Last updated: May 8, 2026
I Spent 20 Years on the Wrong Side of "Stable"
I sold cars for over twenty years on Vancouver Island — the last fifteen at Duncan Honda. Sales is a trade in its own way, but it isn’t a stable one. Your income swings with the month. The dealership reorganizes and people get cut. A new manager comes in with new “metrics” and suddenly the guy who built half the customer base is being told to hit a different number.
I lived that for two decades. I made decent money. But I never once felt like the floor under me was solid.
So when somebody over 40 asks me — “do you think I should get into the trades?” — I don’t give them the cheerful internet answer. I give them the answer somebody who watched it from a car-lot desk for twenty years would give. Money is real in the trades. Stability is real. But there’s a catch nobody warns the over-40 crowd about, and we’ll get to that too.
This post is for the guy or woman who’s looking at their current job and wondering if it’s time. It’s for the person whose office gig keeps “restructuring.” It’s for the sales rep who’s tired of starting from zero every January. It’s for the parent who needs a job that’s still going to be there in ten years.
Why Over-40s Are Looking at the Trades in 2026
Two reasons, mostly. Money and stability.
Money first — because we have to be honest. A licensed electrician in BC is making $38 to $50 per hour as a journeyman in 2026. That works out to $79,000 to $104,000 a year depending on what you’re wiring and where (WorkZen Canadian Electrician Salary Guide 2026). A plumber on Vancouver Island is hitting a $35.20/hour median — about $73,000 a year — with the high end pushing $44 (Government of Canada Job Bank, BC plumber wages). Automotive techs in BC have a median around $35/hour and a high of $49 (Job Bank, BC auto technician wages). Welders in BC average around $36.61/hour, with the top earners pulling $40+ (Indeed BC welder salary).
That’s real money. Not promised money — measured money, from federal and provincial wage data.
But the bigger draw, for people in their 40s, is stability. Not in the romantic sense — stability the way you mean it when you’re 45, you’ve got a mortgage, kids, maybe a parent starting to need help. Stability is “my industry can’t get killed by an email from head office.”
I’ll tell you about a customer of mine who learned that the hard way.
The Tim Hortons Baker Who Became an Electrician
Mid-1990s, when I was selling at Wheaton Pontiac Buick. A young woman walked onto the lot. She had a steady job — Tim Hortons, in-store baker. Back then, every Tim Hortons had real bakers making real donuts in the back of the store. It was good work. She was proud of it. She bought a brand-new Pontiac Grand Am from me on the strength of that paycheque.
Three months later, she came back for service and told me Tim Hortons had fired all the in-store bakers. Every one of them. Corporate had decided to start trucking in pre-made donuts from a central plant. The bakers found out the same week the customers did.
She had no warning. No severance to speak of. Her trade — donut baker — was gone. Not slow-died over years. Killed in one boardroom decision.
She didn’t sit around. She got into the electrical apprenticeship system. Four years of school and on-the-job hours, and she came out the other side as a licensed electrician. She kept coming back to me for service through that whole journey, and we became friends. By the time she was a few years post-ticket, she was making more money than half the office workers I knew, with benefits, with a pension contribution, and — this is the part that matters — with skills nobody at corporate could outsource with a memo.
That story stuck with me. The trades didn’t just give her income. They gave her something corporate Canada had taken away: the ability to control her own next move.
The Catch Nobody Tells the Over-40 Crowd
I’m not going to sell you a fairy tale. Here’s the part most blogs leave out.
It’s a young man’s game when you start.
The money at the top is real. The money at the bottom is humbling. As an apprentice, you’ll be doing the dirty jobs, the cleanup jobs, the “go grab the thing from the truck” jobs. You’ll be making far less than the journeyman beside you, even though you’re showing up to the same site at the same time. First-year electrical apprentices in Canada generally earn 50–60% of the journeyman rate (WorkZen guide). For a 45-year-old who’s used to making $80K, that’s a real adjustment.
The other thing nobody warns you about: the older guys won’t talk to you at first.
Doesn’t matter that you’re roughly the same age. Doesn’t matter that you ran a sales floor or a kitchen or a delivery route for twenty years. Day one on a job site, you’re a newbie. Until the OGs see you put in the work — until you’ve been there long enough to count, until they know you’re not going to quit on them in three weeks — you’re not part of the conversation. You eat your lunch a little to the side. You get the silent nods, not the stories.
I’m telling you this because I’ve watched guys go in expecting to be welcomed and fold inside two months. The ones who lasted understood: paying your dues isn’t an insult. It’s the trade. Once you’ve done it, the OGs warm up. The information starts flowing. The good jobs find you. But you have to get through the first year.
If you go in expecting that — knowing it — you’ll do fine. If you go in expecting respect for being 45, you won’t.
Which Trades Actually Make Sense After 40
I’m going to tell you what I’d tell my own kid if they were 42 and asking. This is from twenty years of selling cars to BC tradesmen and watching whose bodies held up and whose didn’t.
Electrician
The brain trade. Less back-breaking than most. Tools are lighter. The work is varied — residential, commercial, industrial. Top wages in BC. The path is well-defined and BC’s apprenticeship system through SkilledTradesBC is one of the most generous in Canada. If I were starting at 42 with a sore back, this is where I’d look first.
Plumber
Hard on the body, but the money is excellent and the demand never stops. People are always renovating bathrooms, fixing leaks, building suites. The downside is real — knees, shoulders, crawling under sinks at 50 hits different than at 25. But BC plumber wages are some of the highest of any trade and there is essentially zero unemployment risk. Plumbers don’t get laid off.
Automotive Mechanic
This is my old neighbourhood — and I have a strong opinion. If you’re going into automotive over 40, get into a great dealership if you can. Independent shops can be excellent, but a busy dealership service department teaches you faster because you’re seeing more vehicles, more problems, more repeat issues. You build a knowledge base in years that takes a decade at a slow shop. Plus — at a dealership, you usually have the manufacturer’s training program, the parts on hand, and the lifts and equipment you need to do the work right.
If you’re aiming at Honda specifically, BC has a real path: the BCIT Automotive Technician Honda/Acura Foundation program is exactly the kind of program that takes someone with no experience and gives them a real shot at a dealership floor.
Welder
Hardest on your body, but the wages are real and the specialized work pays huge. Pipeline welding, structural welding, certified pressure-vessel work — these can pay over $100K once you’re ticketed and certified. Red Seal data shows the Canadian average welder hourly wage at around $40.73, and BC top welders are pulling more. The trade-off: eyes, lungs, joints. Wear your PPE like your life depends on it, because it does.
The Honda Buddy I Watched Reinvent Himself
Stories close better than statistics, so let me tell you one more.
When I was at Duncan Honda, we had a guy in the shop who started out doing oil changes and tire rotations. Just the basics. He’d come over to the lot and chat with the salesmen between jobs. Quiet guy, hard worker, no chip on his shoulder.
He got into the Honda Canada apprenticeship program — the proper structured one where you learn the brand, get certified by the manufacturer, and rack up your provincial apprenticeship hours at the same time. Four years.
I watched him change.
By year two, he was doing brake jobs and clutch work without supervision. By year three, he was diagnosing issues that the senior techs would come ask him about. By year four, when he completed the program, he was a Red Seal automotive service technician earning real money in a busy, secure dealership service department. He’d gone from oil-change guy to one of the most valuable people on the floor.
Watching him change was incredible. He came in unsure if he could do it. He came out of the program a different man — more confident, more skilled, paid better, working alongside people who respected him. The dealership wasn’t just paying him. They were protecting him, because he was harder to replace every year.
That’s what the trades do for someone who’s willing to put in the four years.
The Honest Bottom Line for the Over-40 Reader
Going into the trades after 40 isn’t easy. It isn’t fast. The first year will test you. The OGs won’t roll out the welcome mat. Your body will let you know when you’re running out of road.
But here’s what I’ve watched, twice now, with my own eyes: the people who do it come out the other side standing taller. They earn real money. They have skills nobody can take away with a memo. They wake up in the morning knowing what they’re doing and who they’re doing it for. That’s worth a lot, especially in a job market that keeps “restructuring” the people over 40 out the door.
If you’re sitting at your desk wondering if it’s time — read the job postings. Walk into a dealership and ask about apprenticeships. Talk to your neighbour who’s a plumber. Visit SkilledTradesBC and look at the entry programs.
The first call is free. And it might be the most important one you make this year.
Need Help Thinking It Through?
If you’re 40+ and weighing a trades switch and want to talk it out with somebody who’s not selling you anything, drop me a line through the Contact page. I’m not a career counsellor and nothing here is professional advice — I’m a retired car salesman who watched the trades up close for twenty years and is happy to share what I saw.
Brew approves the messages.
— Mark Dupuis
Duncan, BC
Sources:
• WorkZen — Canadian Electrician Salary Guide 2026
• Government of Canada Job Bank — BC plumber apprentice wages
• Government of Canada Job Bank — BC automotive service technician apprentice wages
• Red Seal Recruiting — 2026 Canadian welder salary guide
• BCIT — Automotive Technician Honda/Acura Foundation program
• SkilledTradesBC — apprenticeship and Red Seal information
• Trades Training BC — BC Trade Salaries and Financial Benefits