Union vs non-union electrician pay: the full package

Union construction workers had median weekly earnings of $1,585 in 2025, against $1,132 for nonunion, per the BLS. That's $453 a week in wages, and BLS says part of it comes from region, job mix and firm size, not the card alone. The bigger gap is the package: an IBEW Local 46 journeyman's $77.93 wage is $114.95 an hour once health, pension and training are added.

Both sides have good hands and good shops. This post puts the numbers next to each other so you can compare a union package and an open-shop offer the same way.

01Union vs open shop at a glance

The short version: union scale is usually higher where the union is strong, and the package on top of the wage is bigger and set by contract. Open shop pay is set by the shop, and benefits run from very good to nothing.

02What the BLS says about the gap

BLS union data shows union workers earn more per week, but BLS itself warns the gap isn't all from the card. In the Union Members 2025 release, union members in all industries had median weekly earnings of $1,404 against $1,174 for nonunion workers. BLS adds that "these earnings differences reflect a variety of factors," including the mix of jobs, industries, ages, firm sizes and regions.

The construction rows from BLS Table 4, full-time wage and salary workers, 2025:

A few things to know before you quote those:

• They're medians of weekly earnings, not hourly rates. More hours a week pushes them up.
• They cover all of construction, not just electricians.
• 2025 is an 11-month average. October 2025 wasn't collected because of the federal shutdown, so BLS says it isn't strictly comparable with older years.
• They're wages only. Health and pension money paid into a fund isn't in them.

Times 52 weeks, the construction industry gap is about $23,556 a year ($1,585 x 52 is $82,420; $1,132 x 52 is $58,864). Use that as a rough picture, not as what any one hand would gain.

03How many electricians are union

Most electricians work open shop, and union hands are concentrated in certain metros. In 2025, 11.1% of construction industry workers were union members and 12.0% were covered by a contract, per BLS Table 3.

On the electrical side, the open-shop trade group IEC puts merit shop firms at about 81% of the electrical contracting market. Its 2026 economic impact study (2025 data) counts 400,704 electricians at merit shop contractors, out of about 548,000 at electrical contracting firms. That's "nearly three-quarters" of the electrical contracting workforce, in IEC's words.

What that means for pay: in a city where the local is strong, union scale often sets the top of the market and open shops compete against it. Where the local is small, the open-shop rate is the market.

04Three wage sheets next to the local market

The cleanest way to see the gap is one local's wage sheet next to the BLS median for the same metro. Here are three, with the dates on each.

Where these come from:

• Local 46 inside construction sheet, effective Aug 3, 2026 to Jan 31, 2027 (wage sheet). The $114.95 includes small employer fees and funds on top of the $114.21 subtotal.
• Local 48 general journeyman inside wireman sheet, effective Jan 1, 2026 (wage sheet). $65.50 wage plus $33.24 in employer-paid fringes.
• Local 11 inside wiremen's rates, effective Oct 26, 2026 to Jan 31, 2027 (wage bulletin). The sheet lists fringes separately, so we added them: $67.00 wage, NEBF at 3% ($2.01), local pension $18.12, health $16.64, training $0.86, LMCC $0.55.
• Metro medians are BLS OEWS, May 2025, for Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (BLS OEWS).

Now the caveats, because they matter:

1. The BLS median includes union hands. It's everyone working as an electrician in the metro: union, open shop, apprentices, maintenance, residential. It's not an open-shop number.
2. It includes apprentices. A first-year apprentice and a 20-year foreman both count.
3. It's straight time and wages only. No OT, no per diem, no benefits.
4. The dates don't match. The BLS figures are May 2025. The sheets are 2026.

So the honest read is this: a journeyman on the union sheet earns well above the middle of the whole local trade at straight time. It doesn't tell you what an open-shop journeyman with your years makes in the same city. For that, you need open-shop offers or ads in the same area. What a journeyman makes in 2026 has the state and metro tables.

05Why a package and a wage aren't the same number

A package is everything the contractor pays per hour you work. Your wage is only the part that hits your check. Mixing them up is the most common mistake in this argument, on both sides.

Local 48's sheet spells it out. For every hour worked:

• $65.50 wage
• $11.10 to the health trust (medical, dental, vision for the family)
• $2.65 to a flexible benefit plan
• $19.49 to three retirement plans: $11.40 to a local pension, $1.97 (3%) to NEBF, the national pension, and $6.12 to an annuity
• $98.74 total package

Then money comes out of the wage. Dues total $2.95 an hour, which the sheet says leaves an "effective take-home wage" of $62.55 before taxes. Another 4% ($2.62) goes into a vacation account in your name. That's still your money. It just isn't in the weekly check.

Local 46 works the same way: 6% of gross is deducted for the vacation plan. At $77.93 that's about $4.68 an hour set aside (our math).

So when an open-shop hand compares his $50 rate to "$98 an hour union," he's comparing a wage to a package. When a union hand compares his $65.50 to an open-shop $50, he's leaving out what the open shop pays for health and the 401k. Line them up wage to wage and package to package. How to read a union wage sheet walks through one sheet line by line and converts an open-shop offer into the same columns.

06Turning an open-shop offer into a package

To compare fairly, add up what the open shop pays per hour on top of your rate. Here's an example, not a real offer:

• Rate: $50 an hour
• Shop pays $900 a month toward your health plan: $900 x 12 is $10,800, divided by 2,080 hours is about $5.19 an hour
• 4% 401k match, if you put in 4%: $2.00 an hour
• 10 days PTO plus 6 paid holidays, 128 hours at $50: $6,400 a year, about $3.08 an hour

Package: $50 + $5.19 + $2.00 + $3.08 = $60.27 an hour.

One wrinkle: the union "vacation" comes out of your own wage, while open-shop PTO is paid by the employer on top. So open-shop PTO belongs in the open-shop package, and the union vacation deduction doesn't belong in the union one. Neither side's package counts the employer's payroll taxes.

What the benefits are worth to you depends on what you need. If you're on a spouse's health plan, the shop's health money may be worth little to you. If you're covering a family, it's worth a lot. What benefits an open-shop electrician should expect has the BLS numbers on who gets what.

07Retirement is where the two sides differ most

Union retirement is usually a pension plus an annuity, paid per hour. Open-shop retirement is usually a 401k match, and many shops don't offer one.

Per the BLS Employee Benefits survey, March 2025, 72% of private industry workers had access to a retirement plan, 70% to a defined contribution plan like a 401k, and only 14% to a defined benefit pension.

On the union side, the plans pay on hours worked. Local 48's sheet says its local pension and NEBF both vest after five years, and the annuity is "100% vested from day one." NEBF credits $32 a month at retirement for each year with at least 300 hours, per the same sheet. So 25 years earns $800 a month from NEBF alone, at the current rate.

On the open-shop side, ask three things, as IEC itself advises in its union and non-union career guide: "Be sure to ask about vesting, match percentages, and out-of-pocket caps."

Neither is automatically better. A pension pays for life but you need the years. A 401k is yours to move but only grows if you and the shop put money in.

08Hours, overtime and steady work

Contracts set the OT rules on union jobs. Open shops follow federal and state law and their own policy. That changes what 50 or 60 hours a week pays.

• Local 46: the first 2 hours past 8 on weekdays and the first 8 on Saturday are time and a half. Everything else, Sundays and holidays included, is double time.
• Local 11: double time after 10 hours on weekdays and Saturdays.
• Federal law: time and a half over 40 hours in a workweek, per DOL Fact Sheet #23. A few states add daily overtime. Many open shops pay only what the law requires.

On a 6-10s job, double time versus time and a half adds up fast. What 6-10s really pay runs the math by schedule.

Steady work is a separate question from rate. Union hands work off the out-of-work list and wait for calls between jobs. Many travel to other locals on Book 2 when home is slow. How Book 1 and Book 2 work covers that. Open-shop hands depend on the shop's backlog: a shop with steady work keeps you, a shop between jobs lays off. Count the weeks you'd really work in a year on each side, not just the rate.

09What contractors are seeing

One national electrical contractor told us a lot of the big jobs coming up in one region they work are union jobs, while they were trying to man their own job open shop in the same market.

When union and open-shop jobs are both manning up in the same area, they're after the same journeymen. That's when knowing both numbers, wage and package, pays off for you.

10How to decide for yourself

Compare the two the same way and the right answer for you usually shows up. The same method works for any two offers; comparing two electrician job offers adds per diem, job length, trucks and the foreman.

1. Wage to wage. Union wage after dues vs the open-shop rate.
2. Package to package. Union package vs open-shop rate plus what the shop pays for health, retirement and PTO.
3. Hours a year. Weeks you'd actually work, and how much OT, at what multiplier.
4. Retirement. Pension years and vesting vs 401k match and vesting.
5. Your life. Dispatch and travel on one side. Picking your shop and talking your own rate on the other.

Before you weigh either side, know what open-shop hands with your license make where you live. Run your Pay Check to see what electricians with your license make near you. Takes about a minute and your boss never hears about it.

FAQFAQs