Industrial Electrician Salary 2026: Pay by State, Industry and License

Industrial electrician pay bands in 2026

The federal series set the floor and the shape of the distribution; the industry cuts show where plants sit inside it, and posting data shows what employers advertise against those numbers. Each band names its source and vintage.

Sources: BLS OEWS May 2025 national and national-by-industry estimates for SOC 47-2111 and 49-2094, retrieved via the BLS OEWS data query system September 2026; BLS OEWS May 2024 (47-2111 median $62,350) and BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Electricians (Pay section, May 2025 industry medians); O*NET OnLine 47-2111.00 and 49-2094.00; Indeed career salaries (Sep 6, 2026), Payscale (May 21, 2026), Talent.com (2026); employer Greenhouse job-board postings retrieved Sep 15, 2026.

Why “industrial electrician” scatters across two codes and a $40,000 spread

Payroll departments classify the same person differently. A journeyman who pulls conduit and terminates switchgear in a plant under construction is coded 47-2111 and blends into a $63,190 median dominated by contractors; kept on after commissioning to maintain drives, PLC I/O and motor control centers, the same journeyman is often coded 49-2094 at $74,090 or lands in the manufacturing cut at $74,550 (all BLS OEWS May 2025). Aggregators match on title strings, which is why Indeed’s $33.74/hr and Talent.com’s $37.40/hr differ by 11% under the same label (2026). The sources agree at the top: the 90th percentile is $105,590–$108,510 in both federal series, and senior employer-published ranges top out at $56–$59 per hour, the same neighborhood annualized.

What moves an industrial electrician above the median

Industry, voltage, license, level and shift explain most of the spread. The first three are visible in the federal industry cuts; the last two only show up in employer-published ranges and posting requirements.

These compound. A licensed journeyman moving from the $61,640 building-equipment-contractor median into an aerospace plant at $96,830 (both BLS OEWS May 2025) has changed industry, not skill, and the plant is paying for continuity on medium-voltage gear it cannot afford to have down. Add a night rotation, the premium pay and on-call terms the battery-materials employer advertises, and the frequent overtime the launch sites require, and the annualized gap is wider than any percentile table shows.

Industrial electrician salary by state and market

Line one of any state comparison is the license regime, because it decides who can be hired at all. Line two is union density. Both show up in the BLS OEWS May 2025 state cuts for 47-2111 below, with the 49-2094 repairer figure where it changes the picture.

The geography of reindustrialization runs against the geography of pay. The fastest-growing plant, fab and launch corridors (Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia) sit at or below the $63,190 national median, while the trade’s highest medians are in Oregon, Illinois, Washington and the Northeast (BLS OEWS May 2025). Employer-published ranges in the growth states are already priced above the local median, as you would expect when a plant competes against utility and refinery cells rather than local contractors.

Supply, openings and the licensing bottleneck

Demand is documented. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (2025–35 edition) projects electrician employment to grow 9%, adding about 75,900 jobs on a base of 821,000, with roughly 72,700 openings a year including replacement; the 2024–34 edition had put openings near 81,000. BLS names renewable power, grid upgrades and AI infrastructure as drivers. The repairer series is the mirror image: O*NET shows 49-2094 employment of 61,100 in 2024, projected to decline through 2034 with about 4,700 openings a year, so the in-house plant electrician bench is not being replenished even as plants multiply.

Wages are moving slowly relative to that demand. The all-industry median rose from $62,350 in BLS OEWS May 2024 to $63,190 in May 2025, about 1.3%, and the 90th percentile from $106,030 to $108,510. Posting averages are stuck in the same band: Indeed’s $33.74/hr (September 6, 2026) and Payscale’s $33.85/hr (May 21, 2026) both annualize to roughly $70,000, between the two federal medians.

Licensing makes supply inelastic. The common gate is 8,000 hours of supervised on-the-job training, four years full time, before the journeyman exam in Texas, California, Washington and Oregon; Texas adds 12,000 hours plus two years as a journeyman for a Master, and Washington and Oregon renew on three-year cycles with 24 and 16–24 continuing-education hours (TDLR, DIR, L&I, BCD, September 2026). Florida, Arizona and Ohio license contractors rather than individual journeymen, so an employer there underwrites competence itself, which is why postings in those states lean on NCCER industrial credentials, NFPA 70E training and stated 480V and medium-voltage experience instead of a card.

Reading these numbers before you write the req

Three rules follow. First, benchmark against the industry cell, not the occupation: an aerospace or vehicle plant posting at the $63,190 electrician median is offering $29,000–$33,600 under its own industry median (BLS OEWS May 2025), and the licensed journeymen it wants know it. Second, decide whether you are hiring an installer or a maintainer; the 47-2111 and 49-2094 distributions overlap but do not coincide, and the second carries the PLC, drives and motor-control expectation that a facilities technician or data center facilities technician req will otherwise duplicate. Third, price the shift pattern explicitly: the employer ranges above are base, and the postings that quote them disclose shift, overtime and, at the battery-materials employer, premium and on-call pay as separate lines.

For contract and direct-hire planning, the employment-services median of $57,760 (BLS OEWS May 2025) is the wrong anchor for a plant seat; the right one is the ladder employers publish, $26–$44/hr for levels 1–3 and $41–$59/hr for levels 4–5 at a launch manufacturer (September 2026), with the license gate between them. iRecruit is building candidate density in licensed industrial and medium-voltage electricians across manufacturing, aerospace and defense manufacturing and data center construction ahead of demand, on contract and direct-hire terms through embedded recruiting support; the screening questions that separate the bands are the state card, the highest voltage class worked unsupervised, and what the candidate has personally commissioned. Related: data center technician salary and construction certifications.

For the hiring side of this market, see the Manufacturing Recruiters practice.