Trade Schools and Apprenticeships in St. Louis: The Real Numbers
Revised July 27, 2026
What are the trade school options in St. Louis?
Three routes. STLCC at $127/credit hour in-district (automotive, diesel, welding, HVAC, machining, CDL). Ranken Technical College at ~$742/technical credit — about $19,238/yr in tuition and fees. Or a union apprenticeship: no tuition, paid from day one. A first-year Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 562 apprentice starts around $22.77/hr (~$47,000/yr) — roughly a $66,000 year-one swing versus paying tuition. ⭐ Missouri’s A+ Scholarship reimburses up to $225/credit hour, so it fully covers STLCC tuition. Over 25? Fast Track covers tuition and, for apprentices, tools and books. STL metro pay: electricians $77,170 (~$11,760 above the state median), plumbers $77,000, HVAC $63,000, welders $51,640. ⚠️ Missouri licenses electrical CONTRACTORS, not individual electricians — that happens city by city.
Keep reading ↓A first-year plumbing apprentice in St. Louis earns about $22.77 an hour and pays no tuition.
A first-year student at the region’s best-known technical college pays roughly $19,238 in tuition and fees for the same year.
That is a swing of something like $66,000 in year one alone, in opposite directions. Both are legitimate paths into a trade, and which one fits depends on things nobody puts in a brochure. Here is the actual math, the real wages, and the application windows that decide whether you start this year or next.
What are the trade school options in St. Louis?
Three routes. Public community college — St. Louis Community College at $127 per credit hour in-district, with automotive, diesel, welding, HVAC, precision machining and truck driving. Private technical college — Ranken Technical College, a nonprofit with automotive, electrical, construction, IT and manufacturing divisions at about $742 per technical credit hour. And union apprenticeship — free training with wages from day one, run by locals in electrical, plumbing and pipefitting, sheet metal, carpentry, ironwork and heavy equipment. In the Metro East, Southwestern Illinois College runs welding at $135–$145 per credit hour.
Getting paid instead of paying
The apprenticeship model is the least understood option in this market and often the strongest one. You are hired first, then trained — earning a wage that steps up as you progress, with health coverage and retirement, and you finish with a journeyman card instead of a loan balance.
Here is what the St. Louis locals pay apprentices and what the journeyman scale is at the end, according to the joint labor-management body that publishes them:
Plumbers and Pipefitters, Local 562 — five years, apprentice $22.77 rising to $43.01, journeyman scale $50.60.
Electricians, IBEW Local 1 — five years, apprentice $18.82 to $42.34, journeyman scale $47.04.
Sheet Metal, SMART Local 36 — five years and 10,000 hours, apprentice $23.72 to $37.94, journeyman scale $47.43.
Operating Engineers, Local 513 — three years, apprentice $23.90 to $34.76, journeyman scale $43.46.
Ironworkers, Local 396 — four years, apprentice starting around $20.70, journeyman roughly $41.67 to $43.67.
Carpenters, Mid-America Regional Council — 6,000 on-the-job hours plus classroom units, apprentice $20 to $34, journeyman $36 to $43.
Two honest caveats. Those figures come from an industry body rather than each local’s own published sheet, so confirm the current number with the local before you plan around it. And a scale is an hourly rate, not a guaranteed salary — construction hours rise and fall with the season and the job pipeline. Anyone converting a scale straight into an annual income is selling you something.
The application windows nobody publishes together
This is the part that actually decides whether you get in, and it’s scattered across six different websites. Miss the window and you wait a year.
Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 562 takes applications on the first Tuesday of every month — except June and December. Age 18, high school diploma or GED, and you may apply once every two years. Interviews follow the next month.
Sheet Metal Local 36 holds its entrance exam the first Wednesday of every month, morning or early afternoon. It’s a four-part test — reading, math, spatial relations, mechanical comprehension.
Ironworkers Local 396 takes applications weekday mornings, and the cutoff matters: received before January 15 puts you in the current year’s class, after that and you’re in next year’s.
Operating Engineers Local 513 requires you to apply in person, weekdays, at the training center in Silex — and you must live within the local’s eastern Missouri jurisdiction.
IBEW Local 1 is by appointment, with an aptitude test and interview. Note carefully: applicants must live in Local 1’s jurisdiction, which excludes Illinois residents — a real obstacle if you’re in the Metro East.
And the Carpenters have a requirement the others don’t: you need a Letter of Intent from a signatory contractor before you apply. You find the employer first.
What these jobs actually pay here
Federal wage data for the St. Louis metro, current release, median annual and hourly:
Electricians — $77,170 ($37.10/hr)
Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters — $77,000 ($37.02/hr)
HVAC mechanics and installers — $63,000 ($30.29/hr)
Bus and truck mechanics / diesel specialists — $62,280 ($29.94/hr)
Welders, cutters and solderers — $51,640 ($24.83/hr)
Two things in that data are worth knowing before you pick a trade.
St. Louis is an unusually good market for electricians. The metro median runs about $11,760 above the Missouri statewide median and roughly 22% above the national figure. That is a real geographic premium, and it’s the strongest argument for training in this trade in this city.
Welding is the exception, and we’d rather tell you. The St. Louis metro median for welders sits marginally below the Missouri statewide median. Welding is skilled, in demand, and a genuinely good career — but the local premium that exists for electricians does not exist here, and anyone implying otherwise hasn’t looked.
The cheapest path is a scholarship most people miss
If you’re a Missouri high school student, run these two numbers together.
The A+ Scholarship reimburses up to $225.00 per credit hour. St. Louis Community College charges $127 per credit hour in-district.
A+ covers STLCC tuition completely, with room to spare.
The requirements are demanding but ordinary: attend a designated A+ school for two years, keep a 2.5 GPA and 95% attendance across grades 9 through 12, complete at least 50 hours of unpaid tutoring or mentoring, score proficient or advanced on the Algebra I end-of-course exam, and maintain good citizenship. Then enroll full-time at a participating public community college or technical school, file a FAFSA, and hold a 2.0.
Fifty hours of tutoring in exchange for free tuition in a trade is one of the better deals available to anyone in this state, and plenty of eligible students never file for it.
If you’re already an adult
A+ is for recent high school graduates. The program for everyone else is Fast Track, and it is badly under-publicized.
You qualify if you’re 25 or older (or haven’t been enrolled in school for two years), a Missouri resident without a bachelor’s degree, enrolled at least half time, with household income of $40,000 or less filing single or $80,000 or less married filing jointly.
Two features make it unusually good for trades. Registered apprenticeships qualify — so it isn’t only for classroom programs. And for apprentices it covers tools, books and uniforms, not just tuition, which is exactly the up-front cost that stops people. You do have to report employment and residency to the state for three years afterward, but there’s no repayment if you leave Missouri.
Paid to train, with your tools grant-funded, is a genuinely different proposition from a student loan.
Check this before you enroll anywhere
One question, and it costs you nothing to ask: does this school participate in federal financial aid?
St. Louis Community College and Ranken both do. At least one metro trade school states on its own website that federal aid is not available for its programs and offers private financing instead. That is not necessarily disqualifying — but you should know it going in, and it should affect what you’re willing to pay.
St. Louis has a hard lesson in this. Vatterott College — headquartered here — closed all fifteen of its campuses nationwide with essentially no notice in December 2018, taking L’Ecole Culinaire with it. Around 2,300 students were mid-program. The trigger was a federal decision limiting the school’s participation in student aid, which collapsed a pending sale. Affected students had to pursue Closed School Loan Discharge.
So: verify accreditation, verify federal aid participation, and ask what happens to your credits if the school closes. A union apprenticeship or a public community college carries a different kind of institutional risk than a private program that depends on one revenue stream.
What licensing actually requires in Missouri
This confuses nearly everyone, including people already working in the trades.
Missouri does not license individual electricians or plumbers at the state level. The statewide electrical license that exists is for electrical contractors — businesses — it is voluntary, and the Division of Professional Registration states plainly that it does not apply to individual electricians or journeymen. Only one person per company needs it.
Individual licensing happens city by city and county by county. The City of St. Louis has a Committee of Electrical Examiners that tests electrical theory, practical installation and the City’s own electrical code. St. Louis County runs its own board for plumbers, where the journeyman path requires roughly five years of experience through an apprenticeship with signed employer verification, plus an exam.
So the real sequence is: get the hours, then sit for the exam of the jurisdiction you intend to work in. That is exactly what an apprenticeship is built to produce, which is part of why it remains the standard route into these trades here.
Where the metro is thin
Honest gaps, since padding this would be easy.
Plumbing has no community college program we could find in the metro. If you want to be a plumber in St. Louis, the realistic path is Local 562’s apprenticeship, not a classroom. That’s worth knowing before you go looking for a school that doesn’t exist.
Culinary training is thinner than it was since L’Ecole closed with Vatterott, though STLCC’s Forest Park campus still runs culinary arts and baking and pastry.
And we could not verify a single cosmetology program in the metro from a primary source during this research. They may well exist — but every result we found was an aggregator, and we’re not going to list a school we couldn’t confirm.
Which path fits
Take the apprenticeship if you can pass the entrance requirements, can wait for the application window, and want income immediately. It is the only option that pays you while training and ends with no debt.
Take STLCC if you want a credential quickly, want to try a trade before committing five years, or qualify for A+ — in which case the tuition is effectively covered. Its skilled trades program also awards credit toward a degree for apprenticeship training completed with the electricians’ or carpenters’ programs, so the two paths aren’t exclusive.
Consider Ranken for its specific strengths — the automotive and manufacturing programs in particular — understanding the cost, that about three-quarters of students receive aid, and that its placement figure is self-published rather than independently audited.
And if you’re in the Metro East, check residency requirements before anything else. At least one major local excludes Illinois residents outright.
Frequently asked questions
What trade schools are in St. Louis?
St. Louis Community College is the public option at $127 per credit hour in-district, with campuses at Forest Park and Florissant Valley covering automotive, diesel, welding, HVAC and truck driving. Ranken Technical College is the private nonprofit, with automotive, electrical, construction, IT and manufacturing divisions. In the Metro East, Southwestern Illinois College runs a welding program.
Do you get paid during an apprenticeship in St. Louis?
Yes, from the start. First-year apprentice rates in the St. Louis locals run roughly $18.82 to $23.90 an hour depending on the trade, rising in steps toward journeyman scale, with health coverage and retirement. There is no tuition. A first-year plumbing and pipefitting apprentice starts around $22.77 an hour.
How much do electricians make in St. Louis?
The St. Louis metro median is about $77,170 a year, or $37.10 an hour, with the top ten percent above $104,000. That is roughly $11,760 more than the Missouri statewide median and about 22% above the national figure, making St. Louis an unusually strong market for the trade.
Does Missouri license electricians?
Not individually. Missouri’s statewide electrical license applies to electrical contractors — businesses — and is voluntary; the state says explicitly it does not cover individual electricians or journeymen. Individual licensing happens locally, through bodies like the City of St. Louis Committee of Electrical Examiners.
Can A+ Scholarship pay for trade school in Missouri?
Yes, at participating public community colleges and technical schools. A+ reimburses up to $225.00 per credit hour, and St. Louis Community College charges $127 per credit hour in-district — so A+ covers STLCC tuition entirely. It requires a 2.5 GPA, 95% attendance, and 50 hours of unpaid tutoring or mentoring during high school.
Is there help paying for trade school if I'm over 25?
Missouri’s Fast Track Workforce Incentive Grant is designed for exactly that — age 25 or older, no bachelor’s degree, household income of $40,000 or less filing single or $80,000 married filing jointly. Registered apprenticeships qualify, and for apprentices it covers tools, books and uniforms in addition to tuition.
When can I apply for a union apprenticeship in St. Louis?
Windows differ by trade and missing one costs a year. Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 562 accepts applications the first Tuesday of every month except June and December. Sheet Metal Local 36 tests the first Wednesday monthly. Ironworkers Local 396 uses a January 15 cutoff. Operating Engineers Local 513 requires applying in person on weekdays.
Is trade school worth it compared to an apprenticeship?
Financially the apprenticeship is hard to beat — year one is roughly a $66,000 swing, since you earn about $47,000 rather than paying around $19,000 in tuition. School wins when you want a credential fast, want to sample a trade first, qualify for A+, or want a specific program like automotive that apprenticeships don’t cover.
Do you run a trade business in the St. Louis metro? Electricians here earn about $11,760 above the Missouri median, which means demand is real and hiring is competitive — and the people searching for your trade are the same people who might work for you. Listing your business takes a few minutes.
Looking for work now instead? See our St. Louis jobs guides, or browse local businesses on St Louis Near Me Directory.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.