Electrician hourly rate: what to charge and why it varies

There is no single electrician hourly rate, and not because the work varies. Two questions set the number before the job does: who does this need on site, and does it need a permit?

Both are pricing questions, not paperwork. Who is allowed to do the job is the price structure. An apprentice pulling wire and a license holder signing a permit are different products, and one blended number either overcharges the easy hours or eats the hard ones.

But "who is allowed" is not one national rule. It is state law, sometimes city law, and several states have no state license at all. So this guide does not hand you a ladder. It gives you the rules to look up, and the numbers that do exist: what electricians are paid, by state. The base-rate arithmetic itself is the same for every trade — contractor hourly rate covers it.

The rate follows the license, not the truck

A lot of pricing advice treats the three-tier ladder — apprentice, journeyman, master — as the national picture. It is not, and the exceptions are big:

• Several states do not license electricians at state level at all. Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Missouri leave it to cities and counties, and so does New York outside the jurisdictions running their own boards, New York City among them. Your tiers are whatever the local building department says, and two towns twenty minutes apart can differ.
• California has no master electrician. It has one electrical contractor license, the C-10 from the Contractors State License Board, plus separate certification from the Department of Industrial Relations in five categories.
• Texas cuts the ladder much finer, licensing apprentice, residential wireman, journeyman, several journeyman specialties, maintenance electrician and master separately.

What each tier may do unsupervised, who may pull a permit and how many trainees one licensed electrician may run are all state law, sometimes with a city rule on top — California allows one registered electrician trainee per certified electrician. Your state licensing board, or your building department where there is no state license, is the only source worth trusting.

Whatever the tiers are called where you work, price each one you employ separately, even if you sell them as a single crew rate.

What an electrician's hour costs before you mark it up

No dollar figures per tier appear above, deliberately: nobody surveys billed rates by license tier, so any national "journeyman rate" bracket is a guess. What is published, by a primary source, is what electricians are paid: Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, occupation 47-2111 (Electricians), May 2025 estimates, the most recent release at the time of writing. These are wages, not billed rates.

The national median is the least useful number there, because the spread between states is enormous:

An Illinois median hour is worth roughly double an Arkansas one, and two things matter more than the numbers. The low end is not where the folklore puts it: Mississippi and Louisiana both sit above Texas and Florida. And the metro premium inside a state is often smaller than assumed — New York's New York-Newark-Jersey City median is $37.99, Buffalo-Cheektowaga $37.47. Helpers are counted separately, under occupation 47-3013: national median $20.51 an hour.

From wage to cost

A wage is not what the hour costs you. On top of it you pay employer Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% — 7.65% together, with Social Security stopping at the $184,500 wage base for 2026. Add FUTA at 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee's wages, dropping to 0.6% if you qualify for the full 5.4% state credit; a handful of states in credit reduction pay more. Then add your state unemployment rate, your workers' comp premium per $100 of payroll, and whatever you carry for health insurance, retirement, paid time off and drive time. The federal pieces are published each year in IRS Publication 15. Comp and benefits vary by an order of magnitude between shops, so use your own payroll, not a burden multiplier you read somewhere.

Burdened cost is not a price either — truck, tools, insurance, unpaid hours and margin sit on top. But your state median plus your own burden is the floor your number has to clear.

The permit rides on a license, and the license work takes hours

Permits are issued against a license, not against a person with a van. In most jurisdictions the application comes from the contractor license holder: a master electrician where that title exists, a qualifying individual or responsible managing employee in states like California. A journeyman card generally lets you work unsupervised, not open a permit.

Homeowner permits are a separate track. Many jurisdictions let a homeowner pull a permit for work they do themselves on a home they own and live in; the exemption usually stops at rentals, and some jurisdictions do not offer it at all. It is not a route around licensing for a contractor working for pay.

Permit fees are set locally, commonly a base fee plus per-circuit or per-device charges; pass them through at cost. The unbilled part is the time around them: the application and any load calculation, waiting inside an inspection window, meeting the inspector, coordinating a utility disconnect and reconnect on a service change, and any correction and re-inspection. On a panel swap that is half a day, spread over weeks. Bill it as its own line: fee at cost, permit and inspection labor at your rate. In a flat whole-job price those hours still sit inside the number.

How much work a permit brings is not fixed either. The National Electrical Code runs on a three-year cycle, but states and cities adopt editions on their own schedule and amend them, and a few states leave adoption to local jurisdictions entirely. Whether an upgrade triggers extra work depends on the edition your inspector enforces. NFPA maps which edition is in force where; your building department confirms it, local amendments included.

Two things that override your rate card

Prevailing wage. Federally funded construction falls under the Davis-Bacon Act. Most states have their own law for state-funded work, but around twenty do not — several repealed theirs, a couple later brought one back — so there a state or municipal job is bid like ordinary commercial work. Check the project, not a general rule.

Your workers' comp class code. Electrical work is not a cheap code, and the premium is charged on payroll. Get the real number from an independent agent — or, in the four monopolistic states (Ohio, North Dakota, Washington, Wyoming), from the state fund, which is the only place coverage comes from.

Keeping the rates straight

That is at least three numbers to hold: a rate per tier, a permit-and-inspection line, and the burden behind both. Save each rate in DoneQuote as its own service with its own price, so the one you calculated is the one that goes out. Already in a spreadsheet? Upload it and DoneQuote reads them into your catalog.

Before you quote the next panel

• Price every tier you employ separately: the ladder is state law, and several states do not set one
• Start from BLS wages for your own state, then add payroll taxes, comp and benefits: a wage is not a cost, and the national median hides a near-double Illinois-to-Arkansas spread
• Bill permit and inspection work as its own line: the fee is pass-through, the hours are not
• Check the project for prevailing wage, and your class code with an agent or your state fund