An $80,000 Job With No College Degree

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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An $80,000 Job With No College Degree

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The median household income in the United States is $40,480. That figure has been flat since 2019, so finding a higher-paying job may be challenging. For people with only a high school education, the figure is even lower at $34,320. However, there are a limited number of specialty jobs that pay much higher. One of these is wind turbine service technicians. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of jobs in the field will grow 44.9% between 2022 and 2032. (What is the worst job in America?)

Why Wind Turbine Service Technicians Are Needed

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Why will the growth of these wind power jobs grow so quickly? The answer is a move from fossil fuels to heat homes and businesses to greener alternatives. These include solar, wind and nuclear energy. Start-ups are investing in huge wind power turbines, many of which are offshore. Some of the world’s largest companies, like Siemens, also see the sector as an area of tremendous growth.

The wind turbine growth is no accident. It is on the cutting edge of creating ways to generate energy without coal. Bloomberg reports, “Researcher Wood Mackenzie predicts the US will add 120 gigawatts of onshore wind—enough to power perhaps 40 million homes—to its existing 150GW over the next decade.”

Wind turbine service technicians require special training but not a college degree. And that special education allows them to make $80,000 on average. The training for these jobs gets candidates a certificate. After that, the path can get tougher. Many turbines are miles offshore. Technicians often need to move heavy equipment.

There can be job stability risks with these jobs. Some wind turbine projects fail. Building and maintaining offshore turbines can be expensive. High winds and bird strikes can damage parts of the machines. Orsted, a Danish company, walked away from a huge installation and wrote off billions of dollars. But the overall movement to wind energy has not stopped and is unlikely to as the rotation to green energy continues.

Hard work, often far from land, may not be pleasant, but some jobs in the sector pay well, even for people who did not go to college.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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