well im a welder, basically the sky is the limit, this time next year im hoping to be in alaska welding pipelines.
basically its a mindset, if you want to bethe best dont let anything get in your way. your pay will depend on your performance, as far as factory work goes your looking at 30 to 40k a year starting out, the more experience you get (and the higher your skill level) the more you make. around here things are pretty much on slowdown, cat killed most of the work around here and they have not started back up yet... so that is a driving force for me to move out of the factories and into the free lance life, check into your local pipefitters, boilermakers, steamfitters etc and see about getting into an apprenticeship program