How much do electricians actually make? Reading the BLS data right
Search "electrician salary" and you'll find numbers ranging from $45,000 to $130,000, often on the same page. They're not all wrong — they're answering different questions. This article walks through what the Bureau of Labor Statistics data actually says, state by state, and what makes an individual electrician land above or below the line.
Median, not average — and why it matters here
All figures below are median annual wages from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program (May 2024 estimates, the latest state-level release as of this writing). The median is the middle electrician — half earn more, half earn less. Averages run higher because a relatively small number of high-earning master electricians and contractors pull the mean up. For deciding whether the career pays enough for your life, the median is the honest number.
One more wrinkle: BLS counts employees. Self-employed electrical contractors — often the highest earners in the trade — aren't in this data at all. So if anything, the ceiling is higher than these tables suggest, while the typical employee experience is exactly what they show.
The ten best-paying states
| State | Median wage (BLS, May 2024) |
|---|---|
| Oregon | $97,320/yr |
| Washington | $96,530/yr |
| Illinois | $96,360/yr |
| Hawaii | $83,200/yr |
| Massachusetts | $82,120/yr |
| Alaska | $81,860/yr |
| Minnesota | $81,430/yr |
| New York | $77,460/yr |
| Connecticut | $76,790/yr |
| California | $76,540/yr |
The pattern is hard to miss: the top of the table is dominated by states with strong union density and demanding licensing regimes (Oregon, Washington, Illinois), plus high-cost states like Hawaii and Alaska where everything pays more. Illinois is the standout case study — nearly $96,400 median in a state with a moderate cost of living, driven substantially by IBEW market share in Chicago.
The ten lowest-paying states
| State | Median wage (BLS, May 2024) |
|---|---|
| Georgia | $58,860/yr |
| South Dakota | $58,550/yr |
| South Carolina | $58,260/yr |
| Mississippi | $57,300/yr |
| Texas | $56,920/yr |
| New Mexico | $56,890/yr |
| North Carolina | $54,070/yr |
| Florida | $53,100/yr |
| Alabama | $52,420/yr |
| Arkansas | $49,420/yr |
The bottom of the table skews toward right-to-work states in the South. But read carefully before concluding "don't be an electrician in Florida": cost of living differs enormously, and so does the spread within a state — a journeyman in Miami and one in rural panhandle Florida live in different labor markets that a single state median papers over.
What moves an individual electrician's pay
- License tier. The apprentice-to-journeyman jump is the largest raise of your career; the journeyman-to-master jump adds supervisory and permit authority that commands more.
- Union membership. In union-dense metros, the negotiated scale plus benefits typically beats open-shop compensation for the same hours.
- Specialization. Industrial, instrumentation, and high-voltage work pay above residential service work nearly everywhere.
- Overtime structure. Much of the gap between two electricians with the same base rate is overtime availability — common in industrial and data-center construction.
- Going contractor. The earnings ceiling lifts when you run work instead of performing it — along with insurance, bonding, and business risk. Our cost breakdown covers the path.
How to use this data
Look up your state's median in our state-by-state electrician guides — every guide carries the same BLS figure used here, plus the licensing requirements to reach journeyman level. If your state sits near the bottom of the table and you're early in your career, remember the location lever: a license plus documented hours travels better than most credentials, as covered in our reciprocity explainer.