Electrician Hourly Rate 2026: What Public Contracts Show Electricians Bill, and How Much of It Is Wage

The electrician hourly rate on public contracts: a median of $97

Seventeen public time-and-materials documents from 11 states, dated April 2024 to July 2026, price electrician labor by the hour. The median regular-hours rate for a journeyman or general electrician is $97, and most quotes sit between $81.19 and $121.50.

State agencies, counties, cities, school districts and universities buy on-call electrical work on time-and-materials terms: the contractor bills hours at a fixed rate plus parts at cost and a markup. Their bid tabulations and award documents are public. We collected 17 such documents with readable hourly rates, covering Maine, Washington, Illinois, Georgia, New Hampshire, Maryland, Michigan, California, Mississippi, Iowa and Florida.

Each document gives one or more rates per bidder. To keep any single business from standing out, the record below reports the median, low and high per contract and rate type. The 42 contract and rate-type rows contain 150 regular-hours quotes.

The median of the 17 contract medians is $97 per hour for a journeyman or general electrician; the median of all 68 individual quotes is $100.02. Contracts that use the word journeyman (14 of them) have a median of $98.58. The largest pools of bidders are Michigan State University (14 bids, median $112.05) and the Iowa statewide electrician services bid (10 bids, median $100.16).

Spreads inside a single tabulation are wide. On Maine DOT Region 5 (February 2025) journeyman quotes run from $79 to $199 for the same work; on the Michigan State University tabulation from $90.96 to $175.00. A bid tabulation records what each firm offered, not what the buyer paid, and on most of these contracts the award goes on a weighted total of hours, trucks and markup rather than on the hourly rate alone.

Time-and-materials (T&M) rate: An hourly labor price fixed in a contract before any job is ordered. The buyer pays hours worked at that rate plus materials at cost and an agreed markup. It is the closest public equivalent of the hourly rate a contractor quotes a customer.

Federal GSA ceiling rates for electricians center on $100.67 an hour

The GSA Multiple Award Schedule publishes ceiling rates for every labor category on its contracts. For electrician and journeyman categories the median is $100.67, close to the state and local median; master electricians are higher at $126.47.

GSA CALC+ lists 613 ceiling rates whose labor category contains the word electrician, pulled on 2026-10-27. We dropped 30 rows for automotive, aircraft, film lighting and similar non-building trades and sorted the remaining 583 into four groups by their category names.

Electrician and journeyman categories (447 rates on 268 contracts) have a median ceiling of $100.67 per hour; the middle half runs from $76.07 to $124.69. Rates for work at the customer's facility have a median of $100.71, against $97.36 for work at the contractor's facility. Foremen and leads have a median of $119.36 and apprentices and helpers $63.34.

Wages are about a third of what an electrician bills

Combining the billed rates with BLS wage and benefit-cost data shows how the hourly rate divides. In the median contract state, the wage is 36.2% of the billed rate, benefits and payroll costs 15.9%, and the residual for overhead and profit 47.9%.

Three pieces have to fit inside an hourly rate. The first is the wage: the BLS OEWS May 2025 survey puts the national mean for electricians (SOC 47-2111) at $34.37 an hour and the median at $30.38, across 757,220 jobs. State wages are on our electrician salary by state page; union packages are on the IBEW pay scale report.

The second is benefits and payroll costs. BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (June 2026) shows private construction employers paying $36.13 an hour in wages and $15.84 in benefits, for $51.96 in total. That is 43.84 cents of benefits for every wage dollar, including $4.42 in legally required costs such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation.

The third is everything else: trucks and fuel, tools and test equipment, liability coverage (see electrical contractor insurance requirements), licensing, dispatch and office staff, travel and other hours that cannot be billed, and profit. Public data do not measure this piece for electricians, so we derive it as the residual: billed rate minus the wage minus the estimated benefits.

As a national illustration, the $97 contract median is 2.82 times the national mean wage of $34.37. Loading that wage with construction benefits gives $49.44 an hour of labor cost, which leaves $47.56, or 49.0% of the billed rate, for overhead and profit.

Billed rates run 2.68 times the electrician wage

Dividing each contract's median rate by the mean electrician wage in the same state gives a median multiplier of 2.68. It ranges from 1.27 in Maryland to 3.63 in Washington, and using metro wages instead of state wages changes the median only slightly, to 2.62.

Washington (3.63), Illinois (3.37) and Iowa (3.30) have the highest multipliers. The Washington and Illinois figures rest on one contract each, Anacortes at $165 and Rockford at a $149.47 median, against state means of $45.42 and $44.34. Iowa's figure comes from a 10-bidder statewide contract, which makes it the steadiest single estimate.

Maryland is the outlier. Washington County's 2024 contract drew three bids with a $46.00 journeyman median, only 1.27 times the state mean of $36.28 and below the state's loaded labor cost. Against the Hagerstown-Martinsburg metro mean of $31.56 the multiplier is 1.46. The county's bids were due on 2024-05-08, more than two years before the most recent Maine DOT letting.

The multiplier is not a profit margin. A billed rate of 2.68 times the wage pays for benefits, payroll taxes, vehicles, insurance and time that cannot be billed before any profit appears. Contracts that require prevailing wages or union labor also start from a higher wage than the OEWS mean, which includes non-union and lower-paid workers.

Master electricians bill only slightly more than journeymen on the same contract

Where a contract prices both, the master rate is a median 1.04 times the journeyman rate. The GSA schedule shows a wider gap of 1.256.

Eight contracts quote master and journeyman rates side by side: the five Maine DOT regions, Washington County, Gwinnett County's water resources contract and Miami Lakes. Their master medians range from $45.00 to $117.60, with a median of $97.28 across contracts, essentially level with the journeyman median.

Within each contract the master premium is small: a median of 1.04 times the journeyman rate. On Maine DOT Regions 2 and 4 master and journeyman medians are identical, at $110 and $75. Gwinnett County's water resources contract has the largest premium, $94.55 against $75.64 (1.25 times). Miami Lakes prices its journeyman or supervisor line above its master line ($70.00 against $45.00).

On the GSA schedule, master electrician categories have a median ceiling of $126.47 (50 rates), 1.256 times the electrician and journeyman median. That gap is closer to what consumer price guides describe, but it compares different vendors rather than the same firm's two rates.

Overtime adds about 44% to the rate, holidays close to double

Across 32 overtime quotes on 11 contracts the median overtime rate is 1.435 times the regular rate, with 24 quotes below time and a half. Double-time and holiday quotes have a median of 1.886.

Only 6 of 32 overtime quotes (18.8%) are exactly 1.5 times the regular rate. Most are lower: 15 sit between 1.40 and 1.49 and 7 between 1.01 and 1.39. Two bidders charge the same rate at all hours, and two charge more than 1.5, the highest being Anacortes at 1.636 ($270 against $165).

A billed rate below time and a half is what one would expect if the overtime premium applies to the wage but not to fixed costs such as the truck and the office, which do not rise after hours. That explanation fits the data but is not stated in the documents.

Double-time and holiday rates are a median 1.886 times regular across 26 quotes, from 1.36 to 2.0. Rockford's Sunday and holiday rates are 1.88 to 2.0 times straight time; Iowa's double-overtime rates are a median 1.872 times. Miami Lakes caps after-hours prices at two times normal-hours prices in its 2025 request for proposals.

Trip charges and materials markups in public electrician contracts

Public contracts rarely price the service-call fee homeowners see, but some do: Iowa's statewide bidders charge a median $100 per trip. Materials are marked up a median 15%.

Homeowners usually meet the hourly rate through a minimum charge or trip fee. The public record shows how varied these are: Iowa's 2026 statewide bidders list trip charges with a median of $100 in regular hours and $145 in emergency hours, from $12.00 to $296.69 per call; one Gwinnett County contract pays $32.15 or $65.00 per trip and another $0.00. Materials markups run from 7% to 25% with a median of 15%. Consumer guides such as This Old House quote $40 to $120 an hour without a method; those ranges are not comparable with contract rates and are not used as figures here. For job-level prices see electrical pricing, panel upgrade cost and EV charger installation cost.

The same statewide contract rose 30.2% between 2022 and 2026

Iowa's statewide electrician services contract is the one program in the set with published pricing sheets over several years. Its median journeyman rate went from $76.96 in 2022 to $100.16 in 2026.

The 2022 pricing sheet lists 5 contractors, the May 2023 update 4, and the 2026 rebid 10, so the change mixes price increases with a different pool of firms. Contracts with fixed escalators show smaller steps: Flint's Year 1 to Year 3 journeyman median rose from $91.00 to $95.00, and Newmarket's technician rate from $70 to $75, a 7.1% rise over three years.

How the benchmark is built

Get the calculations (CSV)

Where contractors differ

1. The median regular-hours electrician rate on 17 state and local time-and-materials contracts (11 states, April 2024 to July 2026) is $97 per hour.^{[7][13][18][21]}
2. Contracts that label the rate journeyman (14 contracts) have a median of $98.58 per hour.^[7][21]
3. Iowa's 2026 statewide electrician services bid (10 bidders, bid date 2026-05-15) has a median journeyman rate of $100.16 and a median apprentice rate of $62.00.^[21]
4. Michigan State University's 2025 electrical services tabulation drew 14 bids with a median hourly rate of $112.05, from $90.96 to $175.00.^[25]
5. The highest contract median is $165 per hour (Anacortes, Washington, bid date 2025-11-20); the lowest is $46.00 (Washington County, Maryland, May 2024).^[12][17]
6. GSA CALC+ lists 447 ceiling rates for electrician and journeyman categories with a median of $100.67 per hour (October 2026); the middle half runs from $76.07 to $124.69.^[1]
7. GSA master electrician ceiling rates have a median of $126.47 (50 rates), 1.256 times the electrician median.^[1]
8. On the eight contracts that price both, the master rate is a median 1.04 times the journeyman rate; on all five Maine DOT contracts the master median is within 5% of the journeyman median.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}
9. The billed rate is a median 2.68 times the state mean electrician wage (OEWS May 2025) across 17 contracts and 2.62 times the metro mean across 9 contracts.^[2][4]
10. Private construction employers paid $15.84 an hour in benefits on top of $36.13 in wages in June 2026, 43.84 cents per wage dollar.^[5][6]
11. In the median contract state, wages are 36.2% of the billed rate, benefits and payroll costs 15.9% and overhead and profit 47.9%.^[2][5]
12. The median overtime quote is 1.435 times the regular rate (32 quotes, 11 contracts); 24 quotes are below time and a half.^[13][18][21]
13. Double-time and holiday quotes are a median 1.886 times the regular rate (26 quotes).^[13][18][21]
14. Iowa's statewide contract lists trip charges with a median of $100 per call in regular hours and $145 in emergency hours (8 bidders, 2026).^[21]
15. The median materials markup across 27 contractor quotes is 15%, from 7% to 25%.^[13][18][21]

In short

• Across 17 public electrical services contracts in 11 states dated 2024 to 2026, the median regular-hours rate for a journeyman or general electrician is $97 per hour; the median of all 68 individual quotes is $100.02.
• Half of those 68 quotes fall between $81.19 and $121.50 an hour; the full range runs from $42.00 to $199.
• Federal GSA schedule contracts put the median ceiling rate for electrician and journeyman categories at $100.67 (447 rates), master electricians at $126.47 and helpers at $63.34.
• Apprentice and helper labor bills at a median $69.00 an hour on the state and local contracts.
• The billed rate is a median 2.68 times the state's mean electrician wage, from 1.27 in Maryland to 3.63 in Washington.
• Using construction employers' benefit costs from BLS ECEC (June 2026), wages make up about 36.2% of the billed rate, benefits and payroll costs 15.9% and overhead and profit 47.9% in the median state.
• Overtime is usually quoted at less than time and a half: the median overtime quote is 1.435 times the regular rate, and only 6 of 32 quotes are exactly 1.5.
• Within the same contract, master electricians bill a median 1.04 times the journeyman rate, a far smaller gap than consumer price guides imply.

Common questions

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How we built this report

Selection: we searched public procurement records for state, county, city, school district and university electrical services contracts that print an hourly labor rate, and kept documents dated 2024 to 2026 whose rates could be read in full. Seventeen documents from 11 states qualified: 13 bid tabulations or bid summaries and 4 awarded or renewal price sheets. Two older Iowa pricing sheets (2022 and 2023) are used only for the trend in that program. Every document is saved unmodified and linked in the references.

Inclusion and exclusion: rates are regular-hours hourly labor rates for master, journeyman, general electrician, foreman and apprentice or helper lines. Bids marked irregular were excluded (one on Maine DOT Region 4). Where a sheet lists several years, we used the year in force on 2026-10-27 (Flint and Newmarket Year 3). Truck, lift and equipment hours are not counted as labor. Documents we could not open or read are listed in excluded.md, including tabulations from Fort Bend County and Jefferson County, Texas, James City County and Hampton, Virginia, Lakeland, Florida, and Boone County, Missouri.

Aggregation: to avoid singling out businesses, the record reports the median, low and high per contract and rate type rather than each firm's rate. Headline medians are medians of contract medians, so a 14-bid tabulation counts once; medians of all individual quotes are shown alongside.

GSA CALC+: we downloaded all 613 ceiling-rate rows matching the keyword electrician from the public CALC+ endpoint on 2026-10-27 (no API key was needed). Thirty rows for automotive, aircraft, film lighting and similar trades were excluded; the remaining rows were grouped by keywords in the labor category (scripts/gsa_calc.py).

Wages and benefits: wages are BLS OEWS May 2025 mean hourly wages for SOC 47-2111 Electricians (released 2026-05-15) by state and, where the buyer sits in one, by metropolitan area. The benefit load of 0.4384 is total benefits divided by wages and salaries for private construction industries in BLS ECEC for June 2026 (released 2026-09-09). Overhead and profit is the residual after wage and benefits. All formulas and inputs are in derived_metrics.csv and the scripts folder.

Conflicts and limits: contract rates mix union and non-union bidders, prevailing-wage and open-shop work, and different scopes; the 11-state set is not a random sample of the country, and Maine DOT supplies 5 of 17 contracts. Bid tabulations show offers rather than amounts paid. The benefit load is industry-wide, not specific to electricians. Marketplace price ranges were not used as data. This report is not pricing, legal or financial advice. Last updated 2026-10-27.

This report presents published data with its limitations. It is not legal, financial or investment advice.

Sources by tier

Tier 1: primary and official sources (25)

• [1] U.S. General Services Administration. CALC+ Quick Rate ceiling rates, labor categories matching "electrician" (public endpoint). MAS ceiling rates, index of 2026-10-27. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [2] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, state data (SOC 47-2111). May 2025. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [3] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national data and news release (released 2026-05-15). May 2025. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [4] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, metropolitan area data. May 2025. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [5] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (USDL-26-1494, released 2026-09-09). June 2026. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [6] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. ECEC time series flat file (series CMU2..2300000000D/P, private construction industries). 2026 Q2. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [7] Maine Department of Transportation (Region 1). Tabulation of Bids, Contract PH20250122ELR1, On Call Electrical Services. letting 2025-02-12. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [8] Maine Department of Transportation (Region 5). Tabulation of Bids, Contract PH20250122ELR5, On Call Electrical Services. letting 2025-02-19. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [9] Maine Department of Transportation (Region 4). Tabulation of Bids, Contract PH20250514ELR4, On call Electrical Services Region 4 (one further bid marked irregular, excluded). letting 2025-06-04. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [10] Maine Department of Transportation (Region 2). Tabulation of Bids, Contract PH20260610ELC2, On Call Electrical Services. letting 2026-07-01. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [11] Maine Department of Transportation (Region 3). Tabulation of Bids, Contract PH20260708ELC3, On Call Electrical Services. letting 2026-07-29. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [12] City of Anacortes, Washington. Bid Tabulation #26-014-FAC-001, Unit-Priced Electrical Services 2026-2028. bid date 2025-11-20. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [13] City of Rockford, Illinois. Bid No. 225-PW-020 Low Voltage Electrical Services, tabulation. opened 2025-02-27. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [14] Gwinnett County, Georgia (Fire, Parks, Police, Sheriff, Support Services, Transportation). BL108-21 On-Call Electrical Repair, Maintenance, and Installation Services, renewal pricing for 2026-01-04 to 2027-01-03. renewal term from 2026-01-04. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [15] Gwinnett County, Georgia (Department of Water Resources). BL099-22 Electrical Equipment Installation, Inspection, and Repair Services, renewal pricing for 2026-01-01 to 2026-12-31. renewal term from 2026-01-01. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [16] Newmarket School District (SAU 31), New Hampshire. Award of Bid Notice, On-Call Electrical Services FY25 to FY27 (Year 3, 2026-27 rates). awarded 2024-04-18, Year 3 rates for 2026-27. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [17] Washington County, Maryland. PUR-1670 Electrician Services at County Facilities, bid tabulation and award report. bids 2024-05-08, awarded 2024-05-21. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [18] City of Flint, Michigan. P24-538 Electrical Services (3 years), proposals received (Year 3 rates, 2026-07-01 to 2027-06-30). posted April 2024, Year 3 rates for 2026-27. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [19] City of Oxnard, California. Specification PW 24-100 On-Call Electrical Maintenance and Minor Repair Services, tabulation of bids. opened 2024-05-21. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [20] Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors, Mississippi. Bid No. 4025 Electrical Services, bid tabulation. opened 2026-03-18. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [21] Iowa Department of Administrative Services (statewide). Bid Summary, Solicitation 005-RFB-2675-2026 Statewide Electrician Services. bid date 2026-05-15, master agreements from 2026-07-01. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [22] Iowa Department of Administrative Services. Electrician Services Pricing Sheet, Updated 2022. 2022. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [23] Iowa Department of Administrative Services. Electrician Services Pricing Sheet, Updated May 2023. 2023. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [24] Town of Miami Lakes, Florida. Agreement and Form PS Price Sheet, RFP No. 2025-17 Electrical Services – As Needed. agreement September 2025. Accessed 2026-10-27.
• [25] Michigan State University (Infrastructure, Planning and Facilities). 897265 Public Bid Electrical Services, tabulation. posted September 2025. Accessed 2026-10-27.

Tier 3: journalism and expert commentary (1)

• [26] This Old House. How Much Does an Electrician Cost?. page updated 2026-06-05. Accessed 2026-10-27.