Electrician Career Description

Electrician Career Description

A master electrician or journeyman is either installing or maintaining. The profession often calls for installing electrical wiring and outlet terminations while maintaining motors and electrical appliances.

• A master electrician is basically a tradesman who implements the electrical specifications defined by electrical engineers in a building or home construction project.
• The profession brings them to work both indoors and outdoors to inspect electrical installations, perform repairs, install electrical cabling and may even be trained to do structured network cabling.
• In factories, they repair motorized and electrical equipment. A master electrician or journeyman can basically do everything an electrical engineer can do except design electrical systems.

Education and Training

You only need to be a high school graduate or a G.E.D. to start a career as an electrician.  But you have to go under apprentice work under an accredited master electrician or a journeyman while taking vocational classes on electricity, blueprint reading, national electrical code, safety and first aid, among others.  An electrician takes about 144 hours of classroom training and 2,000 hours of on-the-job training every year for 4 years, before apprenticeship or during.

After about 3-5 years as an apprentice, an electrician becomes a master electrician or journey but only if gets licensed. Most states require electricians to be licensed to become master electricians or journeyman though the requirements vary between states.

Employment

Electrician are not normally permitted to work on their own unless employed by an electrical contractor or sufficiently licensed.  Consequently most electricians work under the direct supervision of a master electrician in any installation or maintenance. Typical range of salaries for a master electrician or journeyman is from $31,000 to $52,250 annually.