Skilled trades · Building & Making
Electrician: what the job actually is
Installing and fixing the wiring that every other trade on a site depends on, mostly inside walls somebody else already closed up.
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The work
What this job actually is
- Laying out, installing, testing and repairing the wiring, panels, fixtures and controls in buildings. Skilled Trades Ontario files the construction and maintenance version of the trade as compulsory, which means you cannot do the work legally in Ontario without being registered or certified.
- A large share of the day is pulling cable, drilling through framing, running conduit and labelling circuits. The part people picture, connecting things up and switching them on, is a small slice at the end.
- You are always working around other trades. The framers, plumbers and drywallers all have a schedule, and the electrician is the person who finds out the plan on the drawing does not match the building.
- Testing and troubleshooting is the part that separates people. Working out why a circuit does nothing, or does the wrong thing, is detective work done with a meter.
- Safety is not a poster on the wall. The job involves energy you cannot see, so procedures such as locking out a circuit before touching it are the work, not paperwork around the work.
A Tuesday
What a normal day looks like
Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.
- 6:30 — On site, read the day's list and the drawings, and find out which wall got framed differently from the plan.
- 7:00 — Tool and material check. Nothing is more expensive than a second trip for the one fitting you did not bring.
- 7:20 — Drill through studs and pull cable. You are on a ladder or on your knees for most of the morning.
- 9:30 — Mount boxes and run the cable into them, keeping everything square to a standard somebody will inspect.
- 10:00 — Break. Another trade has been standing where you need to work, so you negotiate for the space.
- 10:15 — Lock out the circuit you are about to touch, test that it is actually dead, and only then start.
- 12:00 — Lunch in the truck or on a bucket.
- 12:30 — Troubleshooting a call-back: a light that works only when something else is on. Meter, drawings, patience.
- 14:30 — Make up a panel, label every breaker, so the next person can tell what is what.
- 15:30 — Clean up the cut-offs, log your materials, and photograph the work before it disappears behind drywall.
Honestly
Who loves this, and who should not do it
The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.
- You like finding out why something does not work and you are comfortable following a procedure exactly when the stakes are physical.
- You do not mind small spaces, ladders, attics and crawlspaces, and you are fine being the person who goes in there.
- You want to be trained for years but be paid while you learn it.
- You like work with a clear pass or fail. The circuit works, or it does not, and the inspector agrees with you or does not.
- You would rather deal with a wall and a meter than with a customer-facing script.
- You hate being told to do things in a fixed order, every time, with no shortcuts. Lockout and testing procedures leave no room for being in a hurry.
- Attics in summer, trenches in winter and unheated buildings in between would get to you. Weather and building conditions are part of the job for many electricians.
- You get anxious about being the last person to touch something people will live in. Your work is hidden, and the consequence of a mistake is delayed.
- You dislike physical repetition. Drilling, pulling and bending is hard on shoulders, knees and backs over a career.
- Your plan for the day gets overruled by whoever else is on site. Schedules in construction slide, and you get squeezed.
The route in
How you actually get there in Ontario
Register as an apprentice with an employer
Construction and maintenance electrician is trade code 309A in Ontario and it is a compulsory trade. To work in it legally you need a Registered Training Agreement, a Provisional Certificate of Qualification or a Certificate of Qualification, so the first job is finding a sponsor, not a classroom.Work the hours and go to school in blocks
The apprenticeship is 9,000 hours: 8,160 hours on the job and 840 hours of in-school training, which Skilled Trades Ontario describes as approximately five years.Write the exam
Skilled Trades Ontario lists the trade as part of the Interprovincial Red Seal Program, under the title Construction Electrician, so the qualification is recognised across Canada.Use the long guide for the detail
We already wrote a full guide to the Ontario route, including how to find the first employer. This page is about what the work feels like and whether to try it. Read the guide when you are ready to move.
Where this comes from: Skilled Trades Ontario — Electrician, Construction and Maintenance (309A) · Ontario — Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program
The money
What it pays in Ontario
Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.
- $20.00
- Low (hourly)
- $34.00
- Median (hourly)
- $50.50
- High (hourly)
Ontario, NOC 72200. Reference period 2023-2024, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth.
Where it is heading
The outlook for the next three years
Job Bank publishes a three-year outlook for every job in every province. It is the closest thing to an honest forecast, and it moves, so read it as a weather report rather than a verdict.
Moderate3 out of 5 stars
- Employment growth will lead to a moderate number of new positions.
- Not many positions will become available due to retirements.
What that rating means: how many openings Job Bank expects in Ontario for this kind of work against how many people are likely to be looking — not whether it is a good job. A “limited” rating means more competition for each opening; it does not close the door, and it can change before you are ready to walk through it.
What is changing in this work
- Large infrastructure investments
- New housing developments to meet population growth in some of Ontario's largest urban centres
Who hires for it
- Most work in construction, mainly as building equipment contractors
- 44,100
- people work in this job in Ontario
- less than 5%
- are women (48% across all jobs)
- 10%
- are self-employed (15% across all jobs)
Source: Job Bank — Electricians (except industrial and power system) job prospects in Ontario (NOC 72200). Outlook updated by Job Bank on 10 December 2025; read by us on 5 October 2026.
Before you leave school
Things you can do now
- Ask your guidance counsellor about OYAP. Ontario says it lets students in Grade 11 or 12 earn co-op credits through a work placement in a skilled trade, if you are at least 15 and have 14 credits.
- Take the shop, technology and physics classes your school offers. Reading a drawing and doing arithmetic with fractions come up constantly.
- Ask whether your school or board offers a co-op placement with an electrical contractor, and what the sign-up process is.
- Look at the wiring in your own house from the outside only: where the panel is, and what the labels say. Do not open anything.
Test it
Do this before you decide anything
Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.
Learn to read a circuit before you ever touch one
About 75 minutes- Find a basic wiring diagram of a light controlled by one switch, in a free video or on a trades education page. Draw it by hand from memory without looking.
- Watch one video of an apprentice describing a normal day on site. Write down which parts sounded dull and which sounded interesting.
- Phone one local electrical contractor and ask one question: do they take apprentices, and what do they look for in a first-year? You are finding out whether the door exists.
- Do not touch any wiring, outlet or panel. Everything in this experiment is paper, video and a phone call.
What it tells you. If drawing the circuit made you want to know why it works and then what happens when it does not, that curiosity is what the job runs on. If the diagram and the call both felt like homework, believe it now, before nine thousand hours.
Better than any article
Questions for somebody who does this job
Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.
- “What did you actually do yesterday, hour by hour?”
- “What is the worst part of your body to have after a week of this work?”
- “What was your first year like, and what nearly made you quit?”
- “How did you find your first sponsor?”
- “What is the part nobody tells apprentices about site politics?”
- “If you went out on your own, what would catch you out first?”
Could you own one of these?
The part other career sites never mention
Yes, and many electricians do, but the rules are strict. The trade is compulsory in Ontario, so you cannot work in it legally until you are registered or certified, and an electrical contractor also has to carry insurance and answer for inspected work. After you are qualified, owning a one-person shop is realistic. Before then, it is a different job.
Not sure this is the right list to be reading
Start from yourself, not from the job.
Future Finder is free, takes about ten minutes, needs no account and stores nothing. It will tell you which kinds of work you lean toward, and which of these pages are worth your time.
Parent of a teenager weighing this up? Career coaching for teens gets them talking to people who do the work, anywhere in Ontario.
If this appeals, look at these too
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Read next
How to become an electrician Apprenticeships in Ontario All careers guides
Wages and training requirements change. Every figure on this page is linked to the body that publishes it, and the review date above says when we last checked. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.