12 Things You Should Know Before Becoming An Electrician

all right everyone welcome back thanks so much for stopping by i appreciate it thanks for clicking on the video and wanting to know about electrical stuff so today i'm going to be talking about things you should know before becoming an electrician um this is sort of the same thing as frequently asked questions as an electrician but that'll be a separate video but these are pretty much gonna overlap a lot um so these are just some quick ideas this is the idea that i had for the day and these are the things that came to came to me off the top of my head so i'm just gonna go over these real quick actually it's probably gonna be like 10 minutes but um in no particular order i try to order these a little bit but these are just things that you should know um before becoming an electrician so number one there's going to be probably a way to be to get into the apprenticeship um and so i've heard of people like waiting a year about two years or more so you're gonna want to try to get an apprenticeship as soon as possible because there might be a wait time because there's only so many people accepted like thousands of people may apply to get into the school to become an electrician and there's usually like 100 or less accepted a year so that's like a ninety percent uh chance of you not getting in so you want to get get in and apply as quickly as possible if this is something that you want to do number two as an apprentice it might start out kind of rough because um you might have to do some you might have to be doing some grunt work like carrying materials around or running errands or whatnot so sometimes it can be rough and demotivating when you're just starting out but that is the way of the trade just because labor is cheap as an apprentice starting out i'll go over that later but you're just so much more cheaper to have running around doing errands and grabbing stuff than a fully paid electrician making over um 30 50 bucks an hour so that's just the way the trade so it is a rough start sometimes depending on where you work at but it does get better trust me um number three um the union schooling i believe is free and the non-union apprenticeship is i'd say about seven thousand dollars max just because it's a four-year program for the non-union um and then the union program is five years so um yeah i'll go over that a little bit later but um the non-union cost four thousand dollars about four thousand four and a half thousand dollars for the one that i went to it's basically a thousand dollars a year um a quarter and then for the labs and stuff and maybe some books that you have to buy so that's the only extra is basically the labs and the books so i'd say um you have four years to complete the program it took me five but you have six years max to complete it so i'd say six thousand dollars for six years and then um if you have to do labs and extra books and stuff i'd throw in an extra thousand dollars so i'd say seven thousand dollars max for non-union and uni union should be free i didn't go through the union so i'm not 100 for sure on that but i believe so um next you don't have to go to trade school or have any prior knowledge to become an electrician i had zero knowledge before i started back in 2012 i believe it was so i didn't have nothing no knowledge anything and now fully licensed electrician have my own apprentices sometimes at work so i'm living an example that you don't need any prior experience at all and i did not go to a trade school i just went to went through an apprenticeship so don't have to waste any money on trade school if you don't have to next the union has some great benefits after this first year um so the first year is kind of like i guess um an indenturement maybe if that's the right word but um the first year you don't really get any benefits in the union besides like all your health care and all that stuff i'm sure is taken care of but as far as like retirement stuff that comes after the first year um and the union also has higher wages but i'll go over that here shortly um next um the union in the union you're basically locked to a company at least where where i'm at you're basically sent to a company and you can't really leave there unless you need a rotation to get different kind of experience as an electrician so the union kind of you're kind of locked to a company so hopefully it's a good fit otherwise you're might be miserable if you're have to work at a company that you really want to i'm not sure if there's a way around that so don't get like too turned off by the union on that um and then the non-union you can work for any company so say i'm working for a company i don't like them i can just leave or whatever put in my two weeks and then just go work for any other company but in the union you can't really do that so that's kind of a disadvantage to the union and then next there are layoffs um like the longest i've been at a company is two years um straight and i have gone to work at other companies on and off which isn't a bad thing because it's good to it's good to have um it's good to work for multiple companies so you can always fall back to another company and get to know people and build that kind of bond and relationship between multiple companies so that's not a bad thing but it is nice to work for one company for a long period of time and not having to worry about finding another job or anything like that so layoffs are not always inevitable but they are common and it's not something to be afraid of it's not hard to find work um it's not hard to get another job very soon um so i'm what i'm saying is it is easy to get another job soon so it's not that big of a deal for me personally it's just kind of annoying to start over at a new company and just getting to know everyone and feeling comfortable and stuff like that so that's an unfortunate little bit but it is just the way of the trade sometimes um and then like i said um the apprenticeship program is four to five years depending on if you go union or non-union the non-union is four the union is five and that is because the union goes to school for eight hours for one day a week so you work four days in the union in in the non-union you work five days a week and then you go to school one night after work for four hours so one of those nights in the non-union is going to be a really long day going to work for eight hours and then going to school for four hours but in the union you work for four days and then one day of those one day a week you go to school for like i think it's eight hours a day so in total you need eight thousand hours to complete your um to be eligible to become a journeyman which is like roughly four to five years and then like the classroom hours i believe is like 144 hours total or a year i'm not sure um on that one i forget i think it's 144 hours for the whole apprenticeship so um moving on the yearly wage for electricians for non-union it's probably about 73 000 depending on obviously what your um what you're getting paid per hour but around here the wages are about for union and non-union it's about seventy three thousand dollars to a hundred five thousand dollars a year um and when you're in the apprenticeship you start at anywhere whether if you're union or non-union you start um around sixteen to twenty dollars an hour and then by the time you finish here at about 30 to 35 dollars an hour all the way up to like 42 to 45 an hour um so and which brings me to my next point the pay increases are every one thousand do fifteen hundred hours in the union or in the non-union the school that i went through every thousand hours you get a raise um and that's usually like anywhere from one to three dollars or an hour so every thousand hours you work you get a one to three dollar an hour raise and in the non-union or in the union it's still you start at like every thousand hours and then um eventually it moves up to like every 1500 hours so a little bit different pay increases there's um what was it i think there's eight eight different wages as the non-union and in the union there's ten different um ten different um maybe i'm getting that confused i haven't thought about it for a while but in the non-union there's less ranks and then the union there's more ranks i believe um maybe i'm getting actually confused but anyways there's different um different pay rates in the union and non-union they're a little bit different but you do get um increases every 1000 to 1500 hours and then um you do have to wear a tool belt in the non-union it's a common practice to see a lot of people wearing tool belts in the non-union it's pretty expected um not not all non-union companies wear tool belts but in the union at least where i'm from um you don't have to wear it to about the doll you don't have to own a tool belt you can either have like a tool backpack a tool pouch a tool bag or any different kind of rolling tool belt or tool bag or anything like that so and there's a lot of carts in the union so you can put your tools on carts and stuff like that but um don't necessarily have to wear a tool belt but um depending on where you work if you're union or non-union sometimes that can be expected um but you can also get like shoulder straps and stuff like that if you want to but um and the union is pretty um pretty common to not have to wear a tool belt so if that's something you're worried about um maybe go that route and then lastly um i always get asked do you have to be good at math and um the answer to that is not necessarily but it certainly helps um the basic basic math the basically the math that you're dealing with is algebra that's the only required math that you have to know to get into the apprenticeship you have to like take a math test or whatever to prove that and then um in the field you don't have to use any more basic math then you have to use any super intense math in the field more than just the basic math like addition subtraction fractions and stuff like that but you will need to know some math to pass the apprenticeship classes which is going to be more and sometimes dealing with algebra and stuff like that doing problem solving and stuff like that and different kind of calculations for um like house loads and circuitry loads and stuff like that so hopefully this video helped you out hopefully i didn't butcher it too bad um those are the 12 things that came up to me off the top of my head so hopefully i explained that well and it came out all right um and got my point across that i needed to so anyways that's gonna do it for this video and stay tuned i will get out another frequently asked questions um video and then provide all those answers for you i just have to go back and find all the questions and then answer them so hopefully i can do a collaboration with my electrician or something that would be a great video to collab with and get that nailed down well for that video so anyways thanks so much for watching i appreciate it as always if you enjoyed make sure to hit the like button and subscribe i would appreciate it um and it would help the channel grow check the description down below for anything else and uh the first link with the link tree is going to be amazing so just click that one first and then anything else hit the notification bell to be notified when i upload or do live streams thanks guys so much god bless have an awesome rest of day see you in the next one peace out

Channel: DailyElectrician

Views: 1,758

Keywords: things to consider before becoming an electrician, Things You Should Know Before Becoming An Electrician, journeyman, apprentice tips, electrical, journeyman tips, electrician work, apprentice, what an electrician does at work, tips to become a better apprentice, typical work as an electrician, daily electrical work, sparky, electrician, life as an electrician, electrical work, electrical apprentiship, apprentiship, union, union electrician, ibew, electrician info, ibew 48

Id: HLTOh8urE68

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021