Surprising job paying $50 an hour with no uni degree required: ‘One week training’

A Sydney worker has candidly revealed how he's earning between $45 and $50 an hour after completing just one week of training. But his job isn’t one for the faint-hearted.

People have recently been breaking the taboo around discussing their pay and it has exposed the humungous range of salaries on offer in Australia. After being stopped on the street, one bloke shared he was earning an above-average hourly salary by working on highrise buildings in the state’s capital.

“Sometimes it’s window cleaning, sometimes it’s remedial work,” he explained in the video posted by jobs app Getahead. “It can be between $45 and $50 and sometimes it is more. It depends on what type of work we do.”

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The average rope access technician is paid between $80,000 and $90,000 a year, according to national data from SEEK, or between $50 to $60 per hour. This covers jobs that involve painting, window cleaning and maintenance.

While the job is definitely not for someone who's scared of heights, the man said he thought the work was “not really” dangerous.

“We are on two ropes. If you fall from that one, you have that one,” he said.

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While he said the abseiling aspect of the job was fun at first, he admitted that after a few years of doing the work you got into more of a “routine”.

The Sydney worker shared that he landed the job after completing “one-week training” via the Industrial Ropes Access Trade Association (IRATA).

This surprised some of the video’s viewers but others pointed out that “95 per cent of people” would not have it in them to do the high-rise work.

Recent data from Indeed found construction managers were able to earn the highest average income without a university degree ($171,341), followed by project managers ($125,052) and underground miners ($120,399).

How do you become a ropes access technician?

You’ll need to be at least 18 years old, be in good physical health and not have any disability or medical condition that prevents you from working safely to get into the job, according to IRATA.

Training courses take at least 30 hours over four days, followed by a one-day assessment. But training time can vary between centres.

Once you’ve passed the assessment, you can practice as a Level 1 technician. Re-validation is also required every three years to ensure you stay up to date and maintain safe working practices.

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