Did Electrician Pay Keep Up With Inflation?

Three years behind prices

The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (OEWS) is the official source for electrician pay. It comes out once a year with wages from May. The median is the middle wage: half of electricians earn more and half earn less.

From May 2022 to May 2025, the median rose from $28.96 to $30.38 an hour, a 4.9% raise. Prices rose 10.0%. Pay rose every year and prices rose faster every year. The 2025 loss of 1.0% was the smallest of the three.

The trade grew from 690,050 electricians to 757,220, up 67,170 or 9.7%. BLS counts apprentices and trainees as electricians. New workers start at lower pay, so fast hiring can hold the median down. The survey does not show how much of the gap comes from that.

The bottom of the pay scale got the biggest raise in 2025

A percentile is a point on the pay scale. The 10th percentile is the wage that 10% of electricians earn less than. These points are not apprentice, journeyman or master pay bands.

At the 10th percentile, pay rose $1.54 an hour, from $18.96 to $20.50. That 8.1% raise beat inflation by 5.6%. The middle of the scale fell behind. The 25th percentile and the median each lost about 1% after inflation.

27 states beat inflation

Prices rose 2.4% from May 2024 to May 2025. The median electrician wage rose faster in 27 of 51 states and DC, and fell in dollars in 10.

The three states with the most electricians split three ways. Texas (76,770 electricians) rose 2.9%. California (73,310) fell 0.5%. Florida (49,700) rose 7.8%.

* Fewer than 5,000 electricians. Small states have small survey samples, so their year-to-year changes are less reliable.

Half of the largest metros beat inflation

We compared the same 100 metros as the Electrician Payoff Report, the metros with the most electricians. In 50 of them, the median wage rose faster than prices from May 2024 to May 2025.

Minneapolis-St. Paul had the biggest drop of the 100. Its median electrician wage fell 13.9%, from $45.71 to $39.37 an hour.

A lower median does not always mean smaller paychecks. When many new workers join at lower pay, the middle wage falls even if nobody takes a cut. Minnesota added 1,380 electricians that year, up 10.6%. Its state median went from $37.52 in 2023 to $39.15 in 2024, then back to $37.58 in 2025. BLS does not report what each worker earned, so the data cannot split the drop between new workers and lower pay. The metro download has all 100 metros.

Contractor pay is beating inflation in 2026

The next yearly survey, with May 2026 wages, comes out in spring 2027. Until then, the newest pay data is the BLS Current Employment Statistics survey. Every month it reports pay for production and nonsupervisory workers at electrical contractors: electricians, apprentices, helpers and other field workers.

In August 2026, these workers averaged $42.69 an hour, up from $40.12 in August 2025. That 6.4% raise compares with 3.4% inflation.

Contractor pay fell behind in 2022, when inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. It pulled ahead in October 2022 and has beaten inflation every month since, except May 2024 and February 2025. BLS did not publish inflation for October 2025, so the chart has a gap there.

• Weekly pay rose from $1,600.79 to $1,707.60, up 6.7%, on a 40.0-hour average week (39.9 a year earlier).
• Hourly pay rose 4.6% for all construction workers and 3.3% across all private industries.
• Since August 2019, before the pandemic, contractor pay rose 39.1% and prices rose 30.6%. After inflation, contractor pay is up 6.5%.
• The Electrician Payoff Report uses May 2025 wages. Prices have risen 4.2% since then.

Electrical contractors are hiring at a ten-year high

Electrical contractors employed 1,160,500 people in August 2026, up 45,900 from 1,114,600 a year earlier. That 4.1% increase compares with 1.1% the year before and 1.4% for construction as a whole. It is the highest level in the ten years of data we used.

What I see on the job board

The work on our board is almost all data center and commercial. Hardly any residential. Electric vehicle charging stations have picked up.

Data center projects are pulling electricians out of town with sign-on bonuses, per diem and rates around $60 an hour, often on seven 12-hour shifts a week. None of that shows up in the BLS numbers above, which assume a 40-hour week and leave out per diem and bonuses.

True entry-level work is rare. Most apprentice roles we post want two or more years of experience. The real entry-level openings mostly come from staffing agencies hiring for low-voltage work. And it isn't only apprentices and journeymen who are hard to find. Foremen and project managers are scarcer now too, and I'm not sure what's driving that.

If I were an electrician without a family and wanted to see the world, I'd get on with a good crew doing data center work. If I had a family, I'd want an established company with steady work, a good environment and a strong safety record, even over the higher rate.

Why the two surveys disagree

The yearly survey shows electricians losing ground through May 2025. The monthly survey shows contractor pay ahead of inflation. Both hold up because they measure different things.

• BLS does not design these wage surveys for year-over-year comparisons, so small-state swings are noisy.
• The newer figure covers all hands-on workers at electrical contracting firms, not only electricians. It shows the direction. It is not the same measure as the report.
• The yearly survey uses the median. The monthly survey uses the average, which high earners and overtime pull up.
• The yearly survey covers electricians in every industry, including factories, utilities and hospitals. The monthly survey covers only electrical contractors.