Updated for 2021
If you’re an electrician, you want a salary that’s to equivalent what you’re worth. After all, you have a very demanding job. Day in and day out you must deal with tight spaces, high voltages of electricity, and ensuring that the customer is always happy.
And if you’re the owner of a business that employs electricians, you want to be sure that you’re paying a fair wage while also effectively managing your costs.
But how can you know these numbers? How can you be sure you’re getting paid a fair salary or paying your employees a fair amount?
To help you out, we scraped data from thousands of electrician jobs posted on Indeed in the entire year of 2019. We compiled the data, analyzed it, and present it here for your consideration. In this post we break down the average salaries for electricians by location to give you a sense of what electricians are being paid in various areas throughout the United States.
We also look at the number of posted jobs with a salary greater than $55,000, and how each state compares to national averages. Finally, we look at cities within each state that have the highest average hourly rate.
Average Hourly Rate For Electricians
The average hourly rate for electricians across the entire United States is $25.46. On an annual basis, this works out to approximately $50,000 per year.
However, it’s important to remember that this is just an average. It includes entry-level, mid-level, and senior positions. It also includes the hourly rates of places where the cost of living is much higher, such as Austin, Texas, and significantly lower, such as rural towns in Wyoming.
Taking a closer look, the state with the highest average hourly rate is Massachusetts, with an average hourly rate of $37.87. The state with the lowest average hourly rate is Oklahoma, with an average hourly rate of $15.94.
Average Rate By State
When looking at the average hourly rates for electricians, it can also be helpful to get a bit more granular and look at the individual average rates paid by each state.
Again, as noted above, these averages include all positions, from the highest paying to the lowest paying.
However, knowing the average hourly rate in each state, and then combining it with other data, can give you an idea of which states tend to pay the most and which pay the least.
If you’re in the hunt for a job, this data is particularly helpful. It can give you a sense of where you might want to look for a job as an electrician.
If you own a business that employs electricians, it can also help you know what a fair hourly wage is for your employees.
Salary Range For Electricians
Another way to slice the data is to look at the entire range of pay being offered. Since the average hourly amount includes both the lowest and highest amount, the range of pay gives you a sense of how broad the pay scale is.
Across the entire United States, the average hourly amount for electricians runs from $10.04 per hour all the way up to $48.72 per hour. This was calculated by averaging both the low and high end of the salary range for all states.
Electrician Salary Range By State
Going beyond national averages, we can get a sense of what electricians are earning within each state by looking at the range of salaries on a state-by-state basis. This data gives us both a high amount and low amount that electricians might expect to earn in a state.
Numerous states have jobs posted with an hourly rate of $7.25, which is the national minimum wage. The state with the highest posted hourly rate is Wyoming, at $66.60. Here is the breakdown of what we found in our analysis.
We’re the best solution out there for your needs
You won’t find a better software for the your business. At Housecall Pro, we’re constantly evolving our product to offer all the features you need to make running your service business easy. You’ll get great support from the Housecall Pro team, as well as 15,000+ Pros like you in our active social community.
Electrician jobs paying $55,000/year or more
Only looking at hourly rates can make it difficult to determine what an electrician annual salary might look like. Calculating what an hourly rate translates in terms of annual salary can give you a feel for what you would earn over the course of the entire year.
In the following table, we detail the number of posted in each state that have an average salary of more than $55,000 per year. We also list out the percentage of all the jobs within each state that have a salary greater than $55,000.
California has the highest number of jobs listed that pay over $55,000 per year with 279 total electrician job postings. Michigan has the highest percentage of jobs listed that pay over $55,000 per year with 31.01%. (That’s 169 jobs paying more than $55k out of 545 total posted electrician jobs.)
Cities With the Highest Electrician Salaries in Each State
In addition to looking at salaries by state, we also wanted to analyze the average salaries within certain cities. This is because there tends to be a large pay range within each state, with roles in big cities typically offering more than those in smaller towns and communities.
As an electrician, you may not want to compare your salary to the national averages, or even your state average. Instead, look at salaries offered within particular cities and compare your salary to those numbers.
What follows are the cities within each state that have the highest average salary listed. Among these cities, Springfield, Massachusetts has the highest average hourly rate at $48.08/hour, while Jacksonville, Florida (the city in Florida with the highest average hourly rate) has an average hourly rate of $21.14 per hour.
Note: There was insufficient data to calculate these numbers in Vermont.
| City, State | Average Hourly Rate |
|---|---|
| Birmingham, AL | $21.87 |
| Prudhoe Bay, AK | $30.78 |
| Phoenix, AZ | $23.39 |
| Jonesboro, AR | $29.18 |
| San Francisco, CA | $34.75 |
| Colorado Springs, CO | $27.73 |
| New Haven, CT | $35.67 |
| Wilmington, DE | $26.33 |
| Jacksonville, FL | $21.14 |
| Augusta, GA | $23.72 |
| Honolulu, HI | $28.55 |
| Boise, ID | $23.77 |
| Decatur, IL | $28.18 |
| South Bend, IN | $32.17 |
| Davenport, IA | $25.79 |
| Kansas City, KS | $26.1 |
| Lexington, KY | $23.00 |
| Houma, LA | $25.98 |
| Portland, ME | $25.34 |
| Gaithersburg, MD | $26.41 |
| Springfield, MA | $41.69 |
| Detroit, MI | $25.51 |
| Saint Paul, MN | $31.63 |
| Jackson, MS | $24.31 |
| Springfield, MO | $23.35 |
| Billings, MT | $34.42 |
| Fremont, NE | $31.70 |
| Reno, NV | $31.41 |
| Manchester, NH | $28.67 |
| Edison, NJ | $31.90 |
| Carlsbad, NM | $26.32 |
| New York, NY | $27.09 |
| Fayetteville, NC | $29.78 |
| Williston, ND | $34.47 |
| Dayton, OH | $21.22 |
| Enid, OK | $24.74 |
| Portland, OR | $33.53 |
| Philadelphia, PA | $23.62 |
| Providence, RI | $35.39 |
| North Charleston, SC | $23.41 |
| Rapid City, SD | $32.86 |
| Memphis, TN | $24.29 |
| Austin, TX | $22.74 |
| Salt Lake City, UT | $23.61 |
| Richmond, VA | $22.38 |
| Seattle, WA | $36.73 |
| Charleston, WV | $36.19 |
| Menasha, WI | $26.53 |
| Cheyenne, WY | $32.57 |
Final Thoughts and Analysis
Though the above data primarily represents averages, it does provide significant insights into the electrical industry.
The average salary is approximately $50,000 per year, with many jobs available above that amount. This demonstrates that being an electrician is a well-paying job, the electrical industry is robust and appears that it will continue to be, and that now is an excellent time to begin a career as an electrician.
The data is also helpful when evaluating your own salary as an electrician, as well as what sorts of pay raises you might expect to see in the future.
If you own a business that employs electricians, this data can be helpful for setting competitive salaries.
Download the full electrician salary infographic
