How to tell if your journeyman pay rate is competitive

Your journeyman rate is competitive when it sits above the BLS median for electricians in your metro, lands in the middle of what live ads near you pay, and doesn't look silly next to the local Davis-Bacon electrician rate. You can pull all three numbers in about 30 minutes. Below the metro median on BLS data (May 2025), you're under market for a carded J-man.

01Why "competitive" is hard to pin down

Every source you check gives a different number, so you need three of them, not one.

One national electrical contractor told us they'd been "going higher and higher on the pay rate so we can be competitive" and still didn't know where competitive was. Their plan was to "do a little bit of research, maybe on Indeed." Ads are a good start, but half say DOE, travel ads fold per diem into the headline, and staffing ads show what the agency pays the hand, not what it bills you.

BLS gives you the spread for your whole metro. The Davis-Bacon rate tells you what union scale or the prevailing rate looks like. Live ads tell you what shops are offering this month. When all three agree, you have your answer. For the bigger picture on setting a rate from scratch, see how much to pay a journeyman electrician in 2026.

02The 30-minute method

Three steps, about ten minutes each. Write every number on one sheet.

Step 1: Pull the BLS percentiles for your metro (10 minutes)

The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey publishes electrician pay (occupation 47-2111) for every metro area, with the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th and 90th percentile hourly wage. The BLS OEWS electricians page gives the national numbers and metro means. For your metro's percentiles, use the May 2025 metropolitan area file on the OEWS tables page. Write down the 25th, median, 75th and 90th.

For reference, the national numbers for May 2025 are:

Read those numbers with four facts in mind:

• Apprentices are in it. OEWS counts every wage and salary worker coded as an electrician, apprentices and some helpers included. That drags the low end down.
• It's straight time only. No overtime, per diem, shift premium or fringe benefits.
• It's dated. The newest set is May 2025. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory construction workers rose 5.0% in the year to August 2026 (AGC, Sept 4, 2026), so a May 2025 percentile reads a few percent low today.
• Union and open shop are mixed together. In a union-heavy metro, union scale pulls the top percentiles up.

Here's our read of what each percentile means for a licensed journeyman. It's a rule of thumb, not a BLS definition:

• 25th: apprentice and helper money. A carded J-man at this number is either underpaid or not really a J-man.
• Median: half of all electricians, apprentices included, make less. For a J-man with his card, treat it as the floor.
• 75th: where an experienced open-shop journeyman usually lands.
• 90th: foremen, specialty hands, and union scale in union markets.

Step 2: Look up the Davis-Bacon electrician rate (10 minutes)

The Davis-Bacon Act covers federal and federally assisted construction contracts "in excess of $2,000," and workers on them get "no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits" (US Department of Labor). The rates are published by county on SAM.gov.

Search SAM.gov for your county and pick the Building determination (commercial work). Scroll to the line that starts with ELEC or says ELECTRICIAN. You'll see a wage and a separate fringe number.

Check the code in front of the rate:

• A union code like ELEC0046-003 means a union rate prevailed in the survey. That's the local's inside wireman scale.
• UAVG means a weighted average of union rates.
• SU means a survey rate: either a single non-union rate or a weighted average that can mix union and non-union rates.

You don't need to bid federal work for this to matter. If the code is union, it's the number your hands compare you to. If it's SU, it's a rough open-shop yardstick. One catch: determinations lag. The rate carries its own effective date, so check it against the local's current wage sheet if one is posted. More on how prevailing wage works in Davis-Bacon for electrical contractors.

Step 3: Read 10 live ads (10 minutes)

Search the job boards for "journeyman electrician" in your metro, posted in the last 14 days, and copy down 10 ads that show a number.

• Same class only. Carded journeymen. Skip apprentice, helper and foreman ads.
• Write the low and high of each range, take the midpoint, then take the middle of your 10 midpoints. That's your ad number.
• Pull travel ads out. A travel ad pays per diem on top. Compare its hourly to your hourly and the per diem separately. See what per diem to offer traveling electricians.
• Staffing ads are pay to the hand, not the bill rate. They're still useful market data.

Ads are best in pay transparency states, where the law makes employers post a range. Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to include a wage scale or salary range (Washington L&I). New York requires employers with 4 or more employees to post the minimum and maximum pay (New York DOL). Other states have their own rules; see which states require pay ranges in electrician job ads.

03Worked example: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue

Here are the first two steps for Seattle, a union-heavy market in a pay transparency state.

The Davis-Bacon line carries the code ELEC0046, so it's Local 46's scale. It still showed the August 2025 rate in October 2026, about $2 under the local's current $77.93. That's the lag.

Now step 3, as an example. Say your ten Seattle ads give midpoints from $48 to $66 and the middle of the ten is $56.

What that tells you:

• $44 an hour is under the BLS median and under every ad. Under market. You'll get apprentices and short stays.
• $52 to $58 sits between the median and the 75th and around the ad middle. At market for an open shop. It fills, just not fast.
• $60 to $70 is the 75th to 90th band. That's where you pick from the good hands instead of taking who calls.

Notice what that does to the "big band" contractors talk about. The contractor we mentioned saw the market running from "$40 to $45 an hour up to like $80." A $40 rate is just under the national 75th percentile ($40.36). In Seattle it's in the bottom half. Same rate, different market. Why the band runs that wide is its own post: why journeyman pay runs from $40 to $80 an hour.

04What at market vs under looks like

Line your rate up against the three numbers and read across.

The Davis-Bacon rate sits off to the side. If yours is a union-code rate, your wage will usually be under it, and that's normal for open shop. The fair test is your wage plus what you spend on benefits per hour against the wage plus fringe on the determination.

The PM on that same call put the floor more bluntly. A licensed electrician who'd take $25 an hour, he said, "needs to see a doctor."

05When the three numbers disagree

They will. Here's how to break the tie.

1. Ads run above BLS. Trust the ads. They're from this month and BLS is from May 2025.
2. BLS runs above the ads. The union share is pulling the top percentiles up. Open-shop ads are the better match for an open-shop rate.
3. Your job is travel work. Compare hourly to hourly and handle per diem as its own number.
4. You need a specialty hand. Medium voltage, controls or industrial terminations can justify a rate above the 75th. Pay that hand a premium instead of raising the whole crew.

If the answer is a raise, run the cost first. On 6-10s, a $1 raise is $70 a week per man before payroll taxes (40 hours at $1 plus 20 overtime hours at $1.50), or $700 a week for a 10-hand crew. See what a $1 raise really costs an electrical contractor.

06Run it again when things change

Redo the 30 minutes when BLS posts new OEWS data each spring, when your county's determination updates, and any time an ad sits a week with no calls from journeymen. An ad that only draws apprentices is a rate telling you something.

If you're short-handed now and want to see what your rate pulls, apply here and we'll see if we can put 5 licensed electricians in front of you in 14 days.

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