Electricians

A Day in the Life

As an electrician, you're a member of a 550,000-strong cadre of skilled electrical workers who work in a variety of industries and sub-fields. Once you received your certification, you discovered that you had a wealth of opportunities available to you.

Eventually, you accepted a job with a construction company that builds new office buildings in your region. Since you like to travel and enjoy working on different projects, this seemed like a good fit for you. Although you currently help to install wiring, outlets, transformers and other components under the supervision of a construction foreman, you hope to open your own contracting business soon. After all, at least 10 percent of all electricians are self-employed.

For now, you arrive at your job site at around 8 a.m. every weekday morning. Although you occasionally work overtime as a deadline nears, most of your work occurs during regular business hours. Today, you're helping to install the lighting system in a new commercial building.

Upon arriving at the job site, you put on your hard hat and stuff your lunch pail and belongings in a makeshift bank of lockers. You ride a construction elevator to the building's third floor and meet your fellow electricians. Each of you has been assigned to a specific section of the floor. You walk over to yours and begin un-looping lengths of standard electrical wire. In order to install the wiring, you string it along the wall supports that will eventually be hidden by wall plaster and use heavy-duty staples to keep it in place.

Next, you consult a copy of the building's electrical blueprint to determine where its wall and floor outlets will lie. Although attaching a socket to a length of wiring can be a complex affair, you've rapidly gotten the hang of it over the past few months. You perform this task several times before breaking for lunch.

After lunch, your foreman informs you that you're needed on the building's top floor. You'll be installing the temporary construction lighting that will allow other members of the building's construction crew to work quickly and safely. You dutifully take the elevator upstairs and begin stringing long loops of wire along each of the building's structural supports. Once this has been done, you attach floodlights at regular intervals. Meanwhile, one of your colleagues installs a switching system that will allow the lights to be switched on and off.

As you work, you notice that the shadows are lengthening outside the building. One of the nice things about your current job is that it allows you to work on your feet. Although plenty of detail goes into the wiring work that you do, you also get to move around a lot. What's more, you get to work in an open environment. While you're not technically outside, you're also not cooped up in a small office.

At around 5:30 p.m., you punch out and say "good night" to your fellow workers. You need your rest. As always, you anticipate a fresh set of challenges tomorrow.