The highest paying trades in Australia

The short answer: what the trades pay

The official pay figures come from the Australian Government's occupation profiles on the Jobs and Skills Australia website. They report median weekly earnings for full-time non-managerial workers on an adult wage, built on the ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours. Treat them as a guide only. They tend to sit below what experienced or self-employed tradies actually take home, and they say nothing about overtime, allowances or going out on your own. Pay always climbs with experience.

Exact dollar figures date quickly and shift each time the ABS data updates, so rather than lock in a number that is wrong within a year, here is where the fifteen trades on this site sit relative to each other, based on the May 2025 survey figures that were current when this was written. Most trades cluster in a fairly narrow band, and a couple (tiling, and diesel as its own line) do not get a published figure at all, which we call out below. For the current weekly dollar figure on any single trade, open its profile on the Jobs and Skills Australia site linked below and read it off the live page.

• •Top of the table: auto electricians and bricklaying lead the official figures, with electrical, airconditioning and refrigeration, and plumbing close behind. Diesel mechanics belong up here too, even though the official table hides them, more on both surprises in a moment.
• •Through the middle: plastering, carpentry, welding and fabrication, and motor mechanics. Tiling realistically sits here too, but so many tilers are self-employed on piecework that the government does not publish a reliable figure for them.
• •Nearer the bottom: commercial cookery, cabinet making, painting and hairdressing sit at the lower end of the band as employees, though each has its own path to better money.

Highest paid and best bet are not the same thing

Bricklaying sits near the top of the weekly pay table, but very few people would call it the smartest trade to pick right now. The work is brutal on your knees and back, a lot of it is piecework (you get paid by how much you lay, so a rained-out week is a lean week), and the number of brickies employed has been drifting down as building methods change, even though bricklayers are still listed in national shortage. High pay with shrinking, weather-dependent work is a different proposition to high pay with a queue of work out the door.

Electrical and plumbing are the genuine all-rounders. They pay near the top, demand is strong, and both are licensed trades. That licence is the important bit. You legally cannot do most electrical or plumbing work without one, which keeps the number of people competing for the work down and props your pay up. It is a moat around your income that a painter or a labourer does not have.

The mining effect: diesel mechanics and auto electricians

Two trades need their own explanation, because the raw table either hides them or flatters them.

Diesel mechanics do not get their own line in the earnings table: officially they are lumped in with motor mechanics, which makes the trade look mid-table. In practice, heavy diesel is one of the best-paying paths on this site. A diesel mechanic servicing haul trucks, excavators or drill rigs on a mine site, often FIFO on a mining agreement, earns with the top of the trades, and the national shortage of diesel mechanics is real and long-running. The catch is where the money lives: remote sites, long swings away from home, and big machinery in heat and dust. Even outside mining, transport and machinery dealerships offer steady work and solid overtime, just not mining money.

Auto electricians are the opposite case: on the latest survey their median actually tops the entire table, ahead of every licensed building trade. Read that carefully. It is a small trade, around ten thousand people nationally, and a decent slice of them work on mining machinery and heavy vehicle fleets, which drags the published median way up. An auto sparky in a suburban workshop earns closer to a motor mechanic. The honest placement is solidly mid-to-upper, with a clear, well-paid road into mining and heavy industry if you want it, and the trade is in national shortage. As cars and machines fill up with electronics, the diagnostic skills only get more valuable.

The honest rundown on the rest

The trades in the middle and lower parts of the table each have their own trade-offs worth knowing before you commit:

• •HVAC and refrigeration: quieter public profile than sparkies and plumbers, but pays close behind them and the field is growing (cooling demand, data centres, tighter refrigerant rules). You need a refrigerant handling licence, and a fair bit of the work is diagnostics and service rather than new installs.
• •Plastering: middle of the table on the official figures, and one of the swingiest trades in real life because so much of it is piecework. Hang more sheets or render more walls and you earn more, and a fast, tidy plasterer subcontracting on volume housing can beat the median comfortably. The flipside is quiet patches when building slows, and shoulders that cop the load.
• •Carpentry: broad, portable and always in demand, but the average pay sits mid-table at best. Chippies who go out on their own and run jobs are where the real money in carpentry shows up.
• •Welding and fabrication: middle of the table on average, but this trade has a long tail. Coded welders, pressure work, and rig or mining fabrication can earn very well. The conditions can be hot, loud and physically demanding.
• •Tiling: the government does not even publish a median for tilers, because the trade is dominated by self-employed subbies paid by the square metre. That tells you how it works: a quick, quality tiler with steady builder contacts does well, mid-table or better, while a slow week lays nothing and pays nothing. Knees and backs wear the cost, and tilers are in national shortage.
• •Automotive (light vehicle): often a passion trade, and the pay reflects that it is easier to get into. Wages lag the licensed building trades, and the shift to electric vehicles is reshaping the skills you will need over a career. Motor mechanics are in national shortage, so finding work is not the problem, the ceiling as an employee is.
• •Cabinet making: workshop-based and mostly indoors, so no rained-out weeks, but the pay sits in the lower-middle band and there is less overtime and site allowance money to chase. The upside is steady conditions, a national shortage, and a clear path into running a kitchen and joinery business, which is where cabinet makers earn properly.
• •Painting: near the bottom of the group and the most casualised, partly because the barrier to entry is low. Steady work is very doable, and painters are currently listed in national shortage, but it rarely tops the pay tables.
• •Commercial cookery: sits near the bottom of the table, and the hours are the real story. Nights, weekends, split shifts and public holidays, with penalty rates propping up take-home pay. The upside is real if you climb: head chefs and sous chefs earn well above the median, mining camps and remote kitchens pay a premium, and catering businesses scale. Cooks are in national shortage and chefs in shortage across regional Australia, so a qualified chef can find work almost anywhere on earth.
• •Hairdressing: the lowest median of the fifteen, and nearly half the workforce is part-time, which drags the published figures down further. Starting pay is modest, no point pretending otherwise. The trade builds differently: a senior stylist with a full book of clients, a chair-rental arrangement or their own salon earns multiples of the award, and hairdressers are in national shortage. It is also the least brutal trade on this list for your body, though your feet, wrists and lungs (chemicals) still work hard.
• •Bricklaying: high weekly pay, hardest on the body, and the least certain long-term outlook of the fifteen.

Where the real money actually comes from

The averages above are for someone working full-time as an employee. The tradies earning well above them almost always did one or more of these things:

• •Got licensed and went out on their own. A licensed electrician or plumber who runs their own business and employs others is in a different earning bracket to a wage employee. It also brings paperwork, chasing invoices, insurance and business risk, so it is not free money.
• •Chased overtime and allowances. A big slice of trade income on commercial and civil sites is penalty rates, overtime and site allowances, not the base rate.
• •Went to mining, resources or remote work. FIFO and remote jobs pay a premium, and it is real money. Diesel mechanics, auto electricians, sparkies and welders are the trades mining wants most. The cost is time away from home and a punishing roster.
• •Specialised. A special-class electrician, an instrumentation or high-voltage sparky, a coded or pressure welder, a gas or fire-services plumber: the narrower and more technical the skill, the more it pays.
• •Built speed, a name, or a book of clients. In piecework trades like tiling, plastering and bricklaying, your pace and quality set your income directly. In hairdressing, the clientele is the asset: the stylist people follow across town charges accordingly. In cookery, the jump from cook to head chef or your own catering run is the pay rise.

The catch: apprentice pay starts low

The upside of a trade is that you earn while you learn and finish with no student debt. The downside is that first-year apprentice pay is genuinely low, and you need to plan for that.

Apprentice pay is not a single national number. It is set by the award that covers your trade, and it steps up each year of your apprenticeship as your skills grow. Your age matters too: an adult apprentice (someone who starts at 21 or older) is usually paid more than a junior. Some awards also lift your pay as you hit competency milestones.

Do not trust random salary figures online for apprentice pay. Put your exact trade, award, year and age into the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay Calculator to see your actual minimum. It is the only figure that counts.

The trade-offs nobody puts on the poster

Pay is only half the picture. Every trade on this list asks something of you that a salary figure does not show:

• •Your body does the earning. Knees, backs, shoulders and hearing wear out, especially in bricklaying, tiling, plastering, welding and plumbing. Plenty of tradies move into supervising, estimating or their own business partly to get off the tools.
• •On-call and early starts. Plumbing and HVAC service work can mean callouts. Site work often means 6am starts and long days.
• •Nights, weekends and split shifts. Cookery runs on penalty rates precisely because the hours are antisocial, and hairdressing works when everyone else is off, especially Saturdays. Factor the roster in, not just the rate.
• •Weather and cash flow. Outdoor trades lose days to rain and heat, and piecework or self-employment means your income is not always steady.
• •Business risk. Going out on your own is where the top money is, but it comes with quoting, chasing payments, insurance and quiet patches.

How to actually choose

If you are chasing the best combination of pay, demand and job security, electrical and plumbing are the clearest picks, and the licence is a big part of why. If mining money is the goal, heavy diesel and auto electrical are the most direct roads there. But if a specific trade genuinely interests you, that matters more than a hundred dollars a week on a table, because the tradies who earn the most are almost always the ones who stuck with it, got good, and eventually ran their own work.

Before you sign anything, look past the wage. Check demand and the outlook for your trade in your state, whether it is licensed, and what your first year of pay really looks like on the Fair Work calculator. A trade is a decade-long decision, not a starting salary.