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About SmartPathGuides

One promise: every number on this site traces to a named public source with a date, and nothing is typed in by hand. If a figure is not in the source data, the page says so instead of filling the gap.

What this site is for

Deciding to train for a trade is a real decision with real money and years attached to it. The facts that decision needs — what the work pays where you live, how the pay spreads from the bottom of the trade to the top, how many people actually do the job, and what a state requires before you can — sit in separate government files that were never meant to be read side by side. SmartPathGuides reads them side by side so you do not have to.

How the pages are built

Wage and employment figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) (May 2025 estimates). A script downloads the source files and writes every page from them; there is no step where a person retypes a wage. That is why the same figure appears identically on the state page, the trade ranking and the comparison table — it is the same cell of the same file each time. The full method, including how suppressed and capped cells are shown, is on the data page.

Currently the site covers 5 trades — electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, hvac technicians, welders, truck drivers (cdl) — across 51 states and the District of Columbia. State-by-state licensing requirements, apprenticeship pay and time-to-journeyman estimates are being added one sourced state and trade at a time; a page shows that section only once the state-board data behind it exists and is cited. A page will never claim a requirement it cannot source.

What this site is not

It is not career, legal or financial advice, and it is not affiliated with the Bureau of Labor Statistics or any state licensing board. It reports what the public data says and links you to the boards that make the rules. Wages are estimates for wage-and-salary workers and exclude the self-employed; treat them as a starting range, not a quote.

Editorial standards

• No invented experience. Pages report data and cite it; they do not pose as a tradesperson who has "been there".
• No hedging or filler. A limitation is stated once, plainly ("BLS suppressed this cell"), and the page moves on.
• Corrections are welcome and fixed at the source. If a number here disagrees with the underlying file, tell us and we will trace it and correct it.

How the site is funded

SmartPathGuides is independent and self-funded. It may carry advertising or affiliate links in the future; if it does, they will be disclosed plainly and will never change which numbers a page reports or how a trade is ranked. The ranking is by the data, not by who pays.