Do people with autism struggle with trade jobs?

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I want to get into trades but dont know if i can do whats required.

You can try it.Maybe you'll be the best at trading among the autistic ones.

Anything is possible when you have a dream.

I recall someone who enjoyed doing prep work for auto body painting.
Very limited social interaction.
But very rewarding for someone who likes to do a good job that is appreciated. If only by the guy who does the painting.

I think most jobs are a struggle for most people, but it's hard to know till you've tried. Trade usually involves interacting with people, and people with ASD might have particular problems with that, but as ASD is a spectrum disorder, you might have a particular struggle with people things and you might not.

can you specify please>

trade needs no emotions, so you might be actually good at it.

What sort of trade? Training is required for many trades but it depends what trade it is. Some trades need a certain qualification relating to the trace before one is even allowed to proceed into employment. Electrician or gas engineer are examples of this for obvious reasons regarding safety.
Other trades also need things like this, as even trades like labouring do need certain safety courses before one can proceed. Though these safety courses will by nature be more basic, they should be looked on as positives as everyone wants to work in safety as much as they can.
Don't be put off by this though, as there are many such courses available. (Depending on what ones country requires). Often employers will send their new recruits on such courses, or even in some cases train their own staff up as required. So if one applies to work in a certain trade, the employer will (If needed) cover this aspect of it. (But not always depending how ones systems work in ones country. Some countries will offer training courses for free if it is likely one will get a job after it, and as a country it makes sense because any costs will eventually come back via taxes on employee earnings, so it makes long term financial sense for governments to offer free training for certain trades, though many countries are not so forward thinking).

I was talking about some of the training I have done in the past and some of the more unusual qualifications I had as a result. Some made me laugh. Somewhere (If I still have it) I have a certificate saying I passed in the "Adequate use of a brush". I remember thinking this was hillarious, and discussing it when I worked on the railways with a passenger who trained people in a government training agency and she said "You would not believe how many youngsters we get these days who don't have a clue how to use a handbrush!" I thought she was joking but she was serious! The mind boggles! Haha!

I suspect there are a lot of us in various trades, especially where technical knowledge needs to back up the skills, electrical and plumbing being examples already quoted.

Potential pressure points: saying yes too often and getting overloaded with work, occasionally not reaching complete understanding with customers.

Making book keeping a daily task so repetition builds the skill and the daily task entering spending and billing into a spreadsheet keeps that side manageable plus at the end of the year, figures are all there to transfer into tax returns etc.

the trades take various skills depending on your abilities, take the time to explore, maybe visit with others in the chosen trades, ask lots of questions. Most skilled trades are begging for trainees, apprentices, and craftspeople.

I'm a fabricator and fair pretty OK most times.

For me, the struggle would have been boredom, but I took the "extra-odd jobs" that would have been slow and risky to hire others for. Those were my most reliable "day jobs" while I tried to make progress in my main vocation. If you are suitable for the trades, you have probably already acquired some sort of tool collection to make things you care about and develop a feel for the materials.

The trick to trades is not minding that it hurts. If you have no interest in enduring pain and discomfort a trade isn't for you. Not that every job is hellish, but you can't tap out. If someone asks you to climb a 20 foot ladder in -30 weather, you have to do it.




Not sure what you mean? in my experience people go to it exactly because they don't want to exercise their social skills.

Lots of NTs hate customers service and would rather work a job where they don't have to talk to people. Not because they're introverts but simply because they like work to be work.

I'm not saying it's an easy social environment, you're routinely around people who have poor social skills, people who are violent etc. You have to know to keep your mouth shut and keep your head down and work hard.

If you work hard people will always leave you alone. If for no other reason than it gives them room to slack.

Doing extra-odd jobs and repairs, I was usually working alone, and for people who couldn't find anyone else for the job. I could often apply a bit of extra know-how from other trades and save them a lot of money, so I didn't get many complaints, except when I couldn't finish on time.

Are you thinking that you might be clumsy and would struggle to learn how to do a trade job? Because learning how the mechanics of things work seems like it would be well suited to ASD. (Although I am not very well versed in that sort of thing myself.) I have a friend who is undiagnosed but probably on the spectrum, and he can tinker with and fix anything.

When I get an inexperienced apprentice, the first thing I tell them to do is to break some of the stuff in my scrap pile. As you bend a piece of metal, the force needed keeps rising, and then suddenly stays the same. It is important to be able to sense that, because the distance you keep bending is the distance that the metal won't spring back, taking on a new shape. Or, if you are tightening a bolt, that's where it is as tight as it can get, and near failure if you persist. The wood will break differently with the grain and across it. The plastic will crack if there's a notch, etc. Once upon a time, a machinist's apprentice would be given a bench with a vise and a few hand tools, and told to produce a one-inch cube. When they could do that, they were allowed to use the machines that made it easy, because by then, they really didn't want to break one.