Why you can't find electricians: the 2026 numbers

You can't find electricians because almost nobody in construction is out of work. Construction unemployment hit 3.1% in August 2026, the lowest for any month in 26 years of data (AGC). The BLS expects about 72,700 electrician openings a year through 2035, and data center construction spending is up more than 73% in a year, pulling the hands that do exist.

01How many electricians does the US need?

The BLS projects about 72,700 openings for electricians every year from 2025 to 2035, most of them to replace people who retire or leave the trade.

From the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, updated August 27, 2026:

The growth number is the small one. 75,900 new jobs over ten years is about 7,600 a year. The other 65,000 or so openings each year are replacements (our math). The shortage is mostly a replacement problem: hands aging out and leaving faster than apprentices top out.

02How many electricians are close to retirement?

About 18% of working electricians are 55 or older, by the Current Population Survey. ABC's chief economist puts it at "approximately one-fifth."

BLS Current Population Survey, 2025 annual averages (11 months; October was missing):

The rows add to 1,062,000 because BLS rounds each one. 55 and older is 191,000 of 1,063,000, or 18.0% (our math). The median age is 39.6.

A note on counts: the CPS is a household survey and counts about 1,063,000 people who work as electricians, including the self-employed. The BLS employment counts above use different methods. Don't mix the two in one sentence.

The age picture cuts both ways. There's a real group of hands within ten years of retirement. There's also a big group under 35, which means a lot of your applicants are early in their careers. That fits what contractors tell us about job posts that pull apprentices instead of journeymen.

03How tight is construction hiring right now?

Tighter than at any time in the data. Few people are laid off, few are out of work, and openings stay hard to fill.

One honest wrinkle: construction's job openings rate has come down. The annual average was 4.9% in 2022 and 2.8% in 2025, per BLS JOLTS. Contractors posted fewer openings, but the people to fill them still aren't out of work. When layoffs are at a record low, the good hand you want is already working for someone else.

ABC's chief economist, Anirban Basu, expects nonresidential contractors to see "faster labor cost escalation due to these shortages in certain occupational categories like electricians" and HVAC workers.

04What do contractors say about hiring?

Most contractors have craft openings they can't fill, and half say the people who apply don't have the skills or the licenses.

The 2026 AGC and NCCER survey (1,830 respondents, fielded July and August 2026) is the biggest annual read on construction hiring:

The survey covers all of construction, not just electrical. But "lacks the license" hits electrical harder than most trades, because a helper and a licensed journeyman are not interchangeable on your job. One national electrical contractor told us they kept getting "so-called journeymen that can't bend conduit," some holding only apprentice cards. That's what "candidates lack the skills" looks like on a job site, and it's why screening matters more in a tight market. Our post on what a bad journeyman hire costs puts numbers on it.

05Where are the electricians going?

A lot of them are going to data centers, power work and the big contractors who win it.

Data center construction is the fastest-growing part of the market:

• Spending. Data center construction spending rose 7.5% in August 2026 alone and is "up more than 73% over the past 12 months," growing at a 149% annualized pace since March, per ABC's read of Census data.
• Who gets the work. ABC's October 2026 backlog survey found about 15% of members have data center work. That's 39% of contractors with over $100 million in revenue, against about 1 in 10 below $100 million. Firms with data center work had 11.3 months of backlog, three months more than firms without.
• What it does to everyone else. In the AGC and NCCER survey, 28% of firms worked on a data center in the past year. Of those, 58% said it increased competition for skilled workers and 49% saw more wage pressure.

If a data center job is pulling hands in your area, read how to hire electricians when data centers pull every hand.

The shortage is also local. AGC found only 177 of 360 metro areas (49%) added construction jobs from August 2025 to August 2026, while 126 lost jobs and 57 held flat. AGC's chief economist credited data centers, power projects and advanced manufacturing for the gains. If you work in a metro with a big data center or plant going up, you feel this more than a contractor two hours away.

06Why aren't good electricians on the job boards?

Because the good ones already have jobs, and with layoffs at a record low, few of them are looking.

The data backs that up: low unemployment, low layoffs, and a quits rate under the private-sector average (1.8% vs 2.1% in August 2026). A working J-man changes jobs when someone gives him a reason, not because he's scrolling a job board on a Tuesday.

That's why so many contractors say their posts bring helpers and apprentices. One national electrical contractor told us that when they posted in local Facebook groups, "everybody that was applying for the job was inexperienced or they were just new to the trade." To reach the working hands, you have to go to them. Our guide on where to find journeyman electricians to hire lists every channel and what it's good for.

07Is it a shortage of people or a shortage of pay?

Both, and the pay side is the part you control.

The people side is real: replacement openings, an aging slice of the trade, and half of firms saying applicants lack the skills or licenses. No pay rate creates journeymen who don't exist.

The pay side is just as real. More than 8 in 10 firms raised hourly craft pay at least as much as the year before, and construction hourly earnings rose 5.0% in a year. If your rate was set two years ago, you're competing against shops that moved and you didn't. No amount of recruiting fills a job priced under the market.

Union and open-shop contractors both feel this. In markets where a lot of the big work is union, open-shop contractors have their own hiring problem, which we cover in hiring open-shop journeymen in a union-heavy market.

08What it means for your crew

You can't fix the national numbers. You can plan around them.

1. Start manning the job when you win it, not when it starts. If 87% of firms are hiring, the hand you want in March has to hear from you in January. See how to plan manpower for an electrical job you just won.
2. Know what being short costs you. Overtime, delays, backcharges, bids you pass on. Put a dollar figure on it so you can judge what's worth spending to fix it. What a short-handed crew really costs walks through the math.
3. Check your rate against this year's market, not last year's. If 8 in 10 firms raised pay, standing still is a pay cut relative to the market.
4. Screen for the card and the skill. Half of firms say applicants lack them. Look up the license, ask what he's bent and terminated, and watch him work before you put him on a crew.
5. Recruit working hands, not job seekers. Tell them the whole check up front: rate, hours, per diem with its unit, and how long the work runs.
6. Keep the ones you have. In a market this tight, replacing a J-man costs more than keeping him. Our guide on how to keep good electricians from leaving covers what works.

If you're short on a job you've already won, apply here and we'll see if we can put 5 licensed electricians in front of you in 14 days. If we don't book you 5 in 14 days, you don't pay.

09What to watch in 2027

A few numbers will tell you whether it's getting easier or harder:

• ABC's 2027 estimate. ABC says the industry needs to attract 349,000 net new workers in 2026 and 456,000 in 2027.
• New BLS wage data. The May 2026 OEWS wage estimates should come out in 2027. That's the next national and state read on what electricians earn.
• Data center spending. Census releases construction spending monthly, and ABC tracks backlog monthly. If data center spending keeps climbing at this pace, expect more pressure on hands and rates near those projects.
• The next AGC and NCCER survey, usually out in late summer.

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