Salary
Average Salary: $45,890
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $1,915,816
Living on a small boat for two weeks and melting metal underwater isn't a typical job. Compensation for commercial divers can be equally unusual. Sure, you'll find full-time employment and collect benefits, but you can leave any other nine-to-five preconceptions you may have about the job behind on the poop deck.
All divers start as a "tender" before earning the title of "diver." Not tender, as in chicken tender; tender as in, "one who tends." These tenders typically pull in $35,260 per year, a comparatively small amount against the $45,890 average salary of divers (source).
During their tending time, tenders monitor the health and operations of the people making more money than them and learn to use tools that'll one day allow them to also make more money. It's not really an apprenticeship; tenders actually play a crucial role, despite dragging down the average salary of commercial divers as an industry.
Once you're a diver, you can start swimming for the big bucks (or at least bigger bucks). That consists in finding work that pays you bonuses for the sort of danger you're willing to take on and the depths you're willing to go to for a job. Basically, if you're working at the bottom of a nuclear reactor (and that's a real thing these people do), you're breaking six figures.