Electrician Work Life Balance - All Work No Play?
Do Electricians have any free time after work?
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The Schedule of an Electrician:
Being an electrician, or really even just a tradesman in general, is much different than your typical 9-5 job; especially if you happen to be coming from the wonderful world of retail. In retail, you’ll typically know your schedule a couple of weeks in advance, and the days/ times that you work could vary from week to week. You might work Monday-Friday one week, work weekends the next, and then have split days off the following week. You might have to work the occasional holiday, get asked to cover a shift for a co-worker every now and again, and depending on who beat you to requesting time off first, you may or may not be able to take time off for the vacation that you were hoping to make happen. In the trades, this is all (generally) very foreign.
Working on a Jobsite:
While many job sites and projects have defined start and stop times, they typically don’t have any actual “shifts”. This means that if you or one of your fellow crew members needs to take time off, they generally won’t need to find somebody to fill their shift. They will usually just need to give their foreman a heads up that they won’t be coming in (preferably with an advanced notice) and then they can enjoy their time off without the stress of finding someone to fill their shift. Of course, there are occasionally times where job sites are on tight schedules or there’s something important happening that you can’t miss. Generally speaking though, it’s usually pretty easy to take time off when you’re working on a job site, and usually the bigger the job site, the more flexibility you’ll have.
Often times tradesmen work early hours. The standard work day in most cases is 8 hours and you’re likely to start working around 6 or 7am. With these start times, you’re likely to get off work sometime around 2:30 or 3:30pm (this factors in adding time for taking breaks), which leaves you plenty of time after work to enjoy your personal life. Do keep in mind that while this is very typical, the start and stop times of jobs will vary from job site to job site, and so will the distance that the project is away from your home.
Life as a Service/ Sustaining Electrician
If you find yourself working as a service or sustaining electrician someday, the flexibility that’s offered to those working on larger project is a luxury that might not be as readily available to you. Service electricians often have a number of smaller projects that they drive around to and tackle day in and day out, Because of this, they’re more likely to have a rigid schedule, almost like working shifts in retail. Working as a sustaining electrical is similar to this. Though they typically have a “home” and aren’t driving from project to project, the facility where they work might be relying on somebody to be on site during specific defined hours. This isn’t to say that in every case service and sustaining electricians won’t have the ability to be flexible with their schedule and take time off, but it is worth noting that schedule flexibility will be more limited to them.
What About Overtime?
In the trades, it’s not uncommon to work on projects where you’re offered overtime. If you find yourself working on a larger project, you may find that you’re consistently offered overtime, while if you find yourself on a smaller project, you might find that you’re not being offered any. Typically, overtime is optional which leaves it up to you whether or not you want to work it. It’s not as common, but occasionally a project will pop up where you’re required to work overtime, and on those projects, you may find that you don’t have much of a work life balance. All in all, when it comes to overtime, it’s typically going to be optional, and even if you end up on a project where it isn’t, it’s typically up to you whether or not you want to work on that project.
Don’t Electricians Have to Travel For Work?
A common misconception about the electrical trade, or really any trade for that matter, is that you’re going to have to travel for work. While this may be the case for some, it really all comes down to a multiple contributing factors:
Do you live/ work in an area where there is a lot of work going on or do you live in a more rural area?
What’s happening with the economy? Are things stable? Is the construction industry busy or slowing down?
Is there an area in the electrical field that you specialize in that may not have as high of a consistent demand in your area?
Do you want to travel?
Are you union or non-union?
There are all factors that could contribute to whether or not you’ll be traveling as an electrician. Generally, if things are good with the economy and you live in a more densely populated area, you won’t have to travel as an electrician. On the flip side, if things are slow, you may need to be willing to travel in order to find work, in which case your life will revolve around work for however long you’re traveling. And of course, if you want to travel, especially as an electrician with the union, you’re usually able to.
How Busy Will I Be With School During My Apprenticeship?
As an apprentice electrician, you’re likely going to be spending 4-5 years of your life going to school in addition to working on the job. Different apprenticeships will have different ways of doing the schooling portion of the apprenticeship program. For example, at IBEW Local 48, apprentices take one day off work each week for school and go to the training center for 8 hours for the in class portion of their training. Local 48 has an alternating term schedule where you’ll have school one day a week for three months, and then upon completion of the term, you have three months off school until you'r next term of school starts. Other apprenticeship programs might have a night school schedule, where apprentices will go to school after work on certain days during the week to knock out their in classroom training.
It’s to be expected that life as an apprentice electrician can be pretty busy, and during the months that you have school, you might find that you don’t have a whole lot of extra free time. Some terms of school have a light workload while other terms can be pretty taxing when it comes to homework and studying. In many cases, the time during your career where you’ll be the busiest is during your apprenticeship.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, generally speaking, electricians are able to have a good work life balance and really enjoy their life outside of work. There may be times and projects where you’ll find yourself with little to no spare time for yourself after work, but this is almost always just a season. And if you find that you really want to be busy and travel and pretty much just work all the time, that’s very possible to do as an electrician too.
Make sure you watch Mad Electrican’s video: Electrician Work Life Balance - All Work No Play? for a detailed answer to this question.
