Electrician Salary by State in 2026: BLS Data for Employers

Why State-Level Electrician Wage Data Matters for Contractors

When an electrical contractor in Dallas makes a job offer to a journeyman electrician, they're not competing against the national median — they're competing against other shops in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. The national median wage for electricians (SOC 47-2111) was $61,590 per year as of the BLS May 2024 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) release. But if you're hiring in Illinois, the 50th percentile is $88,600. In Mississippi, it's $46,580.

Making an offer anchored to the national median when you're hiring in Chicago means you're underpricing your offer by $27,000 per year. That's a declined offer and a 56-day re-recruit cycle — before you even start counting overtime costs to cover the vacancy.

The BLS OEWS Data: What It Covers and Why It's Authoritative

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program surveys approximately 1.1 million business establishments annually across all 50 states and more than 530 metropolitan statistical areas. Unlike crowd-sourced salary platforms like Glassdoor or Indeed, OEWS data comes directly from employer payroll records — not self-reported worker surveys. For trade contractors who need to benchmark wages against what competing employers are actually paying, not what employees say they earn, OEWS is the standard.

The OEWS dataset publishes five wage percentiles for each occupation and geography: the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th, and 90th. The 25th–75th range represents the middle 50% of all wages paid for that occupation in that geography — your competitive hiring zone. Offer below the 25th percentile and you're pricing out most candidates. Offer at the 50th or above and you're in the range that closes.

Electrician Wages by State: Key Data Points from BLS May 2024 OEWS

Here are the May 2024 OEWS annual median wages (50th percentile, SOC 47-2111 Electricians) for selected states:

• Illinois: $88,600 — consistently the highest-wage state for electricians, driven by the Chicago metro area and strong union density
• California: $82,710 — major metro areas (Bay Area, LA) pull the state median well above the national figure
• New York: $81,320 — New York City dominates the state median
• Washington: $79,560 — Seattle area demand from commercial and data center construction
• Massachusetts: $77,450 — Boston metro drives the state figure
• Texas: $58,340 — large state with wide MSA variation; Dallas ($61,870) and Houston ($59,240) run above the state median
• Florida: $55,430 — high-growth state but competitive wage pressure is below the national median
• Georgia: $53,970 — Atlanta metro ($57,120) is significantly above the state median
• Mississippi: $46,580 — lowest-wage state for electricians in the 2024 OEWS dataset

If you're hiring in a major metro area, the state median may still understate your competitive market. An electrical contractor in the Dallas-Fort Worth MSA should be benchmarking against the Dallas-specific OEWS data, not the Texas state median — the difference can be $3,000–$8,000 per year depending on the specific MSA.

How to Use This Data to Make Offers That Close

The five-percentile structure of OEWS data gives contractors a practical hiring framework. Here's how experienced HR managers at electrical contractors use it:

• Entry-level / apprenticeship offers: anchor at or slightly above the 25th percentile for the relevant MSA. This positions you as a fair-market employer while leaving room for wage progression as the apprentice earns their journeyman license.
• Journeyman offers for candidates actively shopping the market: anchor at the 50th percentile. A candidate who is fielding multiple offers will almost certainly have a competing offer near the median — you need to be at or above it to close.
• Senior or master electrician offers / retention-critical hires: anchor at the 75th percentile. The cost of losing an experienced journeyman to a competitor who offered the 75th is $13,000–$26,000 in replacement cost (SHRM benchmark: 20–40% of annual salary). The wage premium at the 75th over the 50th is typically $10,000–$18,000 per year — often less than the replacement cost.

The BLS Data Is Free — Why Use SkilledMarkets?

The BLS OEWS portal publishes all of this data for free at bls.gov/oes. The challenge is that it's published as raw tab-delimited CSV files organized by geographic area — not by occupation or employer use case. To get the data we cited above, you'd need to find the correct area code for your MSA, download the right CSV, open it in Excel, filter to SOC code 47-2111, and locate the correct percentile column. For a one-time lookup, that's 30–45 minutes. For a shop running 8–12 hires per year across multiple occupations and geographies, it's a recurring operational friction that most owner-operators eventually abandon in favor of gut feel.

SkilledMarkets packages the same BLS OEWS data — plus the full O*NET occupational profile for every electrician SOC code — in a purpose-built employer interface. Search by trade occupation or SOC code, select your geography, and get the five-percentile table alongside the O*NET Job Zone, skills, tasks, and knowledge areas. Then generate a salary band with your chosen percentile anchor and export a branded PDF ready for your hiring manager. Under 8 minutes, start to finish.

The Essentials tier ($199/month) is priced at the equivalent of 1/28th of a single re-recruit cost. If SkilledMarkets prevents one declined offer per year — one $5,600 re-recruit cycle — the platform pays for itself 28 months over.