Electrician Salary in Texas: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

The median electrician in Texas earns $58,570 a year, or about $28.16 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field lands between $37,920 at the 10th percentile and $80,300 at the 90th. Texas charges no state income tax, so more of that gross stays in your pocket than it would in most states.

How Texas compares to the national average

The national median for electricians is $63,190 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). At $58,570, Texas sits $4,620 below that national figure. On paper that looks like a discount, and in raw gross terms it is. But the gross number is only half the story in Texas, because the state collects no income tax. A worker in a high-tax state needs a meaningfully larger paycheck just to match the same net, so the headline gap shrinks once you look at what actually lands in the bank. We break that out in the take-home section below.

The Texas mean wage for the trade is $59,280, slightly above the median of $58,570. When the mean runs higher than the median, it tells you a thin band of high earners at the top is pulling the average up while the typical worker sits a notch lower. That pattern is normal in skilled trades, where a master electrician running commercial jobs or supervising a crew can earn far more than a residential service tech.

Texas employs roughly 76,770 electricians, one of the largest state workforces for the trade in the country. That scale matters. A deep labor market means more employers competing for licensed hands, more job sites within commuting distance, and more room to switch jobs for a raise without relocating. The spread from the 10th percentile at $37,920 to the 90th at $80,300 is wide, which is good news: it means there is real headroom to climb from an apprentice wage toward a senior one without leaving the state.

Electrician pay in Texas by experience

Experience is the single biggest lever on an electrician’s pay in Texas. A first-year apprentice and a journeyman with a decade of commercial work hold the same job title but sit at opposite ends of the wage scale. The percentile bands from the BLS map cleanly onto a typical career arc, from helper to licensed journeyman to master or foreman.

The entry rung at $37,920 is where most people start, often as a helper or registered apprentice learning the code on the job. That figure is real money for someone who walked in without a degree, and unlike a four-year graduate, an apprentice earns it while training rather than paying tuition. The climb from the 10th to the 25th percentile, from $37,920 to $46,670, is usually the fastest of a career, because it tracks the early years when raw skill and code knowledge compound quickly. That first stretch alone is worth $8,750 in annual pay.

The median at $58,570 is roughly where a licensed journeyman lands. This is the broad middle of the trade, the worker who can be handed a set of prints and run a job without a master looking over their shoulder. Crossing from the median to the 75th percentile, from $58,570 to $71,130, is a $12,560 jump, and it usually comes from one of three things: moving into industrial or commercial work, picking up a supervisory role, or earning a master license. That single step is worth more in annual dollars than the entire climb from entry to early career.

At the top, the 90th percentile pays $80,300. These are master electricians, foremen, and estimators, the people running crews, pulling permits under their own license, and bidding work. The gap between the 75th and 90th percentiles, $71,130 to $80,300, is $9,170, and it is the hardest stretch to earn because it usually requires either a license upgrade, a move into management, or specialization in high-demand work like industrial controls or high-voltage systems. The full spread from entry to senior is $42,380, which is the clearest proof that in this trade, what you know and what you are licensed to do drive your paycheck far more than your job title does. For comparison, the early-career worker at $46,670 already earns $8,750 more than the entry rung, so even the first few years on the tools pay back quickly.

Electrician salary by Texas metro

Where you work inside Texas moves your pay, though less dramatically than the experience gap. The five largest metros for the trade cluster in a tight band, and the highest-paying one might surprise you. Here is how they stack up, with median pay and the size of each local workforce.

Beaumont-Port Arthur tops the list at $61,380, which runs $2,810 above the statewide median of $58,570. That is no accident. The Gulf Coast around Beaumont is dense with refineries and petrochemical plants, and industrial electrical work pays a premium over residential service. The local workforce is small at 2,000, but the pay reflects the specialized, high-stakes nature of plant work.

Austin follows at $60,390, the highest among the big metros, with 7,340 electricians on the job. The tech-driven building boom and a higher local cost of living both push wages up there. Houston pays $59,180 and carries one of the two largest workforces in the state at 19,730, fed by its enormous industrial and commercial base. Dallas-Fort Worth is the single biggest employer of electricians in Texas at 20,930, paying $59,010, a hair below Houston but with the deepest pool of jobs anywhere in the state. The two big metros together employ 40,660 electricians, more than half the state total.

San Antonio sits at the bottom of this group at $57,010, which is $1,560 under the state median and $4,370 below Beaumont. For an electrician weighing a move, the spread between the highest and lowest of these five metros is $4,370 in median pay, a real difference, but one you should always weigh against local housing costs. A higher Austin paycheck can vanish into a higher rent, while a smaller San Antonio one stretches further. The right comparison is always pay minus housing, not pay alone. If you are early in your career and want volume of opportunity, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston give you the most employers to choose from. If you are chasing the top of the wage scale, the industrial Gulf Coast work around Beaumont is where the premium sits.

Take-home pay after tax in Texas

Gross pay is not what you live on. The number that matters is what survives federal income tax and FICA, and in Texas that is where the trade gets a quiet boost, because there is no state income tax to subtract. Here is the after-tax breakdown at four points along the career ladder, using 2026 tax assumptions for a single filer.

The state-tax column reads $0 all the way down, and that is the whole point of working the trade in Texas. A median electrician keeps $49,099 of a $58,570 gross, an effective tax rate of about 16.2%, and that works out to $4,092 a month. An entry worker at $37,920 keeps $32,507, an effective rate of just 14.3%, while at the senior end the rate ticks up to 19.2% as more income hits higher federal brackets, leaving $64,877 net, or $5,406 a month. The reason the rate climbs as you earn more is the progressive federal bracket structure, not anything Texas does, because Texas takes nothing at any income level.

Now the comparison that an AI overview cannot hand you. Take that same median electrician and drop them into California, a high-tax state. On identical gross pay, the Texas worker nets $49,099 while the California worker nets $47,340. That is a $1,759 gap in real, spendable income every single year, on the exact same paycheck, purely because California taxes wages and Texas does not. Over a decade that gap is worth more than a new work truck. It is the reason the $4,620 gross shortfall against the national median overstates how far behind Texas electricians really are once the tax math is done.

Here is the framing to carry with you: net pay minus local housing is the number that actually decides your standard of living. A bigger gross in a state that taxes it hard and charges high rent can leave you with less to spend than a smaller Texas gross that the state never touches. Before you accept or reject any offer, run it through the Texas paycheck calculator and subtract what housing costs in that specific metro. When tax season comes, software like TurboTax can confirm your effective rate and catch deductions a contractor or tradesperson often misses.

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How to earn more as an electrician in Texas

The percentile spread shows the ceiling is $80,300 and beyond, more than double the entry wage of $37,920. Closing the distance between where you are and that ceiling comes down to a handful of concrete moves, not luck. Here is what actually shifts the number in Texas.

• Earn your journeyman, then master license. The biggest single jump in the data, the $12,560 step from the median of $58,570 to the 75th percentile at $71,130, tracks closely with licensing. A master license lets you pull permits and bid work under your own name, which is where the top of the wage scale lives.
• Move into industrial or commercial work. Beaumont-Port Arthur pays $61,380, the highest metro in the state, because of refinery and plant work. Industrial electrical jobs reward specialized skill with pay well above residential service.
• Specialize in high-demand systems. Industrial controls, high-voltage, instrumentation, and solar are areas where employers pay up for hands that are hard to replace. A focused certification in one of these can lift you toward the $71,130 to $80,300 band.
• Step into supervision or estimating. Foremen and estimators sit near the 90th percentile because they run crews and control bids. The move from working the tools to running the job is one of the surest paths past $71,130.
• Relocate within Texas for the right premium. Switching from a $57,010 San Antonio market to a $61,380 Beaumont one is a real raise of $4,370 at the median, as long as the housing math works in your favor.
• Keep your code knowledge current. Continuing education and supplemental coursework through platforms like Coursera can sharpen the controls, safety, and project-management skills that separate a journeyman from a foreman.

Job outlook for electricians in Texas

The headline number for the outlook is the size of the workforce itself: 76,770 electricians employed across Texas, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). That is one of the largest state totals in the country, and the two big metros alone, Dallas-Fort Worth at 20,930 and Houston at 19,730, together account for more than half of it. A workforce that large signals steady, broad demand rather than a niche tied to one employer or one boom.

The trade is anchored to construction, industrial maintenance, and the energy sector, all of which run deep in Texas. Refineries and plants on the Gulf Coast need licensed hands for maintenance and turnarounds, the tech corridor around Austin keeps new commercial buildings coming, and the sheer population growth of Dallas and Houston feeds constant residential and commercial work. With 7,340 electricians in Austin and 6,660 in San Antonio, even the mid-sized metros support thousands of jobs, so an electrician rarely has to bet a career on a single city. When you are ready to test the market or compare offers, a job board like ZipRecruiter shows what local employers are paying right now, which is the fastest way to know whether your current wage is keeping pace.

Related and higher-paying trades in Texas

Electricians sit in a cluster of skilled Texas trades that pay close to one another, so it pays to know exactly where the lines fall. Against the electrician median of $58,570, here is how two of the most common neighboring trades compare in this state.

A plumber in Texas earns a median of $59,840, which is $1,270 more than an electrician here. An HVAC technician in Texas earns a median of $57,760, which is $810 less than an electrician. The three trades sit within roughly a thousand dollars of each other at the median, so the choice between them comes down far more to the type of work, the local demand, and where the ceiling sits than to the starting median.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (2025); 2026 federal tax and FICA assumptions for take-home estimates. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.