Electricians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Electricians worker at that point in the distribution, so $81,730 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 742,580, or 0.48% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 73,420 jobs; the top three states sum to 26.0% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Wyoming posts a location quotient of 2.02, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $106,030, which is 2.7 times the $39,430 at the 10th, a difference of $66,600 annually. Because the mean wage ($69,630) sits above the median ($62,350), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Electricians runs from the $97,320 median in Oregon down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (73,420 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Electricians stands number 50 by employment and number 370 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Construction and Extraction Occupations, the group median wage is $54,660 across 60 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 14% more than its group median, and it supplies 11.7% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 28 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $62,350, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 38,890 jobs, 5.2% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $38,170 a year, against $104,240 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $5,196 a month before tax, $2,398 biweekly, $1,199 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($48,820) to the 75th ($81,730) is worth $32,910 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $68,585 would sit between the median ($62,350) and the 75th percentile ($81,730), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $48,820, is $13,530 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Construction and Extraction Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators, Roustabouts, Oil and Gas, Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas, Helpers--Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, Tile and Stone Setters, Insulation Workers, Floor, Ceiling, and Wall. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.