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Four or five years is a long time to commit to a training program, and if you’re weighing an electrician apprenticeship, the pay waiting at the end is the part you want pinned down before you start.
Electricians earned a median of $62,350 in May 2024, or $29.98 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That puts the trade well ahead of the wider job market:
The median only describes the middle, though. The lowest-paid 10% of electricians earned under $39,430 that year. The highest-paid 10% cleared $106,030. Same trade, same job title, a $66,600 spread between the two ends.
That spread is the useful part, and it’s influenced by how far up the ladder you’ve climbed and who signs your paycheck.
You don’t pay tuition to become an electrician. You get hired, and the training happens on the job. BLS estimates most apprenticeships at four or five years, with roughly 2,000 hours of paid work per year plus classroom instruction in electrical theory, code, math, and safety.
Apprentice wages start low and step up on a schedule. Programs generally set your starting rate as a share of the local journeyman wage, then raise it at fixed intervals as you log hours, so year three pays noticeably better than year one. BLS doesn’t publish a separate apprentice wage, but the lowest-paid 10% figure of $39,430 is a fair benchmark for the early years.
We won’t dress that up. The first year or two is not much money. It’s more than zero, which beats every training path where you’d be paying instead of earning. You can find apprenticeships in our training catalog alongside everything else, so you can see what’s open near you before you commit.
After your apprenticeship, you become a journey worker, which means you can work unsupervised. Most states put a licensing exam in front of that, covering the National Electrical Code plus state and local rules.
This is the rung where the $62,350 median sits and where most working electricians spend the bulk of their careers. Plenty of people stop here on purpose. The pay is steady, the skills travel to any state, and you are finished with school!
Master status takes additional years of licensed work and a second exam. It opens up supervising crews, pulling permits, and running jobs, which is where the top of the wage range comes into reach. The top 10% of electricians earn more than $106,030.
Keep in mind that master status is not an automatic raise. It’s permission to take on work that pays more. Whether the money follows depends on whether you pursue that work.
Two electricians with the same license can earn thousands apart based on which industry hires them. Here is what BLS reported across the four largest employers of electricians in May 2024:
Now look at where electricians end up. Sixty-five percent of them work for electrical contractors, the lowest-paying group on that list. Another 8% work for themselves.
Nobody brings this up while you’re choosing an apprenticeship. A municipal or manufacturing position can pay $10,000 to $15,000 more a year than contractor work, and those postings exist. They are easy to miss on a general job board, which is why we filter ours to roles that pay a livable wage and don’t screen for degrees.
When you picture yourself five years into this trade, which of those four employers are you picturing?
Master isn’t the ceiling. The code fluency and troubleshooting habits you pick up carry into adjacent roles that pay above the electrician median, and most of them require a high school diploma plus experience rather than a degree.
Every wage figure above is a BLS median for May 2024.
BLS projects electrician employment to grow 9% between 2024 and 2034, against 3% across all occupations. That works out to roughly 81,000 openings a year in a workforce of 818,700. Retirements are doing most of the work there, which means those openings are for jobs that already exist rather than jobs that might materialize. Grid upgrades, EV charging infrastructure, and solar keep adding on top.
The entry cost is a high school diploma, and you earn the whole way through instead of taking on tuition debt.
If you’re weighing electrical against another trade, our skilled trades hub lays out pay and training timelines side by side. And if you want to check the fit before signing up for four years, the Work Styles Quiz takes a few minutes. Electrical work lines up with the Realistic and Investigative results.
National medians are a starting point. What you get offered depends on your state, your metro, and which of those four employer types you work for.
Already decided? Our step-by-step guide to becoming an electrician walks the whole path from GED to license.
First-year apprentices earn below the trade’s lowest wage bracket and step up on a set schedule. BLS reports the lowest-paid 10% of electricians earning under $39,430 a year, and first-year apprentices generally sit under that figure.
BLS doesn’t publish wages by license level. The journeyman rung is where most working electricians sit, which puts the $62,350 median squarely in that territory.
Usually, though not automatically. Master status qualifies you to supervise crews, pull permits, and run jobs. The pay follows once you take that work on.
Among the largest employers, government work pays the highest median at $77,080. Stepping into a related trade pays more still. Power-line installers earn a median of $92,560.
Yes. The top 10% of electricians earn more than $106,030. Getting there usually takes some combination of master licensing, overtime, a higher-paying industry, and running your own business.
