LONDON (Reuters) – The world will need to invest $40 billion to upgrade electricians in the coming decades to meet the growing demand, a group of countries including the United States and China said on Thursday.
The world’s top electricians will have to spend 10 percent of their salaries on training in 2018, which is already a steep drop from 20 percent in 2018 for the same group of workers in 2020, according to a group that advocates for electricians.
That would put electricians’ wages at about $40 per hour by 2025, said Thomas Vigneron, chair of the Electrician’s Association of North America, or EAANA, which represents about 500,000 electricians and technicians.
He said the average electrician earns about $50,000 annually, compared to $70,000 for an electrician in the United Kingdom.
Electricians’ salaries are rising rapidly in many countries because of the global economy.
In 2020, the average worker earned $46,600, according the EAA.
In 2020, electricians earned about the same as an engineer, who makes $80,000.
But a rise in energy costs has put electrician wages on a downward trend.
That trend will continue to worsen, said Vignerson, whose organization was formed in 2008 to improve training for electrician workers.
The EAA and the American Electric Power Association (AEPA), a trade group for electric utilities, are seeking to promote electricians as part of a broader strategy to encourage workers to take on new jobs, including electricians, in the years ahead.
The Electrician, the Electric Engineer and the Electric Technicians Association, or ETAA, is a trade association of electricians for the public and private sectors.
Its president, Mark Siegel, said the group was committed to ensuring electricians had the skills they need to perform all the jobs that are being created.
“Electricians are at the forefront of our economy and we need to create jobs,” he said.
“Efficiency is the only answer to the energy crisis.
We need electricians to get smarter, to take care of their customers, and to stay connected.”
It’s a good time to be an electricians.
“Ahead of a summit in Washington this week on improving skills and skills development in the U.S., Siegel said it was vital that electricians became more skilled.”
The skills that are necessary are needed, but they are not the skills that have to be there to support that transition,” he told a news conference.”
We’ve got to get them up to speed.
“He said there was a lot of research showing that many electricians were “bored” and had little or no skills.
Siegel said the government should invest $20 billion in apprenticeship programs and train electricians “on the jobs they need”.
The EAAA, which has about 20,000 members, is calling for a total of $40.7 billion in investments to train electrician and electrician technician workers in the next decade.
Its membership includes about 1,000 public and commercial electricians who earn $40,000 or less, it said in a statement.
It is calling on governments to spend the money on training electricians so that electrician jobs could be filled by trained, motivated people.
The United States is expected to spend $1.4 billion for apprenticeships, training and technical assistance in 2020.
The $4.6 billion U.K. government has announced is earmarked for apprenticeship training.
In the United Nations Development Program’s 2020 Goals, it is looking to create 500,0000 apprentices for 2020.