What 25 states of BLS data reveal about electrician pay (and where the gaps are)

Ask ten electricians what the trade pays and you'll get ten answers, all of them right — for wherever that electrician happens to work. The number that's true in Chicago is not the number that's true in Birmingham. That's not opinion. It's in the data.

We pulled the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) figures — the May 2025 release, the most recent full dataset — for electricians across the 25 states we currently cover. Here's what the numbers say, and just as important, what they don't.

The headline: same trade, $43,870 apart

The median electrician in Illinois earns $99,560 a year. The median electrician in Alabama earns $55,690. Same license, same conduit, same code book — and a $43,870 gap, which is 79% more pay for doing the job in Illinois than in Alabama (BLS OEWS, May 2025).

That's the single most important thing a new electrician can understand: your state matters as much as your skill, at least for the median. Geography is a raise you can give yourself.

Here's the top and bottom of the 25 states we track:

Highest-paying states	Median	Lowest-paying states	Median
Illinois	$99,560	Alabama	$55,690
Washington	$95,220	North Carolina	$56,800
Massachusetts	$79,420	Florida	$57,250
New York	$78,750	Georgia	$58,320
New Jersey	$77,250	Texas	$58,570

All figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025, median (50th-percentile) annual wage for electricians.

A few things jump out. The top two — Illinois and Washington — are in a tier of their own, both clearing $95,000. Then there's a cluster in the high $70s (Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey). And a wide band of states sitting in the high $50s, including the biggest electrician labor market in the country, Texas.

The median hides the real story: the spread within a state

If you only look at the median, you miss the part that should matter most to you — the range. BLS reports the 25th percentile, the median, and the 75th percentile. The distance between the 25th and the 75th is where your career actually lives.

Nationally, electricians break down like this (BLS OEWS, May 2025):

• 25th percentile: $49,430 — the bottom quarter
• Median: $63,190 — the middle
• 75th percentile: $83,940 — the top quarter

So a national spread of $34,510 from the bottom quarter to the top quarter. Where you land inside that spread is about experience, sector (residential vs. industrial vs. utility), overtime, and whether you're union — more on that below.

Now look at how wide that range gets inside the high-paying states:

• New Jersey: $62,400 at the 25th percentile up to $121,110 at the 75th
• Washington: $66,630 up to $121,530
• Illinois: $73,520 up to $117,460

A 75th-percentile electrician in New Jersey, Washington, or Illinois is clearing $117,000–$121,000. That's not a foreman-of-a-megaproject number; that's the top quarter of the ordinary trade. If you're in one of those states and sitting near the median, the data is telling you there's real room above you.

Where the BLS data goes quiet

Here's where we keep ourselves honest, because the number that isn't in this dataset matters too.

BLS does not split union from non-union. The OEWS median blends both into one figure. So when you see Illinois at $99,560, that's union and non-union electricians averaged together — and in a heavily-unionized state like Illinois, the union scale is pulling that median up. We dig into the union-vs-non-union gap, where we can actually verify it, in a separate breakdown. The short version: the gap is real, but we'll only quote it for the trade-and-city pairs where we've got the actual contract scale in hand.

These are 25 states, not 50. We cover the 25 we have solid data and content for. If your state isn't in the top or bottom table above, it's somewhere in the middle — look it up directly on the electrician salary hub.

Medians aren't cost-of-living adjusted. Illinois pays more than Alabama, but a paycheck stretches differently in each. BLS gives us the nominal wage; it doesn't tell you what your rent will do to it. We don't have a cost-of-living dataset ingested yet, so we won't pretend to adjust for it.

What to do with this

If you're considering the trade, know that the $63,190 national median is a real, livable wage that you reach without a four-year degree or its debt — and the ceiling in the right state is six figures. Start with whether a trade is right for you.

If you're already an electrician, the spread is your argument. If you're below the 25th percentile for your state, you have data-backed grounds for a conversation with your employer or a reason to look at the higher-paying states. Don't negotiate on a feeling — negotiate on the percentile.

And if you want these numbers to get sharper, add your own pay. We publish anonymously, never with a raw email address, and every submission tightens the picture for the next electrician trying to figure out what the job is really worth.

Data: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Figures are annual median and percentile wages for electricians (SOC 47-2111). See how we build these numbers.