ELECTRICIAN SALARY GUIDE

Salary aggregator sites publish a dozen different "average electrician salary" numbers, and most of them disagree. So here is the one number you can trust: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported median annual pay of $62,350 — $29.98 an hour — for electricians in May 2024. Median means half earned more and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned under $39,430. The highest 10 percent earned over $106,030.

Where you work changes the number.

The BLS breaks the median down by industry, and the spread is wide. Electricians in government jobs (not schools or hospitals) had a median of $77,080. Manufacturing paid $71,820. Electrical contractors — where most electricians actually work — paid $61,290. Employment services, the temp-agency world, paid $57,490. Same license, different paycheck, depending on the door you walk through.

The demand picture is strong.

The BLS projects 9 percent job growth from 2024 to 2034 — much faster than the 3 percent average for all occupations — with about 81,000 openings per year. Most of those openings come from retirements and career changes, not new positions, which means experienced electricians are in constant demand. That is the kind of market where wages have room to move up.

Apprentice: the fraction years. Apprentices usually start at roughly 40 to 50 percent of journeyman wages in year one, with scheduled raises each year as they log hours and pass classes. By the final year, pay runs close to full rate. The raises are automatic in most programs — finish the year, get the bump. That built-in raise schedule is one of the best parts of the trade.

Journeyman: the median years.

Licensed journeymen in most markets earn at or above the BLS median, and the spread comes from specialty and overtime. A residential journeyman in a slow market and an industrial journeyman working shutdowns can be tens of thousands apart. Union scale sheets set the floor in union towns; everywhere else, the local market and your reputation set it.

Master: the six-figure years.

Masters commonly earn six figures in strong markets — not because the license itself pays more, but because masters take the jobs that carry responsibility: planning, supervision, sign-off, foreman and superintendent roles. The master who can run a crew, read a print, and keep a job on schedule is worth more than the license alone.

Owner: the uncapped years.

Shop owners set their own ceiling, and busy ones can earn several hundred thousand a year. But that is business income, not a wage — it comes with payroll, insurance, bonding, trucks, and the 2 a.m. phone calls. Ownership is the highest ceiling in the trade and the highest stress. Go in with your eyes open.

Overtime is the quiet raise. Construction schedules slip, plants shut down on weekends, storms knock out power at midnight — and electricians work all of it. Overtime at time-and-a-half (or double time on some union jobs) can add a serious chunk to a journeyman's year. Ask working electricians about their W-2, not their hourly rate, if you want the real number.

Specialization pays.

The specialty map is also a pay map. Outside linemen and industrial electricians are typically among the highest-paid, and the emerging lanes — data centers, solar, EV charging infrastructure — are bidding up experienced people right now. A journeyman who can do PLC (programmable logic controller — the industrial computer that runs factory equipment) troubleshooting or medium-voltage terminations is not competing with every residential wireman in town.

Union vs non-union, honestly.

Union wage and benefit packages often run higher than non-union, and they usually include pension and health coverage funded through the local — benefits that do not show up in an hourly comparison but absolutely show up in a life. Non-union pay varies more by employer, and top non-union shops compete hard for good people. In both worlds, the local market and your specialty matter more than the label.

The second paycheck nobody counts.

Here is the one the salary sites never mention. Every electrical job generates copper cutoffs — Romex tails, THHN shorts, pulled feeders — and on most crews that bucket gets split. A busy electrician's cutoff bucket, sold regularly, adds up to real money over a year. It will not show up in any BLS table, but it shows up in your pocket. Keep the bucket, sell it to Sonny at 312-880-8174, and count it as part of your real pay.