The Real ROI: How Trade School Salaries Are Stacking Up Against College in 2026

There’s a question I’ve been asked more times than I can count: Is the trades path really worth it financially, or does a college degree still win in the end? I’ve always known the answer. But in 2026, the data is finally catching up to what people in the trades have known for a long time.

The trade school vs. college salary debate looks very different today than it did a decade ago. Not because college has gotten worse, but because the math has shifted in ways that are hard to ignore. Costs have soared on one side. Wages have climbed on the other. And the gap in between has become a genuine opportunity for anyone willing to look at it clearly.

The Debt Picture Has Changed the Entire Calculation

Let’s start with the number that shapes everything else: what you owe when you walk out the door.

A four-year degree at a public in-state university now runs around $29,910 per year on average, including tuition, fees, room, and board. Over four years, that’s roughly $120,000. The average student loan debt at graduation sits around $35,000 to $37,000 for those who borrow, and many borrow far more. The Federal Reserve has reported that the average American carrying student loans pays close to $400 a month just to service that debt.

A trade school program, by comparison, typically costs between $5,000 and $33,000 in total, depending on the field, and most programs wrap up in six months to two years. Apprenticeships go even further: you train on the job and get paid while you do it, meaning many tradespeople enter the workforce with little or no debt at all.

That debt difference doesn’t just affect your bank account in your twenties. It affects when you can buy a home, when you can start saving for retirement, and how much financial stress you carry into your peak earning years.

Who Wins on Salary? It Depends on What You’re Comparing

Here’s where honesty matters. If you take the average college graduate and compare them to the average trade school graduate over a full 40-year career, the college grad typically comes out ahead on lifetime earnings. That’s the accurate picture, and it’s worth saying plainly.

But that average tells a very incomplete story.

College earnings are dragged up by high earners in medicine, law, and engineering, fields that require advanced degrees on top of the four-year bachelor’s. If your comparison is a marketing graduate versus an experienced electrician or plumber, the trades often win outright, sometimes by a wide margin.

The mean annual salary across all trade occupations is around $68,480, according to current data. Electricians average around $60,000 to $70,000 and climb higher with experience and specialization. Experienced HVAC technicians who work on complex systems regularly exceed $90,000. Elevator and escalator technicians have a BLS-reported median wage of around $106,580, reached through an apprenticeship rather than a university degree. These aren’t outliers. They’re real outcomes for skilled, credentialed tradespeople.

Meanwhile, some of the most common college degree paths, communications, business administration, general studies, tend to produce starting salaries in the $45,000 to $55,000 range. About 40% of college graduates end up in jobs that don’t require a degree at all, which means the investment doesn’t always connect to a meaningful pay bump.

The Head Start That Changes Everything

The number I come back to more than any other is this: a trade school graduate typically enters the workforce two to three years before a college graduate does. That gap is enormous when you run the math.

While a college student is in their second or third year, accumulating debt and not yet earning a full salary, a trade school graduate is already putting money in their pocket and, if they’re thinking ahead, into savings and retirement accounts. That head start on investing compounds over decades in a way that raw salary numbers don’t capture.

One analysis found that a trade school graduate, even earning less per year than a college counterpart, could end up with a larger retirement balance after 40 years because their money simply had more time to grow. The opportunity cost of four years in school is not just the tuition paid. It’s also the earnings missed and the compounding that never happened.

The Trades Where Salary Growth Is Strongest Right Now

Not all trades are equal, and if you’re thinking about where to put your energy, it pays to look at which fields are seeing the most momentum. The highest-paying trade jobs in 2025 and 2026 share a common thread: they combine technical skill with high demand and a shrinking supply of experienced workers.

Wind turbine technicians are projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to see roughly 50% job growth between 2024 and 2034, driven by the rapid expansion of renewable energy infrastructure. Median pay already lands in the mid-$60,000 range, with room to climb.

HVAC technicians who specialize in smart building systems and energy-efficient technology are commanding $90,000 and above. As green building standards become the norm in commercial construction, the technicians who understand both mechanical systems and the software that runs them are increasingly rare and increasingly well compensated.

Electricians are seeing exceptional demand from data centers, EV charging infrastructure, and solar installation, on top of the steady baseline demand that’s always existed. The BLS projects electrician employment to grow significantly faster than the national average through 2033.

Plumbers and pipefitters continue to see structural demand from ongoing construction and building retrofit work. The median wage sits around $60,000, and master plumbers who build their own client base frequently earn well into six figures.

A Recent Policy Shift That Favors Hourly Workers

There’s another piece of this story that doesn’t get enough attention. Federal legislation passed in 2025 created a new income tax deduction on qualified overtime pay. For individuals, the deduction applies to up to $12,500 in overtime earnings annually.

Who does overtime actually benefit? Hourly workers. Tradespeople. The people who are willing to put in the extra hours and who get paid more for every additional hour they work, unlike salaried employees whose extra hours don’t show up in their paycheck. This policy change effectively increases take-home pay for anyone in a trade working beyond a standard 40-hour week, which is common in construction, electrical work, and HVAC.

The full effects of this change are still working their way into the labor market, but for tradespeople who regularly work overtime, it’s a meaningful improvement to their net compensation that doesn’t show up in base salary comparisons.

What College Still Does Better

I’ve always believed in being straight with people, and here’s where I’ll be straight: there are things a four-year degree provides that a trade school path doesn’t.

If your goal is medicine, law, engineering, or academic research, you need the degree. There’s no trade school shortcut to becoming a licensed physician or a licensed civil engineer. For those paths, the college investment is not just reasonable, it’s required.

A broad college education also provides flexibility that specialized trade training doesn’t. If you decide five years in that you want to pivot to a different field entirely, a bachelor’s degree gives you options that a specific trade certification may not. Career flexibility has real value, especially early in life when you’re still figuring out what you want.

The honest answer is that the right choice depends on what you’re pointing yourself toward. The mistake isn’t choosing college or choosing a trade. The mistake is drifting into college because it felt like the default, without running the actual numbers or asking whether it’s the right fit for you.

The Path That Lets You Start Building Wealth Sooner

Here’s what I know from decades of working in the trades and watching others do the same: the people who build real financial security aren’t always the ones who earned the most on paper. They’re the ones who started early, stayed consistent, avoided debt that didn’t serve them, and built skills that the market would always pay for.

The trade school path, done right, sets you up to do all of those things. You graduate with low debt or no debt. You start earning within a year. You build skills in a field that has genuine structural demand. And if you’re smart about what you do with what you earn, you get to watch your money compound for a lot of years before a college graduate has even finished paying off their loans.

The salary comparison isn’t even the most important part of the story. The head start is.