Precision Metalworkers

After completing apprenticeship training, workers often need several more years' experience to learn the most difficult and specialized skills. Well-qualified, experienced workers may have several avenues of advancement open to them. There is a shortage of precision metalworkers, so opportunities are plentiful for those who have good experience. Some may choose to move into a larger shop for more pay or accept a supervisory position. Others may decide to become a tool designer or specialist in programming computer numerical control tool machines.

Another possibility for some tool makers is to become a tool inspector in an industry that requires a particularly high degree of accuracy in components. Many workers go into business for themselves, opening their own independent job shops to make items for manufacturing firms that do not maintain their own tool-making or die-making department.