Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft 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. Carpenters traditionally worked with natural wood and did rougher work such as framing, but today many other materials are also used[1] and sometimes the finer trades of cabinetmaking and furniture building are considered carpentry. In the United States, 98.5% of carpenters are male, and it was the fourth most male-dominated occupation in the country in 1999. In 2006 in the United States, there were about 1.5 million carpentry positions. Carpenters are usually the first tradesmen on a job and the last to leave.[2] Carpenters normally framed post-and-beam buildings until the end of the 19th century; now this old-fashioned carpentry is called timber framing. Carpenters learn this trade by being employed through an apprenticeship training—normally 4 years—and qualify by successfully completing that country’s competence test in places such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Australia and South Africa.[3] It is also common that the skill can be learned by gaining work experience other than a formal training program, which may be the case in many places.

The word “carpenter” is the English rendering of the Old French word carpentier (later, charpentier) which is derived from the Latin carpentarius [artifex], “(maker) of a carriage.”[4] The Middle English and Scots word (in the sense of “builder”) was wright (from the Old English wryhta, cognate with work), which could be used in compound forms such as wheelwright or boatwright.[5]