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Skilled-trade calculators
Three calculators and a comparison table. Each reads the same records the pages print: 120 trade-and-state licensing paths in 30 states (licensing layer vintage 2026-09), each with the pages it was read from, and the Department of Labor's apprenticeship records.
How long it takes to get licensed Pick a trade, a state and your hours a week: the on-the-job hours each license takes, the years at your pace, and the state's minimum years where it sets one. What a license costs Every license tier for one trade in one state with its published fee, totalled for the tiers you tick, and a "not published" line for each fee that is not listed. Exam fees charged by a testing company are separate. What apprentices are paid The median wage registered apprentices started at and the median at completion, from U.S. Department of Labor records for fiscal 2023, as a week and a year at your hours: 312 trade-and-state pairs have a starting median. The May 2025 BLS median for the trade sits beside them. Licensing compared by state A table, not a calculator: time to the first license and the published fees of the first steps on every sourced path, side by side, filterable by trade.
The figures behind them are on the data page, with each layer as a file to download.