding industry, came to a consensus on the skills that an AWS-certified welder must demonstrate.
What Are Some Top Welding Schools?
Lincoln Electric Welding School offers eight standard courses and advanced courses on welding. Like all good welding schools, only well-trained and highly qualified instructors teach at the Lincoln Welding School. They are the ones who will teach the concepts and then supervise the hands-on training so that they show their students how theory becomes practical application. This school teaches everything from the basics in Intro to Welding to advanced welding techniques, such as submerged welding.
Advanced Welding Institute, in Burlington, Vermont, offers accelerated programs that are packed with hands-on training. AWI offers another standard of trade school education in that the student-to-teacher ratio is very much in favor of the student. This means that all students get personalized instruction, which is the best way to learn something quickly. This school offers 15 and 24-week welding programs and certifications that prepare its students for the industry. AWE also advocates for its students, offering job search assistance to ensure that gainful employment is on the horizon.
Welding Training and Testing Institute, in Allentown, PA, holds accreditations from the Accrediting Commission of Careers Schools and Colleges (ACCSC) and the American Welding Society. Like most trade schools, WTTI offers a range of programs and certifications that touch on various welding skills across industries.
The school's welder fitter course is the primary career-level program and requires 900 hours to complete. It's a great choice for young people with little or no welding experience to get the education and experience that will lead to a career in welding. The combination welding program is a little bit shorter, clocking in at 740 hours, though it eschews concepts such as blueprint reading and pipe fitting. The school also offers advanced welding technique courses that take professional skills to the next level with a specialization.
Universal Technical Institute consists of a family of trade schools that share the common aim of preparing students for futures in the trades. UTI's welding technology training program is second-to-none. It is a 36-week course that is available on 11 campuses and prepares students for flexible careers from automotive fabrication to the aerospace industry.
Hobart Institute of Welding Technology is another big name in the welding world, whose school boasts 80 years of experience teaching the craft. With its industry-leading curriculum, the school offers students the ability to achieve certification - accredited by the American Welding Society- in less than a year. Like most great trade schools, the Hobart Institute offers help with career placement to its students. The school offers the option of taking individual courses or an entire 24-week program.
With three different campuses, the Tulsa Welding School is the largest in the country. Matriculation involves 80 percent hands-on welding training. One day per week is spent in the classroom while the rest of the time, students are practicing welding techniques under the supervision of seasoned professionals in a controlled environment. All programs offered by TWS are accredited by the American Welding Society.
How Much Does Welding School Cost?
The tuition cost to become a certified welder depends on the type of welding school that you attend and will vary depending on the type of training, length of the program and the state that it's in. While some courses can be accomplished in as few as seven months, others can take up to four years. Typically, the longer the course, the more expensive it will be. However, in general, welding school can cost between $5,000 and $15,000.
How Much Can a Welder Earn?
Successful welders can earn a lot of money. Rig welders are some of the highest-paid welders, averaging about $77,000 per year. However, they often work long hours under challenging conditions. Since these types of welding jobs are so dangerous, only the most proven welders are considered for these highly-sought positions. It takes extensive education, far beyond a trade school certification, and a lot of experience before rig welding can become an option for nervy young welders.
Welders can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, especially if they're willing to travel and work long hours. Many manufacturing firms, on the other hand, have two or three eight to twelve-hour shifts each day, which enables the firm to continue production consistently.
Welders, cutters, solders and braziers earn a median annual pay of around $44,000. Some other high-paying careers in the field of welding include inspecting, underwater welding and industrial pipe and pipeline welding.
Is Welding Trade School the Right Choice for You?
If you want to train to become really good at an in-demand skill really quickly and start earning good money with that skill, you might consider a career in welding. If you want the opportunity to work in a field that is critical to industry and construction, where you bring both your mind and your body to your work and where the quality of your work directly affects the overall finished product that the team is working on, welding is there for you.
