What does a Sheet Metal Worker
actually do all day?
top skill Coordinationcore tasks 6median pay $61,800AI exposure 0/100
Sheet Metal Workers is moderately paced, on your feet, some people contact work. Precision matters a lot here.
What this job actually does all day
The representative tasks O*NET analysts recorded for this role — not a glossy job ad, the real work.
- Maintain equipment, making repairs or modifications when necessary.
- Fabricate ducts for high efficiency heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to maximize efficiency of systems.
- Fasten seams or joints together with welds, bolts, cement, rivets, solder, caulks, metal drive clips, or bonds to assemble components into products or to repair sheet metal items.
- Transport prefabricated parts to construction sites for assembly and installation.
- Install assemblies, such as flashing, pipes, tubes, heating and air conditioning ducts, furnace casings, rain gutters, or downspouts in supportive frameworks.
- Hire, train, or supervise new employees or apprentices.
Skills & environment
Bars are O*NET importance/intensity ratings, scaled 0–100 so you can compare at a glance.
The skills it demands most
What the environment feels like
Deadline pressure: constant deadline pressureConflict & friction: moderateNeed to be exact: precision is criticalTime spent sitting: mostly on your feet / movingContact with people: constantly dealing with people
Go deeper on this role
How this is built. Tasks, skills, and work-environment ratings come from the
U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET occupational analysis — job analysts survey real workers, so this is the
closest thing to "what the job is actually like" in public data. Skill scores are O*NET Importance
ratings (0–5) and environment measures are Context ratings (0–5), both rescaled to 0–100 here for
easy reading. This task-and-skill detail comes straight from the O*NET database — it's
pulled straight from the survey, not invented. Figures describe the typical role, not any one person's job.
