Electrician Hourly Rate by State, and How to Set Your Own

Ranked by state, the highest electrician hourly rate of pay is in Oregon, where employed electricians average $47.96 an hour. Washington ($45.42), Hawaii ($44.65), Illinois ($44.34) and Alaska ($43.29) make up the rest of the top five. Those figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage survey for May 2025, published on May 15, 2026. Nationally, electricians earn a mean of $34.37 an hour and a median of $30.38. Arkansas is lowest, at $25.71.

Those are the wages employers pay. If you’re weighing a job in another state, the table below is the comparison you need. If you’re setting your own rate, as an employee about to go independent or as an owner resetting prices, the same numbers are only a starting point. They leave out benefits and every self-employed electrician. With the illustrative costs used further down, a national-median wage becomes a billing rate of roughly $90 an hour.

Electrician hourly rate by state, May 2025

The table ranks all 50 states by mean hourly wage, using the BLS occupation profile for electricians (code 47-2111). The median is the middle wage, with half the state’s electricians above it and half below. It is often the better guide to a typical paycheck, because pay at either end of the range can pull the mean away from it. The 10th and 90th percentiles show the spread. The District of Columbia isn’t ranked; its mean is $42.72.

Read your own state’s row across, not just the first number. In California the 10th percentile is $22.50 and the 90th is $67.47. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (updated August 27, 2026) notes that apprentices earn less than fully trained electricians, with pay rising as they learn. That is likely one reason the range runs so wide. Ranked by median, the top five reorder slightly: Oregon, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Alaska.

Two of the three biggest markets sit near the bottom. Texas employs more electricians than any other state, 76,770, at a mean of $28.50. Florida is third by employment, at $27.72. If you work in either, a national average that a customer or a recruiter mentions is not your local benchmark. Your state’s median is.

Do the top-paying states still pay more after cost of living?

Mostly, yes, but the order changes. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes Regional Price Parities, which compare each state’s price level with the national average of 100. BEA notes that housing rents are often the main driver. Dividing each state’s mean wage by its price level shows what the pay is worth locally. This is our own illustrative calculation, applying 2024 price levels (released February 19, 2026) to May 2025 wages.

Oregon keeps first place. Illinois moves up to second. California falls from 7th to 15th and Massachusetts from 9th to 16th. Florida, already 47th, drops to last. For an employee weighing a move, this is the fairer comparison. If you run your own business, the same price level shows up in your rent and living costs, and your rate has to cover those too.

Why the wage in the table isn’t your billing rate

The BLS is explicit about what these numbers leave out. Its wage survey FAQ (checked October 1, 2026) says the estimates do not include the self-employed. They cover wages and salaries only, not employer-paid benefits. They are straight-time pay, excluding premium pay such as overtime. In other words, the table shows what an employer pays an employee for an ordinary hour, before any of the employer’s own costs.

When you go independent, you take over both sides of that arrangement. The health coverage and retirement contributions an employer funded are now yours, and so are the truck, tools, insurance, license fees and software. You also earn only on the hours you can bill. Driving between jobs, writing estimates, picking up material, chasing invoices and returning for callbacks all happen on unpaid time.

Projected demand is on your side while you work this out. The Occupational Outlook Handbook projects 9% employment growth from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, with about 72,700 openings a year. It points to solar and wind connections, data-center demand and grid upgrades.

Check you can quote the work before you price it

There is no federal electrician license. States set the rules, and some cities and counties add their own, so who may contract for electrical work changes at the state line. Three examples show how much it matters when you go out on your own:

• Texas: the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation requires anyone doing, or offering to do, non-exempt electrical work to be licensed and to do that work through a licensed electrical contractor. A master license alone isn’t enough to take on jobs in your own name; the business needs an Electrical Contractor license.
• California: electrical contracting falls under the CSLB’s C-10 Electrical Contractor classification. The electricians working for a C-10 contractor must be certified through the Labor Commissioner.
• Florida: a Certified Electrical Contractor (EC) can contract anywhere in the state. A Registered Electrical Contractor (ER) can contract only in the cities or counties named on the registration, per the Electrical Contractors’ Licensing Board.

A license may not transfer if you move, so check reciprocity with the new state’s board before you count on it. Our overview of contractor license requirements by state covers the wider picture. Before a quote goes out, make sure the business named on it holds the license that lets it contract for that work, in that place.

How to turn a state wage into your own hourly rate

Start from what you need to earn and work up to a price. In this illustrative example, the pay figure comes from the BLS and the other inputs are hypothetical, so replace them with your own:

• Your pay: $63,190 a year, the national median wage for electricians ($30.38 × 2,080 hours).
• Self-employment tax: the IRS sets the self-employment tax rate at 15.3%, made up of 12.4% Social Security and 2.9% Medicare. To keep the arithmetic simple, we apply it to the whole pay figure: $9,668. Schedule SE works out the exact amount, and our guide to quarterly estimated taxes covers paying it during the year.
• Overhead: $40,000 a year (hypothetical) for the truck, tools, insurance, licensing, phone, software and accounting. General liability insurance is one line in it. Health coverage and retirement savings aren’t included; add them if you’ll pay them.
• Billable hours: 1,400 a year (hypothetical) out of 2,080 working hours. The rest goes on travel, estimates, admin and callbacks.
• Profit margin: 10% of the price (hypothetical).

Add pay, tax and overhead: $112,858. Divide by 1,400 billable hours and the break-even cost is $80.61 an hour. Divide that by 0.9 to leave a 10% margin, and the rate comes to $89.57. Call it about $90 an hour.

How state pay and billable hours change the rate

Swap in a state’s median wage, keeping the other inputs the same, and the rate moves with it. Oregon’s median of $101,310 gives about $124 an hour, and Illinois ($99,560) gives about $123. Texas ($58,570) gives about $85, and Florida ($57,250) about $84. Overhead differs between states too, so the state versions are only as good as the overhead figure you put in.

Billable hours make a large difference. At 1,800 billable hours, the national example drops to about $70 an hour, nearly $20 less. Small gaps add up the same way. Pricing $15 an hour below your number costs a two-person shop billing 1,400 hours each $42,000 a year ($15 × 1,400 × 2). The inputs are hypothetical, so plug in your own crew and hours.

What customers are being quoted

No official statistic measures what electricians charge customers; the BLS measures wages only. The consumer cost sites that publish ranges for homeowners are the best available guide. They disagree with each other and they are national, so use them as a rough market check rather than a rate card:

• HomeGuide (electrician hourly rates, February 12, 2026): $50 to $130 an hour on average, with journeymen at $50 to $100 and masters at $90 to $130 or more.
• HomeAdvisor (updated June 19, 2026): apprentices $40 to $60, journeypersons $60 to $90 and masters $90 to $120. After-hours work runs time-and-a-half to double, plus a trip charge of $100 or more. It puts big cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Denver closer to $100 an hour.
• Thumbtack (updated April 2026): $65 to $130 an hour.

Both HomeGuide and HomeAdvisor put the typical service-call fee at $100 to $200, covering the first hour. HomeGuide adds that some electricians charge a separate $40 to $100 trip fee. HomeAdvisor says one- to four-hour minimums are common.

Flat prices for common electrical jobs

HomeGuide puts a new outlet at $150 to $350 and a 200-amp panel replacement at $1,400 to $2,800. To build your own flat prices, multiply your hourly number by the hours the job realistically takes, then add materials and travel. The method is the same one laid out in our flat-rate versus hourly comparison, written for plumbers.

Where the worked example lands against the market

Put the two halves together. The national-median example, at about $90 an hour, sits at the bottom of both master bands and the top of HomeAdvisor’s journeyperson range. The Texas and Florida versions, at $84 to $85, sit inside the journeyman bands. The Oregon and Illinois versions, at $123 to $124, are above HomeAdvisor’s master range and near the top of HomeGuide’s. The guides are national, and Oregon and Illinois wages run well above the national figures, so a higher local rate may hold. Check it against what customers in your own area are actually being quoted.

If your number lands inside the band your customers see, you have a rate you can defend. If it lands above, the levers are billable hours and overhead, not a price below your break-even. Pricing below it means every billed hour loses money; our piece on competing on price makes the wider case. Run the numbers again each year when new wage data comes out, so your rate keeps up with what an employer would pay you.

Updated October 2026: rewritten with May 2025 BLS wages for all 50 states, 2024 regional price levels and a worked billing-rate example. The earlier state table did not match a BLS release and was replaced.