Electrician Hourly Rates in 2026
The Producer Price Index for electrical contractors climbed from about 175.4 in December 2025 to roughly 179.0 by March 2026, reflecting rising input costs across the trade.
Why the range is so wide
There's a real difference between what an electrician earns as an employee (commonly cited around $30-60/hour in wage-level data) and what a contracting business bills a customer once overhead, insurance, licensing, and vehicle costs are factored in. That gap explains most of the spread between 'wage' figures and 'billable rate' figures reported across different industry sources.
What's driving rates upward in 2026
A persistent, structural labor shortage is the biggest factor: industry estimates put annual electrician job openings around 81,000 nationally, with a significant share of the current union workforce nearing retirement age, keeping upward pressure on both wages and billed rates.