Skilled trades · Building & Making

Welder: what the job actually is

Joining metal so it holds, usually to a drawing, usually to a tolerance somebody will inspect.

Published October 1, 2026Last reviewed October 1, 2026How we research and correct this

The work

What this job actually is

Melting the edges of two pieces of metal so they become one piece, and doing it to a standard that holds under load, pressure or inspection.
Most of the day is not welding. It is reading a drawing, measuring, cutting, grinding, clamping things square, and then a few minutes of actual arc.
The work splits roughly into shop and field. A shop is the same bench, the same jigs, production targets, indoors. The field is construction sites, shutdowns, pipelines and whatever the weather is doing.
There are several processes — MIG, TIG, stick, flux-core — and they feel completely different. Liking one is not liking all of them. TIG is slow and fussy and beautiful; stick is rough and fast and you can do it outside in the wind.
Somebody checks your work. On anything structural or pressurised it gets inspected, X-rayed or pressure-tested, and a bad weld comes back with your name on it.

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.

6:45 — In, boots on, pull the drawing for the job you were on yesterday. Check what the night shift did or did not finish.
7:00 — Grind and wire-brush yesterday's tacks. Nothing good gets welded onto dirty metal, and this is the part nobody films.
7:40 — Measure twice, clamp, square it up, tack it. The fit-up is the job; if the gap is wrong the weld will be wrong no matter how well you run it.
8:30 — Actually welding. Hood down, forty minutes of total concentration where you cannot hear anybody and your whole world is a pool of liquid metal three millimetres wide.
9:15 — Hood up, inspect your own work, grind back the one that undercut, run it again.
10:00 — Break. Your hands smell like metal and will for the rest of your life.
10:15 — New job on the bench. Different thickness, different process, change the settings, run a test bead on scrap first.
12:00 — Lunch. Somebody is complaining about the drawings, which are wrong, which they usually are.
12:30 — The afternoon is the same shape as the morning, except now you are tired and the tiredness shows up in the weld before it shows up in you.
14:45 — Clean the booth, coil the leads, log what got done. You can see exactly what you made today, which is more than most jobs give you.

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.

How you actually get there in Ontario

Finish high school with shop and maths if you can
You do not strictly need a specific diploma stream to start, but measurement, fractions and reading a drawing are the whole job, and tech or shop classes are the cheapest possible way to find out whether you like being in a shop at all.
Find an employer who will sponsor an apprenticeship
This is the real gate, and it is a people problem rather than a paperwork problem. You need a shop willing to register you and sign off your hours. Walking in, being useful and being obviously keen beats an online application almost every time.
Register and work the hours
Welder is trade code 456A in Ontario and it is a non-compulsory trade, so you can work in it while you train. The apprenticeship is 6,000 hours in total: 5,280 hours of on-the-job experience and 720 hours of in-school training across three levels.
Write the certifying exam
Pass it and you hold a Certificate of Qualification. Because the trade is non-compulsory you can be employed as a welder without it, which is why plenty of people never finish — and also why the ones who do finish get the better jobs.
Then collect tickets
Welding careers are built on specific qualifications for specific processes, positions and materials. Pressure tickets and position tickets are what actually move your pay, and they come after the apprenticeship rather than during it.

Where this comes from: Skilled Trades Ontario — Welder (456A) · Ontario — Start an apprenticeship · 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.

$21.00: Low (hourly)
$28.00: Median (hourly)
$41.28: High (hourly)

Ontario, NOC 72106. 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.

Source: Job Bank — Welder wages in Ontario

Before you leave school

Things you can do now

Take every shop or manufacturing technology course your school offers. If it does not offer them, ask the guidance office what the nearest school or board programme is.
Ask about OYAP. It lets you start accumulating apprenticeship hours while you are still in Grade 11 or 12, which means leaving school already part-way into the trade.
Get to a welding competition or a skills event and watch. Ten minutes of watching somebody good tells you more than a week of reading.
Weld something badly, on purpose, in a supervised shop. The first bead everybody runs is ugly. The question is whether you wanted to immediately run another one.

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.

Find out whether you can actually concentrate like this

About 90 minutes

Watch three videos of the same weld done in three processes — MIG, TIG and stick. Write down which one you wanted to keep watching. That is a real signal and it is specific.
Learn to read one simple welding symbol off a drawing. There are only a handful of parts to it. Find a drawing online and say out loud what the symbol is asking for.
Set a timer for 25 minutes and do one fiddly, repetitive, physical task with your hands and no phone — building something from a kit, taking apart an appliance, sanding something properly. Notice honestly whether the time went fast or slow.
Phone or walk into one local fabrication shop and ask one question: do they take apprentices, and what do they look for. You are not asking for a job. You are finding out whether the door exists.

What it tells you. If the 25 minutes went fast, that is the single best predictor you can get for free — this trade is sustained narrow focus with your hands. If it dragged and you reached for your phone twice, take that seriously now rather than 2,000 hours in.

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 weld today, and was any of it interesting?”
“What percentage of your day is actually arc time?”
“Which process do you reach for when you get to choose, and why?”
“What does your body feel like at the end of a week?”
“What do the people who quit in the first year have in common?”
“What ticket made the biggest difference to what you get paid?”
“If you were starting again at 17 in Ontario, what would you do differently?”

Could you own one of these?

The part other career sites never mention

Yes, and it is one of the more realistic trades to own. A mobile welding rig is a truck, a machine and a phone, and plenty of welders go out on their own doing repair work for farms, shops and contractors. The constraint is not skill, it is quoting, invoicing and knowing which jobs to refuse — which is exactly what the business side of this site is for.

Business 101 is free and teaches that part

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.

Try Future Finder — free All jobs

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