Definitive Guide to Welding & Fabrication
A focused guide on hiring, verifying, and retaining welders and fabricators. Certification-verification tactics, role-specific recruiting playbooks, and a candid look at what works.
What's inside
- What BLS data actually says about welder pay, growth, and state variation
- How AWS certification tiers work - and why "AWS certified" alone means nothing
- The 10 most-recruited welding and fabrication roles
- A practical hiring playbook for screening verified credentials
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Download Definitive Guide to Welding & FabricationThe welding & fabrication market this paper is about, in federal numbers.
Every claim the paper makes sits on top of these. They are published, they are free, and we would rather you saw them first.
There were 4,061 nonresidential structural steel contractors in the United States in 2023, employing 74,875 people at an average of $78,464 a year. Against 2018 that is +3.6% employers, +1.2% employment, +22% average pay - five years, before inflation is taken out of any of it.
There were 3,851 structural metal fabricators in the United States in 2023, employing 95,985 people at an average of $74,756 a year. Against 2018 that is +13% employers, +5.6% employment, +26% average pay - five years, before inflation is taken out of any of it.
Where the work is most concentrated.
- Tulsa, OK — 3.68× the national rate of welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, 4,520 employed
- Baton Rouge, LA — 3.36× the national rate of welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, 3,690 employed
- Chattanooga, TN — 2.57× the national rate of welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, 1,850 employed
- Huntsville, AL — 2.54× the national rate of welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, 1,810 employed
- Lancaster, PA — 1.88× the national rate of welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, 1,270 employed
- Virginia Beach, VA — 1.83× the national rate of welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, 3,740 employed
Concentration is not the same as volume. A metro can be the densest market in the country for a trade and still be a small one - which is exactly the condition that makes a search hard, and is why the paper treats the two separately.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2018 and 2023 annual averages, private-sector employers. Concentration from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
