Electrician Salary Reality

Let's start with the number. What do you make?

Which number do you want? Because there are three. My on-the-check rate is $54.27 per hour. That's what hits my bank account before taxes. My total package, meaning what the contractor pays for every hour I work, is $91.40. The difference, that $37 an hour I never see on my check, goes to the pension fund, the health and welfare fund, the annuity fund, NEBF which is the national pension supplement, and the LMCC which is the labor-management cooperation fund. None of that is optional. It's negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement. The contractor pays it on top of my wage.

People hear "$54 an hour" and they think that's great money. It is. For Seattle, it's solid. But they don't realize that $91 of value is being generated per hour and I see $54 of it. The other $37 is benefits I'll use later, mostly when I retire, or benefits I use now, like the health insurance that covers me, my wife Diana, and our two kids. That health insurance, if I had to buy it on the open market, would cost probably $1,800 to $2,000 a month. I know because I looked it up during a period between jobs. So $37 an hour sounds like money I'm losing, but $2,000 a month in free health insurance plus a pension that'll pay me $4,800 a month when I'm 62 is real value. You just can't see it in your checking account.

What's the annual math?

Here's where it gets complicated. Union work isn't a salaried job. I work when there's work. In a good year, I book 1,800 to 1,900 hours. That's $54.27 times let's say 1,850, which is about $100,400 gross. After federal tax, state tax in Washington is zero which is nice, FICA, and union dues which are about $47 a month, my take-home is roughly $78,000. That's in a good year.

In a slow year, like 2023, I worked 1,400 hours. That's $76,000 gross. Take-home was around $58,000. I was on the bench for about two months. "The bench" means I'm on the union's out-of-work list waiting for a call. You collect unemployment during that time, which in Washington caps at $999 a week, and you wait. I redid my kitchen cabinets during one of those bench periods. Diana says the quality of our home improvements is directly proportional to how slow work is.

The overtime changes the math a lot. Anything over 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week is time-and-a-half, which is $81.40 on the check. Double time kicks in on Sundays and holidays, which is $108.54. I worked four Saturdays and two Sundays on a hospital renovation last year. Those six days added about $5,200 to my gross. That's when the money gets real. But you can't count on overtime. Some jobs have it. Some don't. I never budget around it.

You mentioned you were making $14.50 an hour as a first-year apprentice. What was that like?

Terrible. I mean, I was 23 and I'd been picking orders in a warehouse for $11 an hour, so $14.50 felt like a raise. But in Seattle in 2008, $14.50 was not comfortable. My rent was $775 for a studio in Rainier Beach. After taxes, I was clearing maybe $1,900 a month. Rent was $775. Car payment was $230. Insurance, food, gas, I was breaking even. Some months I wasn't. My mom Grace helped me a couple of times. Just $300 here, $200 there, to cover a car repair or a dental bill. She never made me feel bad about it. She worked at a Safeway for 30 years and she understood what starting out looked like.

Each year of the apprenticeship, you get a raise. By year four I was at about $32 an hour. By year five I had my journeyman card and I was at the full scale, which was around $42 at the time. That's when I stopped needing my mom's help. That's when I started the spreadsheet, actually. Because I wanted to see the line go up. It's a small thing, but on the hard days, when I'm soaked in a trench or I'm arguing with a GC about a scope change, I pull up that spreadsheet on my phone and I look at the line. It's been going up for 18 years. That means something.

$78K take-home in Seattle. Is that comfortable?

Comfortable is a relative word. We own a house. We bought it in 2017 for $385,000, which seemed insane at the time and now seems like a bargain because the same house is probably worth $600K. The mortgage is $2,100 a month. Diana works part-time as a dental assistant, brings in about $24,000 a year. Between us we're at about $102,000 take-home. For a family of four in Seattle, that's fine. We're not struggling. We're also not saving much. We put $200 a month into a 529 for each kid. The pension and annuity are my retirement. I don't have a separate 401k because the union benefits are supposed to cover that. The pension estimate, at 62, is $4,800 a month. If I live to 82, that's over a million dollars in pension payments. That's the argument for union electrical work. You don't see the money now. You see it when you're old and your body can't climb a ladder anymore.

What's yours?

How much of your financial life depends on the local economy. Union rates are great. Union work is not guaranteed. When construction slows, I get laid off. Not fired. Laid off. It's normal in the trade and nobody takes it personally. But getting laid off when you have a mortgage and two kids and your wife works part-time is a very specific kind of anxiety that salaried workers don't experience. The bench is not a vacation. The bench is sitting at home knowing that your income is unemployment insurance and your health insurance runs out in 90 days if you don't get dispatched.

My brother-in-law Terrell works in IT for a healthcare company. He makes $88,000 a year. Every year. Rain or shine. He doesn't get laid off between projects. He doesn't check the out-of-work list. He doesn't recalculate his monthly budget every time a job ends. He also doesn't have a pension. He also sits at a desk. We've talked about this. He says he envies my paycheck. I told him I envy his security. We're probably both right.

What's your number?

$27 an hour. Straight time. No overtime unless the boss, his name is Carl, explicitly approves it, which happens maybe twice a month. My gross last year was $56,160 based on 2,080 hours, which is a standard 40-hour year. After federal and state taxes, FICA, and the $60 a month I pay for the company health plan, which is a high-deductible plan with a $5,000 deductible, my take-home was about $43,200. That's $3,600 a month.

$43,200 in Huntsville. How does that feel?

Huntsville is cheap compared to a lot of places. My rent is $1,050 for a two-bedroom apartment. My truck payment is $380. Insurance on the truck is $190. Phone, utilities, food, gas. After the essentials I've got maybe $400 to $500 a month in discretionary money. Some of that goes to the boat. Some of it goes to savings, but not as much as I'd like. I've got about $6,000 in savings. No retirement account. Carl doesn't offer a 401k. I could open an IRA on my own but I haven't because that $200 a month or whatever I'd put in feels like money I need now.

My girlfriend Aubrey teaches kindergarten. She makes $41,000. Between us, we're at about $84,000 take-home combined, living in a city where the median household income is around $65,000. So on paper we're doing fine. It feels fine most months. It feels tight when something breaks. The truck needed a new transmission in October. $3,400. That was half my savings. That's the thing about making $27 an hour with no safety net. You're one transmission away from being stressed about money for the rest of the year.

Do you think about going union?

I've looked into it. IBEW Local 558 is the Huntsville local. The journeyman scale is about $32 on the check, plus benefits. So I'd get a $5 raise and a pension and better health insurance. The catch is the work. Huntsville is growing, there's a lot of construction, but the union doesn't control as much of the market here as they do in Seattle or Chicago. Carl keeps me busy year-round. The union might not. I asked a guy at Local 558 and he was honest with me. He said some years are 1,800 hours and some years are 1,500. At $32 an hour, 1,500 hours is $48,000 gross. I'm making $56,000 now with Carl and I work every week.

Freddie, a guy I did my apprenticeship with, he went union. He says the pension is worth the slower periods. He's probably right in the long run. But I'm 31 and the long run feels abstract when my transmission just died. I think about it though. I pull up the Local 558 wage schedule probably once a quarter and do the math again. The math keeps saying the same thing: more per hour, but fewer guaranteed hours. I can't make the jump until one of those numbers changes.

You came from a warehouse. How does the money compare?

The warehouse paid $13.50 when I left. That was 2018. I was 23. My starting apprentice wage was $14 an hour, so it wasn't even a raise at first. What it was, was a path. The warehouse had no path. You start at $13.50 and six years later you're at $15 and you're still picking orders. The apprenticeship had a destination: journeyman, $27 an hour, the ability to go anywhere and do this work. The money doubled over four years. That doesn't happen in a warehouse.

My buddy Coleton is still at that warehouse. He's making $17 now. He asked me once if becoming an electrician was worth it. I said the money is obviously better, but the thing I didn't expect is that it feels different to be good at something. In the warehouse, I was competent. I picked orders correctly. Nobody cared. Nobody noticed. Here, when I diagnose a problem that the homeowner's been dealing with for six months and I fix it in 45 minutes, they look at me like I'm a genius. I am not a genius. I just understand circuits. But that feeling, someone looking at you with genuine gratitude because you solved their problem, that's worth something that doesn't show up on a W-2.

What's yours?

The ceiling. I'm at $27 an hour. Carl pays his most experienced journeyman, Wendell, $31. Wendell has 22 years of experience. That means my ceiling, working for Carl for the next 20 years, is about $4 more an hour. An extra $8,300 a year. Before taxes. That's my upside.

The only real way to break through the ceiling is to go out on my own or go into project management or estimating. Going on my own means getting my master's license, getting insurance, buying a van, building a customer list. That's a $30,000 to $40,000 startup cost and two to three years of uncertainty. Project management or estimating means leaving the tools, which I'm not ready for at 31. So I'm kind of stuck in the middle. Making decent money. Not enough money to build wealth. Not seeing a path to significantly more without a big, scary leap. Aubrey says I should go for the master's license. She's probably right. But "probably right" and "ready to risk it" are different things when your savings account has $3,000 in it.

You grossed $247,000 last year. What did you actually take home?

About $104,000. Which is a number I should be thrilled about and mostly I am, except that when I say "I made $247K" people hear "she's rich" and when I explain that $143,000 of it went to materials, insurance, payroll, vehicle costs, licensing, accounting fees, and a dozen other line items, they get this look like I'm being evasive. I'm not. That's just the math.

Let me break it down. Materials were about $72,000. That's wire, panels, breakers, boxes, fittings, devices, connectors. I buy most of it from two suppliers. Richie at the Morristown Graybar knows my account number by heart. I go in there probably three times a week. Insurance was $14,200, and that's general liability, the van insurance on two vehicles, and workers' comp for my two employees. Payroll for Benito and Kaz was about $38,000 combined. They're both journeymen. Benito has been with me for six years, Kaz for two. Vehicle costs were $9,600, which includes payments, gas, maintenance on two vans. My accounting software is $55 a month, my accountant is $3,200 a year, my licensing renewal is $400, continuing education is $600. It adds up fast.

So $104,000 take-home on $247,000 revenue. What does that actually feel like?

Complicated. Because $104,000 in New Jersey is a good income. My husband Andrei is an HVAC technician, he works for a bigger company. He makes $72,000 salaried with benefits. Between us, we're at $176,000 household take-home, which in Morristown is, I mean, we're fine. We own a house. Kids are in public school. We go on one vacation a year, usually the Jersey Shore.

But here's the part that gets me. If I went back to working for someone else, which I could do tomorrow, a master electrician in northern New Jersey working for a shop can earn $42 to $48 an hour. At $45 an hour times 2,080 hours, that's $93,600. So I'm making about $10,000 more than I would as an employee, but I'm also doing all the estimating, all the customer calls, all the bookkeeping, all the scheduling, all the permitting, and all the liability. I'm working 55 hours a week instead of 40. My evenings are spent writing estimates on the kitchen table after the kids are in bed. Ten thousand dollars a year buys about 800 extra hours of work. That's $12.50 an hour for the ownership premium. I did that math one night and Andrei told me to stop doing math after 9 PM because it was making me depressed.

Is there a path to making the business more profitable?

Hiring. If I add a third crew, meaning one more journeyman and an apprentice, I can take on more commercial work, which has better margins. Residential service calls average maybe 35% margin. Small commercial jobs, like a restaurant buildout or an office remodel, can hit 45% if I price them right. But hiring is its own risk. Another employee means another $5,000 in workers' comp, another van, another set of tools. I've been looking at the numbers for six months. Richie at Graybar asked me last week if I was growing the business because my material orders have been bigger. I told him I was thinking about it. He said, "That's what you said last year." He's not wrong.

The thing holding me back is the management overhead. Right now, I can run two crews because one of them is me. If I add a third, I can't be on a jobsite and manage three people remotely. I'd have to become a full-time manager, which means I stop doing electrical work and start doing office work. That's a different job. I didn't become an electrician to sit at a desk. Benito could run a crew, he's got the skills for it. I'm just not sure I want to become the person who sends other people to do the work I love while I sit at my kitchen table writing estimates until 10:30.

The part nobody talks about

What's yours?

Collecting money. The work is the easy part. Getting paid for the work is where the real stress is. I have a GC right now who owes me $16,400 for a pharmacy buildout I finished five weeks ago. He approved the invoice. He told me it would be paid in "the next cycle." It's been two cycles. I've called three times. His bookkeeper Christine tells me it's "in the queue." Meanwhile, I paid Benito and Kaz for those hours. I bought $6,800 in materials for that job. That money came out of my operating account and it hasn't come back yet.

When you're a salaried employee, you do the work and the check appears. When you own the shop, you do the work, you invoice the work, and then you wait. Some customers pay in a week. Homeowners usually pay quickly because they're standing right there. But GCs and property management companies, they pay on net-30 or net-45 and "net-30" is a suggestion, not a promise. I've had invoices go 90 days. At 90 days, I've financed $16,000 of someone else's project for free. I'm not a bank. But when you're a three-person shop and the GC has 200 subs, you don't have leverage to demand faster payment. You call Christine. You leave messages. You wait. Andrei asked me once what I'd change about owning the business and I said "I'd make everyone pay me on the day I finish the work." He laughed. I was completely serious.