Maintenance Helper / Assistant
Career Area: Maintenance, Repair, and Installation
Occupation Group: Maintenance and Repair
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Maintenance Helper / Assistant earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $30,903
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $32,584
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Assists maintenance mechanics. Repairs and maintains equipment and machines, such as cars or heating systems. May assemble or adjust machines as directed by a head mechanic.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 715 | +11.5% |
| Nationwide | 21573 | +7.9% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Maintenance Helper / Assistant is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Preventive Maintenance: Machine maintenance or the preventive maintenance (PM) has the following meanings: The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment in satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures either before they occur or before they develop into major defects.
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Physical Abilities: Physical Abilities, which refers to the ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with the body, arms, and/or legs. These abilities often require strength, endurance, flexibility, balance and coordination.
- Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.
- English: English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Repair: Restoration of a broken, damaged, or failed device, equipment, part, or property to an acceptable operating or usable condition or state.
- Plumbing: Plumbing is any system that conveys fluids for a wide range of applications.
- Painting: Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (support base).
- Cleaning: Cleaning is the process of removing unwanted substances, such as dirt, infectious agents, and other impurities, from an object or environment.
- Carpentry: Carpentry is a skilled trade in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Maintenance Helper / Assistant that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Power Tools: A power tool is a tool that is actuated by an additional power source and mechanism other than the solely manual labour used with hand tools.
- Snow Removal: Working experience of Snow Removal, which is the job of removing snow after a snowfall to make travel easier and safer.
- Drywall: Drywall (also known as plasterboard, wallboard, gypsum panel, sheet rock, or gypsum board) is a panel made of calcium sulfate dihydrate (gypsum) with or without additives and normally pressed between a facer and a backer (typically thick sheets of paper).
- Facility Maintenance: Maintenance activities include keeping spaces, structures and infrastructure in proper operating condition in a routine, scheduled, or anticipated fashion to prevent failure and/or degradation.
- Plumbing Repairs: Working experience of Plumbing Repairs, which is repair work done on the pipes, together with the joints, tanks, stopcocks, taps and other fixtures of a water, gas or sewage system in a house or other building.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 84% |
| 3 to 5 years | 14% |
| 6 to 8 years | 1% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Maintenance Assistant
- Maintenance Clerk
- Assistant Maintenance
- Power Washer
- Fixtures Installer
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles: