This guide is intended to inform people thinking about going into the welding industry of the types of work that can be done in this industry.

First off let me say that this industry has been very good to me, I have been involved in welding for over fifteen years and have never once been without work and the prospects in this industry are only getting better. Let me go over  a few statistics with you:

The average age of a welder is 54 years.

The US will need aprox 450,000 new welders in the next ten years.

There is unfilled demand in the energy industry right now for skilled welders in various parts of the US and worldwide locations as well.

There are new generations of nuclear plants that will be built to in the US in an effort to make this country less dependent on foreign oil, this will require a large number of certified welders to accomplish.

There are some new welding processes that require knowledge of electrical waveform in order to enhance productivity.

More and more of the welding done has to be done by certifed welders in order to meet quality control standards.

This industry is changing. What was once a simple hands on process is being transformed into a highly efficient and flexible industry to meet the demands of the future and there are lots of different paths you can choose for your career.

Do you like to travel? Do you like working on large scale projects? Do you like highly technical environments? Do you like making as much as most new doctors do in year?

While there are lots of shops that still operate with old equipment and old practices there are many more that are changing with the times. You need to be ahead of the pack in order to grow your career as fast as possible.

There are lots of ways you can learn how to weld. Traditional welding schools take about a year and a half, community colleges take around two years and of course you can simply practice on your own.

As a welding instructor at a local community college I can tell you a few things about learning to weld in a school. The first one is that when you leave the school you will only have entry level skills because most schools only teach you how to weld, they dont teach you how to fabricate. This is an important thing to mention because just as a medical student may learn to cut and suture the hard part is learning exactly how things go together. Welding is the same in that over time you will develop a knowledge of metals and welding that will allow you to build things that will stand the test of time.

I have developed a highly focused training program that allows anyone to learn not only the basics of welding but also allows them to gain the skill needed to certify in their chosen process and to gain some basic fabrication skills as well.

One of the hardest hurdles many of my students have is getting certified not because of a lack of skill but because it is hard to find testing centers and when you do it is very expensive to test. I was seeing many good hands go to work in other industries because of the high cost of certification so I became a CWI with the express intent of making certification reachable by everyone and to offer training specific to the type of welding the student wants to learn. In the computer industry this type of training is known as a "boot camp" and is a highly focused and intense type of training with the end result being the preperation for a skills test and this is exactly what I think is needed in the welding industry.

Do you have questions about the many types of certs available? How about what to do when you want to change jobs but cant afford to take a year off from your respnsibilities?

Maybe you are stuck in a cubicle somewhere doing a boring job you hate knowing that you are just one of the many unrecognized people in your company.

Other paths than the typical graduate high school then off to college to study something you may or may not ever use in your actual career.

Contact me at weldcerts.com or at my ebay store crestontrailindustries and I would be happy to discuss any questions you may have regarding this exciting and well paying industry.