Industrial electrician salary

Which plants pay electricians the most

The industry you work in moves pay more than the title does. BLS reports electrician pay by industry, and the spread is wide: a median of $51.27 an hour at utilities, $38.81 in transportation equipment manufacturing and $24.15 in computer and electronic product manufacturing. At specialty trade contractors, where three out of four electricians work, the median is $29.63.

Most plants pay electricians more than contractors do, but not all. Machinery manufacturing ($28.93) and computer and electronics plants ($24.15) come in below the contractor median. If you are weighing a move into a plant, the industry is worth checking before the offer.

Maintenance electrician versus industrial electrician

The two titles pay almost the same, $1.00 apart at the median. Maintenance electricians keep a running plant running: motors, drives, controls and breakdowns, often on a shift. Industrial electricians in construction install the same systems in new or expanding plants.

Shifts and overtime

Plants run around the clock, and the posts show it. In about one in five industrial posts the employer mentions a second, third, night or rotating shift, and about one in seven mention a shift differential or premium. More than a third mention overtime.

A shift premium is paid on top of the base rate, so the base rates on this page understate what a night-shift electrician takes home.

Ohio is the only state with enough industrial posts to report on its own: a median of $37.10 an hour (11 posts from 8 employers).

Setting industrial pay

The middle of the posted market is $31.00 to $39.53 an hour. If your plant is in an industry that pays above the contractor median, your competition for electricians is other plants, and the industry table above is the better guide.

If you run off-shifts, put the differential in the post. It is part of the pay.

Questions

How these figures are made

• Every posted figure comes from job posts on Best Electrician Jobs where the employer entered a pay range. Pay that appears only inside a job description is not counted.
• Only hourly pay is counted, using the midpoint of each range. Ranges under $15 or over $120 an hour are dropped, and so are ranges whose top is more than twice the bottom, because those span different jobs.
• A job posted in several cities counts once, and no company counts more than three times in any figure.
• Jobs are grouped by title. A row appears only with at least 10 posts from 5 employers. A headline figure needs 20 posts from 10 employers, and a middle-half range needs 30 posts.
• Yearly figures are the hourly rate times 2,080 hours, rounded to the nearest $100.
• Posted pay is what employers offer in their ads, not what workers end up earning. Government figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025.

Figures as of November 13, 2026.