Chase the paycheck you keep, not the one they quote

Quick answer: Compare markets by what's left after rent, state taxes and moving costs, not by the hourly rate. Call the state licensing board before you commit. And if you can, finish your apprenticeship somewhere cheap, then move as a journeyman.

Take two offers for a journeyman electrician. Metro A pays $44 an hour. Metro B pays $36. Those numbers are made up, but the math is real.

At 2,080 hours a year, A pays $91,520 and B pays $74,880. That's a $16,640 gap, and it looks like an easy call. Now say rent for the same kind of place runs $900 a month higher in A. That's $10,800 a year. The gap is down to $5,840 before state taxes, before a longer commute, before the truck costs more to insure.

Run it honestly and sometimes A still wins. Sometimes B wins by a mile. You only know after you do the work.

Get the real numbers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes wage data by occupation and by metro area in its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. It's free. Pull up your trade, then your target cities, and look at the median hourly wage. Ignore the top end. The top end is the guy with thirty years and his own crew.

Then go one level closer to the ground. Many union locals post their wage scale and benefit package publicly. Non-union shops will tell you a range if you call and ask like a grown man who's serious. Ask what a first-year journeyman makes, not what the best guy makes.

Pay varies a great deal by state and even by county. The same card can be worth very different money forty miles apart.

Patterns, not a ranking

Nobody can give you an honest list of the ten best states for every trade, because it changes with the trade and with the year. What you can see are patterns.

Dense union markets in the Northeast, the West Coast and the big Great Lakes cities tend to post high wage scales and strong benefits. They also tend to carry high housing costs. Fast-growing metros in the South and Mountain West often have loud demand and cheaper housing, though the cheap part is shrinking in a lot of them. Energy and industrial regions can pay a premium when a plant or a pipeline is going up, then go quiet when it's done.

None of that tells you where to go. It tells you what to check. Which of these describes the place you're eyeing: high scale and high rent, high demand and moderate rent, or one big project and nothing behind it?

Licensing is the toll booth

This is where moves go sideways. Licensing for electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs is set state by state, and sometimes city by city. Some states honor another state's license. Some make you sit their exam. Some will count your documented hours and some won't count a single one.

Before you pick a place, call the state licensing board and ask three questions:

• Do you recognize my current license or journeyman card?
• Will my apprenticeship hours transfer, and what proof do you need?
• What does the exam cost, and how soon can I sit it?

Get the answers in writing if you can. Then get your own paperwork in order before you leave. A former employer who won't sign off on your hours six months after you've moved is a problem you can't fix from a U-Haul. If you're still on the way to a license, what it actually takes to become a plumber shows how much the path depends on where you live.

Do the apprenticeship where life is cheap

Here's the contrarian part. A lot of young guys want to move to the big-money market on day one. Usually that's backward.

An apprentice earns a fraction of journeyman pay. The big-money city is also where an apprentice can least afford to live. If your parents' basement, a cheap rental or a buddy's spare room is available where you are, take it, and bank the difference while you learn. Move when you hold the card, because a journeyman can walk into almost any market and ask for a job.

Concede the trade-off: the best apprenticeship programs in some cities are hard to get into, and the waiting lists can be long. If a top program in a pricey market will take you, that can be worth the squeeze. Just go in knowing the number you're signing up for.

Make sure the market is hungry

A hot market and a hungry one aren't always the same thing. Before you move, call three contractors in the area and ask a simple question: are you turning down work or begging for it? If you're looking at a union hall, ask about the out-of-work list. A long list means the wage scale looks better on paper than it is in your bank account.

Watch out for a single-project town too. When one plant, one data center or one pipeline carries the whole market, the work can disappear on the day the ribbon is cut. Look for a place with several kinds of work going at once, such as housing, commercial, industrial and service.

If you'd rather chase the money without uprooting, travel work is its own option. The lineman paycheck is real and so is the price is a fair look at what that costs a man and his family.

If you're torn on the union question in a new market, read union or non-union trade work and how to actually choose before you decide. The answer can change from city to city.

Move like a man who loves his family

A job offer isn't a family decision. If you're married, your wife gets an equal say, and not a polite one. She'll give up her friends, her church or her job, her mother down the road. Sit down together and put the numbers on the table.

Then take the careful route:

• Visit in the worst month, not the best. See the place in August heat or January ice.
• Rent first. Don't sell the house until you've lived there six months and still want to stay.
• Check schools, the drive to work, and the distance to the nearest family you've got.
• Keep a cash cushion of a few months' expenses, because the first paycheck is always later than you expect.

And when you leave a rental, leave it cleaner than you found it. Your next landlord might be the cousin of your next foreman, and it's a small trade world.

A bigger number on the offer letter proves nothing. What matters is whether the guy who gets there can build something lasting for the people riding along with him.