Become an Electrician in Toronto – Career Opportunities Guide

Skill Requirements and Employment Outlook for Electricians

As long as electricity remains a viable source of power for just about everything–and the trend seems to be moving toward more things running on electricity than fewer-the employment outlook for those wanting to become an electrician remains unbelievably bright. News almost as good as those prospects for employment is that jobs working with electricity are available to those looking to be self-employed as well as those who don’t want to bother with all the non-handiwork of running a business.

Education
Great news for those who could get an A in any class requiring hands-on learning, but often found themselves snoring through history or English classes: you don’t need to waste more of your time taking classes you don’t need in order to get a college degree to become an electrician. That’s not to say you don’t need an education, however. Here’s where the news possibly gets the best of all: a combination of paid on-the-job training with classes that teach what is better learned in a controlled environment is the typical path to a career working with electricity. Contact local chapter for information on apprenticeship programs.

Skills
That classroom instruction may well focus on math. If your problems in high school extended to math classes, it could present a steep learning curve. Part of the job will include reading blueprints, schematics and other diagrams that require excellent spatial recognition. Manual dexterity is also a requirement as you will regularly be working with small hand tools, wires, fuses, switches and very delicate electrical components. Be forewarned that the most basic skills required in working with electricity require not just good vision, but the ability to identify colors. Since color blindness has the potential to be a fatal disability in this field, if you do suffer from that vision disorder you should probably not be considered a career as an electrician.

Work
The job outlook is so sunny because you would be hard-pressed to think of anywhere that people congregate that doesn’t use circuit breakers, fuses, wires, lights, air conditioning, heating, video, audio, computers or anything else requiring electrical power. You could get jobs installing electrical systems in houses or office towers. Or maintaining electrical systems in factories, hospital or universities. The future of electrical work will extend to robotics and technological innovations that’s not even past the conceptual stage right now. When the new speciality skills required for electrical work of the future is combined with the fact that the field of productively skilled workers today is shrinking, the salary outlook for this field may never have held such promise for those at the top of the game.

Salary
And just what kind of salary can you expect from full time work as an electrician? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top earners in the field can earn in excess of $80,000. Those just starting out fresh from an apprenticeship program can potentially walk into a new job making as much as half that amount or as little as $25,000 a year. Even that lower end of the entry level salary does not look bad at all in the increasingly shrinking market for skilled technical workers in the U.S.

Important Things to Know
This is not a career path for anyone not in good physical condition. Working with the multiple components of electricity means bending over, stopping, working on your knees, heavy lifting, standing in one place of extended periods of time and needing the strength to do things like bend conduit. Color blindness is the only disability that could leave you severely injured or dead. It is vitally important for anyone just starting to consider a job working with electricity that it rates for injury and death on the job are higher than the national average. Unlike many other occupations where the danger results from external conditions beyond the worker’s control, however, the potential for harm can be significantly reduced through conscious efforts to observe proper safety measures.

Contact us if you need a licensed Toronto Electrician.