Electrician Salary: Average Pay by State, Experience, and Specialty

What Electricians Earn

The national picture for electricians comes from one widely used distribution: ONET OnLine's 2025 wage data, which reports a median annual wage along with the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile annual wages for the occupation. Those three numbers are the ones to write down. The median tells you what the middle electrician in the country earns in a year; the 10th and 90th percentiles tell you how wide the field is between people early in the trade and people at the top of it. Pull all three from ONET OnLine directly, and note the data year shown on the page when you do — the figures are refreshed, and an undated number is not usable.

There is a separate series for people who have not yet entered an apprenticeship. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a median annual wage for Helpers—Electricians, a distinct occupation code from electricians, with May 2022 as the data year on that release. If you are comparing your current helper pay to "electrician pay," you are comparing two different occupations — check the helper series first, then the electrician series, and keep both as annual medians so the comparison is arithmetically valid.

One more distinction matters before you read any figure. Published wage series report earnings from employment, which for an hourly trade usually means the base hourly rate rolled up to an annual figure. They do not separate out overtime premiums, shift differentials, per-diem and travel allowances on out-of-town jobs, tool allowances, or benefit value such as pension and health contributions, which in some shops are a substantial part of the package. If you are weighing two offers, ask each employer for the base hourly rate first and the add-ons second. A job with a lower base and heavy scheduled overtime can out-earn a higher-base job in a single year and then fall behind when the overtime stops.

Finally, decide which geography you are asking about before you quote a number. A national median, a state median and a metro area average answer different questions, and mixing them is the most common mistake readers make with trade wage data.

Pay by Experience Level

Electrician pay is tiered by license status more than by résumé years, and each tier has a different pay mechanism. The table below maps the tiers to typical experience and to the published series that covers them. Look up the current dollar figure in the source named in the last column rather than relying on a figure quoted secondhand.

Two cautions. Apprentice pay is a percentage of the journeyman rate in the local agreement, so the dollar amount moves whenever that rate moves — there is no single national apprentice wage to look up. And business owner income is profit, not salary, so it does not appear in any of the wage series above.

Pay by State or Metro Area

Geography is the single largest published source of variation in electrician pay. The table lists states and one metro area for which named sources publish an electrician figure. The rows are ordered alphabetically, not by pay — the ranking between these states changes between data releases, and quoting a stale order is worse than quoting none. Pull each figure from the source named in its row, check the data year on the page, and compare like with like: state medians against state medians, metro averages against metro averages.

Note that the New York-Newark-Jersey City row is an average, while the state rows are medians. An average is pulled upward by the highest earners; a median is not. Do not subtract one from the other and call the result a pay gap. If you want a clean state-to-metro comparison, find both figures as medians, or both as averages, from the same dataset and the same data year.

Cost of living is not built into any of these numbers. A higher state median in Hawaii or Alaska is a gross annual wage, not purchasing power, and housing costs can absorb a large share of the difference.

Factors That Affect Pay

• License level. Journeyman to master is the clearest step up in the trade, and it requires 2-4 additional years of journeyman experience plus a passed master electrician exam (tradecolleges.org). The pay effect is an increase, and a master license is often what lets you pull permits and run work.
• Geography. The spread between state medians in the May 2025 nuecareer.com data — covering states including Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington — is larger than most readers expect, and metro figures such as the New York-Newark-Jersey City average (O*NET OnLine, 2025) sit on a different scale again from rural work in the same state.
• Employer type. Electrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors are the largest single employer category for electricians (nuecareer.com, 2024). Contractor work, utility work, in-house maintenance for a manufacturer, and government or school district positions each set pay differently — contractors by hourly scale, institutional employers often by salary grade.
• Union status. In unionized shops, pay follows a posted collective agreement scale by classification, with scheduled increases and defined benefit and pension contributions. In non-union shops the rate is negotiated individually. The direction of the difference depends on the local market; the structure difference is absolute.
• Overtime and shift differentials. These sit on top of base pay, not inside it. Night, weekend, shutdown and storm-response work typically carries a premium over the base hourly rate. Published wage series do not break this out, so an annual figure that includes heavy overtime overstates base pay.
• Specialty and setting. Residential, commercial, industrial, line work, controls and instrumentation, solar and low-voltage all draw from different rate schedules. Industrial and utility-adjacent work generally pays above residential service work in the same region.
• Additional certifications. Credentials such as Electrical Plans Examiner, listed as a relevant certification for electricians on O*NET OnLine, open inspection and plan-review roles that are paid on a different basis from field hourly work.
• Position in the distribution. The gap between the 10th percentile and 90th percentile annual wages in O*NET OnLine's 2025 electrician data is the honest measure of how much the factors above add up to. Look at that spread before you assume a median applies to you.

How to Increase Your Pay in This Role

1. Sit the master electrician exam as soon as you qualify. It typically takes 2-4 years of journeyman experience to be eligible, plus the exam itself (tradecolleges.org). Eligibility rules and the exam are set state by state, so get the requirements from your own state licensing board rather than a national summary, and start logging qualifying hours in the format they ask for.
2. Add the Electrical Plans Examiner certification. O*NET OnLine lists it among the certifications relevant to electricians, with the awarding body named in that listing. It moves you toward plan review and inspection work, which is paid as a salaried or municipal role rather than on a field hourly scale — a different pay structure, and a different physical demand curve.
3. Negotiate against a posted scale, not a feeling. Before any conversation, pull three numbers: the O*NET OnLine 2025 median annual wage for electricians, your state's median from a named state-level source with its data year, and the posted journeyman scale of the local agreement if your area has one. Ask for the employer's own classification scale and where you sit on it. Naming a classification is more effective than naming a target number.
4. Switch into the employer category that fits your goal. Electrical contractors and other wiring installation contractors employ the largest share of electricians (nuecareer.com, 2024), so that is where most openings are — but in-house industrial maintenance, utilities and public-sector roles often trade a lower overtime ceiling for a salaried base and benefits. Decide which you want before you apply, and compare base hourly to base hourly.
5. Get licensed in a second state or add a reciprocal license. Reciprocity rules differ by state, and licensing boards publish their own agreements. A second license lets you take work in a higher-median state — for example, moving between the state markets tracked in the May 2025 nuecareer.com data — without restarting your hours.
6. Take the premium work deliberately, and price it. Shutdowns, night shifts, storm response and travel jobs carry differentials and per diem on top of base. Ask for the differential rate and the per-diem amount in writing before you commit, and keep track of what portion of your annual earnings depends on overtime that may not repeat next year.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. O*NET OnLine — National Wages: 47-2111.00 - Electricians (2025)
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2022: 47-3013 Helpers--Electricians (2022-05)