Electrician

Wire houses, factories and data centers. Get paid from your first week of training and never owe tuition.

Typical pay: $63,190a year
Time to qualify: 4 to 5 yearspaid while you train, from day one
Demand: Very high
License needed: Dependsneeded in 34 states

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Quick answers

How much does an electrician make in the United States?

The median pay is about $63,190 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $42,640 at the lower end to about $108,510 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.

How long does it take to become an electrician in the United States?

4 to 5 years, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.

What does it cost to become an electrician?

$1,100 to $3,500 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.

Do you need a license to work as an electrician in the United States?

It depends where you work. You need a license, certificate or registration in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.

What is the job outlook for an electrician in the United States?

Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.

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Electrician salary in the United States

What you earn and what it costs to get there.

What electricians make

Median

$63,190

Bottom tenth

$42,640

Top tenth

$108,510

The national median is $63,190 a year, the bottom tenth earn $42,640 or less and the top tenth $108,510 or more, in the 2025 federal wage survey.

You get paid from day one

A share of the journeyman rate

First-year apprentice, with a raise at set steps

Apprentice wages are set as a percentage of the journeyman rate in your area, and the percentage rises as you pass each stage of the apprenticeship. No tuition bill arrives at any point.

The middle half of electricians

$23.76 to $40.36 an hour

$49,430 to $83,940 a year: the bottom quarter to the top quarter, 2025

Overtime is normal in construction and pays time and a half. Shutdown and data center work often means nights and travel. The top tenth of electricians earn $108,510 or more.

What it costs to get there

Apprenticeship application: Usually nothing to about $50
Tools: $800 to $2,500, built up over the apprenticeship, not bought at once
Code book and class materials: $150 to $400, and many programs include them
License application and exam: Set by your state or city, commonly a few hundred dollars in total

Roughly, all in

$1,100 to $3,500

Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel

There is no tuition on this path. A registered apprenticeship pays you a wage from the first week, so the low end is an application fee, a starter tool kit built up slowly over four or five years, a code book and the license and exam where your state or city has one. The high end is a fuller tool kit, materials your program does not include, and a state with higher license and exam fees. Most electricians finish their training with savings rather than loans, which is the biggest financial advantage this career has.

There is no tuition. Because you earn a wage the whole time, most electricians finish their training with savings instead of student loans. That is the single biggest financial advantage this career has.

Benefits, especially in a union

A real pension
Locals of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) run defined benefit pension plans.
Health coverage from the first year
Union apprenticeships usually include family medical and dental.
Overtime at time and a half or double time
On big construction jobs this can add a lot to your yearly pay.
Travel and living allowances
Working away from home on industrial jobs comes with a daily allowance on top of wages.

How to become an electrician in the United States

The exact path from high school to qualified.

The path to becoming an electrician, step by step

An apprenticeship, not a degree. Mostly on the job, with classroom hours at night.

1
High school diploma
Grade 12
Algebra is the one that matters. Some districts run a pre-apprenticeship or a construction academy that gets you a head start.
2
Get into an apprenticeship
Weeks to a year of applying
Two main routes: the union programs run by the electrical training Alliance, a partnership of the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) and the National Electrical Contractors Association, or non-union employer programs. Neither charges tuition, and both are competitive.
3
Register with your state
Days
Many states require apprentices to hold an apprentice license or registration before touching a wire. Your program handles the paperwork.
4
Work and study
4 to 5 years
About 8,000 hours on the job over four to five years, plus several hundred hours of evening classes on code, theory and safety.
5
Journeyman license
After your hours
Sit your state's or city's exam, mostly on the National Electrical Code. Pass it and you can work unsupervised.

High school courses that help you become an electrician

Algebra and geometry
Load calculations, conduit bends and voltage drop are all arithmetic you do on site.
Physics
Electricity is physics, and understanding why beats memorizing rules.
Shop or construction technology
Proof to a hiring committee that you can work with your hands.
English
The code book is dense legal writing and you get tested on it.

Time and money, at a glance

Years to license: 4 to 5
Admission: Aptitude test and interview. Programs take a fraction of applicants
Total out of pocket: Usually under $3,000, nearly all of it tools
Paid while training?: Yes, from your first week, with a raise every year

Licensing is state by state, and sometimes city by city

There is no national electrician license. 33 states and DC (the District of Columbia) license electricians themselves, often down to apprentices: Texas, for example, issues apprentice, journeyman and master licenses. The rest, including New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Florida, leave worker licensing to cities and counties or license only the contracting business. Nearly every exam is built on the National Electrical Code.

What helps you get ahead as an electrician

Things you don't need, but that help.

Tickets worth getting

Master electrician license
Needed to pull permits and run a contracting business in most states. A second exam, usually after several years as a journeyman.
Industrial and instrumentation work
Plants, refineries and water treatment.
PLC (programmable logic controller) training
Factory automation. Short supply of electricians who can troubleshoot it.
Solar and electric vehicle charger installation
Short manufacturer courses, and demand is growing quickly in most states.

Nice-to-haves

A driver's license and a clean record
Effectively required. You drive to a different site most weeks.
Safety cards
The 10-hour course from OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) plus first aid and CPR. Cheap, quick, and employers ask for them.
Aptitude test practice
Apprenticeship entry tests are algebra and reading comprehension. Practicing for a few weeks genuinely changes who gets in.
Physical fitness
Ladders, crawlspaces, conduit overhead all day. The work is easier if you are in shape for it.

Running your own shop

Some electricians eventually go out on their own. With a master license you can pull permits, hire apprentices and bill directly, and a small residential service business can be started from a van. The honest part: you become a bookkeeper, an estimator and a collections agent as well as an electrician, you carry liability insurance, and slow months in a housing downturn are your problem rather than your employer's.

What being an electrician is really like

Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.

What an electrician does day to day

A 6am or 7am start on site. Read the prints, lay out where things go, then bend and hang conduit, pull wire, and mount panels, lights and outlets. Afternoons often mean terminations and testing. Service electricians instead drive between calls all day, diagnosing faults in houses and small businesses. Everything stops for safety checks before anything gets energized, and that is not a formality.

The honest pros and cons of being an electrician

The good

Paid from week one, no tuition and no student loans
Licensed and earning a full rate in under 5 years
Rapid growth, with data centers and electrification driving demand
You can start your own business without more schooling

The hard parts

Hard on the body: ladders, attics, crawlspaces, cold sites
Construction slows in a downturn and layoffs come with it
Genuine electrical danger, which is why the rules are strict
Early starts, long drives and a lot of time away from home on big jobs

Work life

Typical hours: 40 a week, overtime common
Remote work: None
Physical demand: High
Unionized: Often in commercial and industrial work, rarely in residential

Similar paths

Things nobody tells you about being an electrician

Things people don't tell you.

The rulebook changes every three years

The National Electrical Code is revised on a three-year cycle, and each state decides for itself which edition to adopt. That is why two neighboring states can legally require different wiring in the same situation, and why electricians keep going back to class.

About 72,700 openings a year

The federal career profile counts 821,000 electricians in 2025 and expects much faster than average growth to 2035, with about 72,700 openings a year.

Data centers are rewriting the job

The buildings full of computers behind AI (artificial intelligence) and streaming need enormous amounts of wiring and power distribution. Electricians are one of the trades most in demand on those projects.

Most start with training after high school

In the federal survey of electricians, 62% said a new hire needs a certificate from training after high school, which is what an apprenticeship gives you. Only 2% said less than a diploma is enough.

How an electrician compares

Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.

More skilled trades careers in the US

Electrical and energy first, then the rest of the field. See every career in skilled trades.

Where these numbers come from

Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.