Keep the motors, controls and power systems of a factory or plant running, and get paid while you learn the trade.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
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.
4 to 5 years, on the usual route, and you are paid while you train from the first day.
$1,200 to $12,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a license, certificate or registration in Alaska, Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, 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.
Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
All electricians 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 survey. The federal wage survey has one line for Electricians and does not split out the industrial and maintenance side, where plants run around the clock and pay shift and overtime premiums to keep people.
$20.50 to $23.76 an hour
The bottom tenth and bottom quarter of electricians, 2025
Apprentices usually start in this part of the range. Registered apprenticeships pay a share of the journeyman rate, and you get a raise roughly every six months to a year as your hours and classroom credits build, and you finish with no tuition debt.
$49,430 to $83,940
Half of all workers in the 2025 survey earn between these two figures
Plants pay a shift differential for nights and weekends. Shutdown and turnaround work, where a plant stops production for two weeks and everything gets fixed at once, is 12-hour days at overtime rates.
Roughly, all in
$1,200 to $12,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
A registered apprenticeship is paid work, so the low end is application and book fees of a few hundred dollars a year, a hand tool kit built up slowly, and the journeyman license exam at the end where your state requires one, usually under $200. The high end adds a community college electrical program paid for up front, a fuller tool kit and the same license fees. This is one of the few careers where you can finish fully qualified with savings rather than debt, and a Pell Grant, which you never repay, often covers the college route outright if you file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
This is one of the few careers on this site where you can finish fully qualified with savings instead of debt. If you take the community college route first, file the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), because a Pell Grant often covers it entirely.
Union pension
Organized industrial work through the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) usually comes with a pension plan.
Health coverage for the family
Standard in both union plants and most large non-union employers.
Overtime and shift premiums
Plants run 24 hours. Nights, weekends and callouts all pay more.
Travel and per diem
Shutdown crews and large industrial projects pay a daily allowance on top of wages when you work away from home.
Employer-paid upskilling
Automation and controls courses are usually paid for by the plant, because they need people who can do it.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
An apprenticeship, not a degree. Mostly paid work in a plant, with classroom hours every year.
High school diploma or GED (General Educational Development) test
Grade 12
Algebra is the gate. Most apprenticeship applications include a math and reading aptitude test you have to pass.
Get accepted into an apprenticeship
Weeks to a year of applying
Apply to a joint union and contractor training center, a large employer's own program, or find a sponsor through the federal apprenticeship finder. This is the competitive step.
Work and study together
4 to 5 years
Thousands of hours on the job across four to five years, plus classroom nights covering theory, code, motors and controls.
Pass the journeyman exam
After your hours
Most states test you on the electrical code and practical calculations before issuing a license.
Specialize in industrial work
Ongoing
Motor controls, drives, programmable controllers and instrumentation. This is what separates an industrial electrician from a house wirer.
Algebra and trigonometry
Load calculations, bending conduit and sizing conductors are all math you do on the floor.
Physics
Electricity, magnetism and motors are physics whether you like it or not.
Shop and electronics
Wiring a circuit board is closer to this job than most people expect.
English
The electrical code is a dense book and you will be tested on reading it accurately.
There is no national electrician's license. 30 states and DC (the District of Columbia) require a plant electrician to hold a state license. Kentucky, Arkansas and Texas license electricians but exempt a plant's own maintenance staff, and the rest leave it to cities or license only contractors. Wisconsin even has a separate industrial journeyman license. Plants add arc flash and lockout training before you touch live equipment.
Joint union and contractor training centers
The electrical training ALLIANCE (the joint training body of the electrical workers' union and the National Electrical Contractors Association) has over 70 years of history and supplies the curriculum used at training centers across the country.
Employer apprenticeships
Large manufacturers, refineries, mines and utilities run their own registered programs and hire straight out of high school.
Community colleges
An electrical technology certificate or associate degree before you apply makes you a far stronger candidate.
The federal apprenticeship finder
The United States Department of Labor lists registered apprenticeship sponsors by trade and location at apprenticeship.gov.
Things you don't need, but that help.
PLC (programmable logic controller) programming
The computers that run production lines.
Variable frequency drives
The electronics that control motor speed. Every modern plant is full of them and they fail in confusing ways.
Instrumentation
Sensors, transmitters and calibration. Often a second certification.
Robotics and automation
Maintaining and troubleshooting robot cells in manufacturing.
Master electrician license
The state credential that lets you pull permits and run your own electrical contracting business.
A clean driver's license
Assumed by every employer, and essential for travel work.
Safety certificates
Confined space, fall protection and arc flash awareness. Short courses that employers like to see on an application.
Willingness to work nights
Maintenance happens when production stops. New apprentices usually get the off-shifts.
Troubleshooting patience
The job is often standing in front of a dead machine at 2am working out which of 200 things is wrong.
Industrial electricians have an option most trades do not: follow the big jobs. Refinery turnarounds, data center builds, mine expansions and power plant outages all bring in crews for a few weeks or months, pay overtime plus a daily living allowance, and then end. Some people do this for a few years in their twenties, bank most of it, and then take a steady plant job close to home. It is hard on relationships.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Clock in at 6am for the handover: what broke overnight and what is still down. First job is preventive maintenance, checking and cleaning motor starters on a line that is scheduled to stop for an hour. Then a call from production: a conveyor is dead. Half an hour with a meter and a wiring diagram finds a failed proximity sensor. After lunch, pulling cable for a new machine being installed, which is planned work you will not finish today. Lockout procedures on everything, every time.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represents active members and retirees across utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing, railroads and government.
The United States Department of Labor reports that people who complete a registered apprenticeship start at an average of about $86,000 a year across all trades, and report they earn over $300,000 more across a career than peers who did not.
Before working on industrial equipment you physically isolate the power and put your own padlock on the switch. Only you can remove it. It is the single rule that keeps industrial electricians alive, and violating it gets people fired on the spot.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Electrical and energy first, then the rest of the field. See every career in skilled trades.
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.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.