// APPRENTICE COST
What an apprentice actually costs you
Written for the owner deciding whether to take someone on at entry level. The honest version, including the part most pages skip: there is no national number, and here is why.
BLS puts the median Helpers--Electricians at $20.51 an hour. Add employer FICA and you are at $22.08, roughly $45,924 a year full time, before overhead and insurance. That is about 68% of what the qualified rate costs.
// START HERE
There is no US apprentice wage table
If you have looked for one and come up empty, that is not you missing something. It does not exist. Registered apprenticeship programs set their own progressive wage schedules under 29 CFR 29, normally as a percentage of the journeyman rate that steps up through the term. Those schedules are agreed program by program and are not published in one place, so what you pay depends on the program you register with and the state you are in.
That makes the honest planning question a different one. Not "what is the rate", which has no national answer, but "what does entry-level trade labour actually cost in my market, and what does it cost me once payroll taxes and overhead are on top". Both of those are answerable.
The floor is the federal minimum wage, and many states set a higher one. Above that, the numbers below are the best published measure of what entry-level trade work is really paid.
// THE PUBLISHED PROXY
Helper-level pay, and how it compares
BLS reports Helpers as their own occupations, alongside each trade. A helper is not the same thing as a registered apprentice, and this page does not pretend otherwise. It is the closest published, checkable measure of entry-level trade pay, and the ratio it shows lands close to where apprenticeship schedules typically start.
| Trade | SOC | Helper median | Qualified median | Helper as % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roofer | 47-3016 | $21.23 | $26.65 | 79.7% |
| Carpenter | 47-3012 | $21.05 | $29.12 | 72.3% |
| Electrician | 47-3013 | $20.51 | $30.38 | 67.5% |
| Plumber | 47-3015 | $20.36 | $30.67 | 66.4% |
| Painter | 47-3014 | $19.46 | $23.75 | 81.9% |
| Handyman | 49-9098 | $19.05 | $23.84 | 79.9% |
US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national across all
industries. Retrieved 2026-08-27.
Helper occupations, not a registered-apprentice wage schedule.
Six of the ten trades on this site have a published Helpers
counterpart and all six are shown. The other four do not have one:
BLS publishes no Helpers occupation for landscaping, janitorial or
construction management, and plumbing's helper category is the shared
pipelayer and pipefitter row already listed.
// THE REAL COST
Wage is not the cost
Worked on electricians, the trade with the most published data behind it. Every line is arithmetic off a published figure, on a 2,080-hour year.
- Helper median wage $20.51/hr $42,661 a year. BLS May 2025
- Plus employer FICA at 7.65% $22.08/hr $45,924 a year. Social Security and Medicare, published by the IRS
- Plus overhead they carry a share of +$10,600 25% of wage on this trade's model. A starting assumption, not a published figure
- Plus what the page cannot price Your call Unemployment insurance and workers' compensation both vary by state and trade. So does supervision time, which is the real cost of a junior pair of hands and never shows up in a wage table.
Against a qualified electrician: the same arithmetic on the journeyman median of $30.38 comes to about $68,024 a year, so the gap is roughly $22,100. Worth having in front of you, and worth discounting by the supervision the junior hire needs.
// WHAT YOU GET BACK
Federal support, and what is not federal
The short version: the money is mostly at state level, and the federal contribution is mostly help rather than cash.
- Tax credits state administered
- apprenticeship.gov states that businesses can qualify for tax credits "in many states". That is state administration, not a federal program, and the amounts and rules differ by state. This is the single biggest number in most apprentice-cost calculations and it is the one this page cannot give you, because it depends entirely on where you are.
- Work Opportunity Tax Credit federal
-
The one federal credit that can apply, though it is a general hiring
credit rather than an apprenticeship program. Worth up to
$2,400 per qualifying employee, calculated as 40% of
up to $6,000 of first-year wages, reduced to 25% for someone working
120 to 399 hours. It only applies if the person hired falls into one
of ten target groups. Certification is strict: Form 8850 has to be
completed on or before the day the offer is made, and filed with the
state workforce agency within 28 days of the start date.
It has lapsed, so do not budget on it yet. The authority for WOTC came from the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, which extended it to 31 December 2025, and it applies to people who begin work on or before that date. As of 27 August 2026, the IRS page still shows that end date and no extension, so a hire you make today does not qualify on the current authority. Congress has repeatedly renewed WOTC, often retroactively, so it is worth checking again rather than writing it off. Confirm with the IRS or your accountant before it goes anywhere near a budget. - GI Bill stipends federal
- A qualifying veteran in a registered apprenticeship can draw a monthly stipend on top of the wage you pay. The money goes to them, not to you, but it makes an entry-level wage go further for the right candidate.
- Technical assistance federal
- Access to the national registered apprenticeship support network at no charge, covering program setup and standards. Not cash, but it is the part that makes registering a program tractable for a small business.
Check your state. Because credits are state administered, the number that decides whether this pays off is one this page deliberately does not quote. Your state apprenticeship agency or workforce board is the place to get it, and it is worth the phone call before you commit to a hire.
// SOURCES
Where every figure came from
- Helper and journeyman wages US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national. Retrieved 2026-08-27.
- Employer FICA at 7.65% Social Security 6.2% plus Medicare 1.45%, published by the IRS.
- Work Opportunity Tax Credit IRS, Work Opportunity Tax Credit. Maximum, wage basis, target groups, the Form 8850 deadline and the authorizing legislation all read from that page, checked 27 August 2026.
- Apprenticeship structure and state credits apprenticeship.gov, employer guidance on registered apprenticeship programs. Wage schedules set per program under 29 CFR 29.
- Overhead percentages Starting assumptions from this site's charge-out model, labeled as such throughout. Not published statistics.
// READY WHEN YOU ARE
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