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

Power-line workers in Massachusetts earn a median $110,210 a year, which works out to roughly $52.99 an hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That's a strong number, and it reflects both the genuine danger of the work and the years of training required to do it safely. These figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025.

The full spread tells you more than the median alone. The bottom quarter of power-line workers in Massachusetts — the 25th percentile — earns $94,370 a year, or about $45.37 an hour. These are typically workers earlier in their careers, still building hours and certifications, or working for smaller contractors with less overtime. The top quarter clears $126,040 a year, roughly $60.60 an hour. Workers at that level usually have a decade or more of field experience, hold line foreman or crew leader roles, or work specialty jobs like high-voltage transmission work where the risk and skill premium is steepest.

The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is $31,670 a year. That's not a trivial difference — it's the kind of spread that rewards staying in the trade and deliberately pursuing the work that pays more. Knowing where you sit on that range, and what it takes to move up it, is the whole point of looking at this data.

Massachusetts is a high-cost, high-wage state. The combination of a dense utility infrastructure, aggressive grid modernization projects, and ongoing storm restoration demand keeps steady pressure on line worker employment throughout the state. Eversource and National Grid are the two dominant employers for distribution work, but there is also a significant contractor market servicing both investor-owned utilities and municipal light plants. Massachusetts has more than 40 municipal electric utilities, and several of them compete hard for experienced linemen.

Experience level is the biggest single driver of pay in this trade. An apprentice in the first or second year of a five-year program will earn a percentage of journeyman scale — often 50–60% to start, stepping up annually. Once you reach journeyman status, your base rate jumps sharply. From there, overtime, shift differentials, and hazard pay for transmission or underground work can push total compensation well above the median figures shown here. Emergency restoration work — called out nights and weekends after major storms — adds meaningful income for workers willing to take it.

Specialty skills also matter. Linemen certified in underground cable work, fiber installation, or substation switching tend to command higher rates than those limited to overhead distribution. Foreman and working foreman titles carry explicit pay bumps, and some employers offer lead pay for workers who perform supervisory duties even without a formal title change.

Geography within Massachusetts plays a role too. Boston metro area employers generally post higher base wages than rural or western Massachusetts utilities, partly due to cost of living and partly because urban line work involves more traffic control, tighter working conditions, and more complex permit requirements. That complexity gets priced in.

No union scale data is available for this trade-and-state combination in our current dataset. Where collective bargaining agreements are in place — and many Massachusetts utilities do operate under them — the negotiated scale sets a floor, and the BLS figures above reflect the full mix of union and non-union workers in the state.

The numbers here are a starting point. Use them to benchmark a job offer, prepare for a wage conversation, or simply understand where you stand relative to the rest of the workforce doing the same job in Massachusetts.