How much to pay an apprentice electrician or helper

Union wage sheets start a first-year apprentice electrician at 40% to 47% of the journeyman rate and step him up to 85% by the last year. In 2026, IBEW Local 46 runs 42% to 85% and IBEW Local 11 runs 40% to 85%. For helpers, the BLS national median was $20.51 an hour (OEWS, May 2025).

01Helper vs apprentice: what you're paying for

A helper is a job. An apprentice is a job plus a path to a card. That difference should show up in how you pay them.

The federal standards for registered programs require "a progressively increasing schedule of wages to be paid to the apprentice consistent with the skill acquired" (29 CFR 29.5). A helper has no schedule unless you give him one, which is why good helpers leave for shops that offer a program. If you're weighing which to hire, see who to hire next as your shop grows.

02What union wage sheets pay apprentices

Union inside wireman ladders are the best public reference for apprentice pay, because the percentages are printed. Even if you're open shop, they show how a step ladder is built.

Here's IBEW Local 46 (King, Kitsap, Jefferson and Clallam counties in Washington), inside construction, effective Aug 3, 2026 (Local 46 wage sheet):

The last column is an example only. It applies Local 46's percentages to a $40 journeyman rate so you can see what the same ladder looks like in an open shop. Set your own base from your market; how much to pay a journeyman electrician in 2026 covers that.

IBEW Local 11 (Los Angeles County) uses 10 six-month periods instead of hour bands, with rates effective Oct 26, 2026 (Local 11 inside wage rates):

Two notes when you read these. Union wages don't include the fringe package (health, pension, training), which the employer pays on top. And both locals are high-cost metros, so the dollars won't match your market. The percentages travel. The dollars don't.

03What BLS says about the floor

BLS doesn't publish apprentice pay by year, but two numbers show where the bottom of the market sits.

From BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national, hourly:

Sources: BLS OEWS, Helpers, Electricians and BLS OEWS, Electricians. These are straight-time wages with no overtime or benefits. BLS counted 63,630 electrician helpers employed nationally.

How to use them:

• The electrician 10th percentile ($20.50) includes apprentices. OEWS counts apprentices inside the electrician code, so the bottom of that range is a rough read on what early apprentices make nationally.
• The helper median ($20.51) is what an untrained helper can get. If your first-year apprentice makes less than a helper down the street, you'll lose him before school starts.
• Check your state and metro. National numbers run low in high-cost areas and high in cheap ones. Your metro's OEWS line is on the same BLS page.

Notice the problem in the Local 46 example column above. A 42% start on a $40 J-man rate is $16.80, under the national helper median. If your journeyman rate is near $40, a start closer to 50% ($20) lines up with the helper median. That's our read of the numbers, not a survey figure, so check it against ads near you.

04How to build your own pay ladder

Build the ladder once, write it down and give every apprentice a copy on day one.

1. Pick your base. Use the journeyman rate you actually pay, not the union scale.
2. Set the start. Check the start against your metro's helper median and local ads. A start under helper pay doesn't fill.
3. Set 6 to 10 steps to about 85%. Tie each step to hours worked. For registered apprentices, also tie it to passing the school year.
4. Add a skills check if you want, but don't let it stall the raise. If a step needs a skills signoff, give the foreman two weeks to do it, not "whenever."
5. Put it in your program standards. If you're registered, the schedule goes in the standards. See how to start a registered electrical apprenticeship program.
6. Price it. Each step is a raise, and raises cost more than the hourly number. What a $1 raise really costs an electrical contractor runs that math.

A worked example of what one step costs on 6-10s: going from $20.80 to $26.00 is a $5.20 raise. At 40 straight hours plus 20 overtime hours at time and a half, that's $5.20 x 40 = $208 plus $5.20 x 1.5 x 20 = $156, or $364 a week per apprentice before payroll taxes.

05Overtime, prevailing wage and the other pay rules

Apprentices and helpers are paid hourly and get overtime like anyone else. A few more rules to know:

• Overtime. Time and a half over 40 in a workweek under federal law, and some states add daily overtime. School hours are a separate question; ask your sponsor and your accountant how your program treats them.
• Davis-Bacon jobs. Only apprentices individually registered in a registered program can be paid below the journeyman rate on the wage determination, and only up to the program's ratio (29 CFR 5.5(a)(4)). An unregistered helper isn't an apprentice under that rule. More in Davis-Bacon for electrical contractors.
• Ratio. Hiring more apprentices than your journeymen can supervise is a violation, whatever you pay them. See apprentice to journeyman ratio rules by state.
• State minimum wage. Some state and city minimums are close to a first-year apprentice rate. Check yours every January.

06What apprentices cost when you rent them

One national electrical contractor told us an agency sent them three apprentices billed at about $87.50 an hour, plus per diem. Compare that to the ladder above. Even the top step of Local 46's apprentice wage ($66.24) is under that bill rate, and an open-shop first-year on a $40 base is $16.80 to $20.

Paying your own apprentices well is cheaper than renting someone else's. The catch is that you have to keep them long enough to get the work back.

If you need licensed journeymen to run work and train the apprentices you've got, apply here and we'll see if we can put 5 licensed electricians in front of you in 14 days.

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