How much do power-line workers make in California in 2026?

The median annual wage for a power-line worker in California is $129,040, which works out to roughly $62.04 per hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That figure sits well above the national median for this trade, reflecting California's high cost of living, strong utility sector, and significant demand for grid maintenance and expansion across the state.

Pay spreads wide in this trade. Workers at the 25th percentile — typically those earlier in their apprenticeship or working in less competitive regional markets — earn around $98,680 per year, or about $47.44 per hour. Workers at the 75th percentile clear $156,380 annually, roughly $75.18 per hour. That $57,700 gap between the bottom quarter and the top quarter tells you experience, certifications, overtime, and employer type matter enormously in this trade.

What drives you toward the higher end of that range? Time on the job is the most direct factor. Power-line work is heavily apprenticeship-driven, and union programs in California typically run four to five years. As you accumulate years and sign-offs on more complex work — transmission versus distribution, underground versus overhead, substation switching — your classification and hourly rate move up in steps. Journeyman linemen command more than apprentices, and foremen or lead linemen sit above journeymen.

Employer type shapes pay significantly. Investor-owned utilities like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric operate under collective bargaining agreements and tend to pay at or above the 75th-percentile range for experienced workers, especially when overtime is factored in. Rural electric cooperatives and smaller municipal utilities may land closer to the median. Electrical contractors hired for construction projects — building new transmission lines or distribution systems — can also pay at the high end, particularly when work is heavy and overtime is plentiful.

Geography inside California matters too. Projects in the Bay Area, greater Los Angeles, and San Diego carry higher pay scales than rural interior regions, partly because prevailing wage rules on public contracts adjust for local cost of labor. Workers willing to travel to wherever construction or storm-repair work is concentrated typically accumulate more hours and more overtime pay per year.

Overtime is a real part of total compensation in this trade. Storm response, grid upgrades, and emergency outage work can add significant hours on top of a standard week. A worker sitting at the median base rate of $62.04 per hour earns $93.06 for every overtime hour at time-and-a-half. Workers regularly putting in 200 to 400 overtime hours per year can push their total earnings considerably above their base annualized rate.

California's grid is under sustained pressure — wildfire mitigation, undergrounding programs, EV infrastructure buildout, and renewable energy interconnection are all driving sustained hiring. That translates to a steady pipeline of work and consistent hours for qualified linemen across both the utility and contractor sides of the industry.

All figures on this page come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025. No union scale data was available for this specific trade and state at the time of publication.