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

A licensed electrician in Georgia earns a median of $58,320 a year, or about $28.04 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the trade falls between $37,180 at the 10th percentile and $84,000 at the 90th. Where you land inside that range depends on your experience, your metro, and whether you carry a license and run jobs.

How Georgia compares to the national average

The national median for electricians is $63,190 a year, per the BLS (2025). Georgia’s median of $58,320 sits $4,870 below that. That’s a real gap, but it lines up with what you’d expect from a state where the cost of living, and especially housing, runs lower than the U.S. average. A dollar of Georgia pay stretches further than a dollar earned in a coastal metro, so the headline gap overstates the difference in actual buying power.

The spread inside Georgia is wide. The 10th percentile earns $37,180 while the 90th earns $84,000, a difference of $46,820 between the bottom and top of the field. That spread is the real story here. The state median tells you where a typical electrician lands, but the gap between a green apprentice and a licensed journeyman running service calls is what shapes a career. The 25th percentile sits at $46,640 and the 75th at $76,490, so the middle half of Georgia electricians earns somewhere between those two figures.

Georgia’s mean of $61,090 runs higher than its median of $58,320. When the average sits above the midpoint, it means a smaller group of high earners at the top is pulling the average up, which is exactly what you see in a licensed trade where master electricians and specialty contractors clear well into the $80,000 range.

Electrician pay in Georgia by experience

Experience is the single biggest lever on electrician pay in Georgia. A first-year apprentice and a licensed journeyman with a decade in the field are doing related work, but they are not paid anywhere close to the same. The table below maps the BLS percentiles to the stages of a real Georgia electrician’s career.

An apprentice starting out at the 10th percentile earns $37,180. That’s the floor, and it’s where most people in the trade begin while they log hours toward a license. Move up to the 25th percentile at $46,640 and you’ve cleared the apprenticeship phase and started running work with less supervision. The jump from entry to early career is about $9,460, and it tends to come fast in the first few years as you become useful on a crew without constant oversight.

The median at $58,320 is where a competent, experienced electrician sits. Getting from the 25th percentile to the median is another $11,680 of annual pay, and it usually tracks with getting licensed and being trusted to run a job from rough-in to final inspection. From the median, the climb to the 75th percentile at $76,490 is the steepest single step on the ladder, $18,170. That’s the jump from a solid journeyman to someone who carries a master license, leads crews, or specializes in higher-value work like industrial controls or service.

The top of the field, the 90th percentile, earns $84,000. The gap from the 75th to the 90th is $7,510, smaller than the step below it, which tells you the ceiling for a working electrician in Georgia firms up around the low-to-mid $80,000s unless you cross over into contracting or estimating. Each of these moves is something you control: hours logged, license earned, specialty chosen.

It helps to see these stages as raises rather than abstract percentiles. An apprentice at $37,180 who reaches the median is looking at $21,140 more per year, a 57 percent increase from the floor. Keep climbing from the median to the 90th percentile and that’s another $25,680 on top, taking total pay from $58,320 to $84,000. Put differently, the difference between the bottom and the top of Georgia’s electrician field, $46,820, is larger than the entire entry-level salary. Few careers you can enter without a degree offer that kind of range, and almost all of the climb is driven by things you accumulate: time in the trade, a license, and a specialty employers will pay a premium for.

One caution on reading the percentiles: they are a snapshot of the whole Georgia workforce, not a guaranteed schedule. A fast learner in a high-demand specialty can hit the 75th percentile faster than the table implies, while someone who stays in straight residential work without licensing may sit near the median for years. The numbers tell you what’s possible and roughly what each step is worth, not how long it takes. Use them to price your next move: if a license bumps you from the median to the 75th percentile, you now know that’s worth about $18,170 a year, which makes the cost and effort of getting licensed easy to justify.

Electrician salary by Georgia metro

Where you work inside Georgia matters, though less than experience. The five metros below cover where most of the state’s 21,650 electricians are employed, with Atlanta accounting for the large majority on its own. These are the BLS metro medians (2025).

Augusta tops the list at $59,660, edging out Atlanta’s $58,650 by about $1,010. Augusta’s wage is propped up by heavy industrial and nuclear-related work in the region, which pays well for skilled electricians. Atlanta is where the jobs are, though. With 13,430 electricians employed, the metro holds more than 60 percent of the state’s total, so for sheer volume of openings and the chance to specialize, it’s the center of gravity for the trade in Georgia.

Savannah comes in close behind at $58,430, supported by port activity, manufacturing, and steady coastal construction. The two south Georgia metros, Columbus at $50,730 and Valdosta at $50,560, sit roughly $8,000 to $9,000 below the Atlanta median. The pay difference between Augusta and Valdosta is $9,100, which is real money, but lower-cost metros also come with lower housing and living costs, so the in-pocket gap is narrower than the wage number alone suggests. If you’re weighing a move within the state, compare net pay against local rent rather than chasing the highest sticker wage.

The employment numbers tell their own story. Atlanta’s 13,430 electricians dwarf the rest of the state combined: Augusta has 860, Savannah 650, Columbus 480, and Valdosta 450. That concentration matters for more than just the number of job postings. In a deep market like Atlanta, you can switch employers without relocating, find work in a specialty rather than taking whatever’s available, and negotiate harder because there’s always another shop hiring. In a thin market like Valdosta, with only 450 electricians employed, your options narrow and a single large employer can set the local wage. Volume gives you bargaining power, and Atlanta has the volume.

That said, the three top-paying metros, Augusta, Atlanta, and Savannah, are separated by only about $1,230 at the median, from $58,430 to $59,660. So within the higher-paying half of the state, the metro you choose barely moves your pay. The meaningful divide is between those three and the south Georgia pair. If you’re already in Augusta, Atlanta, or Savannah, chasing a different metro for a raise isn’t worth it; chasing a license or a specialty is. The metro table is most useful for someone deciding whether to relocate out of Columbus or Valdosta, where the roughly $8,000 to $9,000 gap to the larger metros is large enough to weigh against moving costs and local housing.

Take-home pay after taxes in Georgia

Gross salary isn’t what hits your account. Georgia taxes wage income, so an electrician here pays federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), and state income tax before anything lands in the bank. The table below breaks down take-home at each career stage for tax year 2026, using a single-filer estimate.

At the median, a Georgia electrician grosses $58,320 and takes home $46,402 a year, which works out to $3,867 a month after an effective tax rate of 20.4 percent. The senior earner at $84,000 keeps $63,599, or $5,300 a month, at a 24.3 percent effective rate. Notice how the effective rate climbs from 17.8 percent at entry to 24.3 percent at the top: that’s the progressive federal brackets at work, so a bigger share of each raise goes to tax as you move up.

Look at what actually changes between the stages. The entry earner at $37,180 nets $30,555, or $2,546 a month. Reach the median and your net jumps to $46,402, an extra $15,847 a year in your pocket, even though your gross only rose by $21,140. The difference, about $5,293, is the share of that raise that went to federal tax, FICA, and Georgia tax combined. Climb from the median to the 75th percentile and gross rises $18,170 while net rises $12,319 (from $46,402 to $58,721). The pattern holds at the top: the senior earner’s $5,300 monthly net is $1,433 more than the median earner’s $3,867, on $25,680 more of gross pay. The raises are always worth taking, but plan around the net number, not the gross, because taxes claim a growing slice as you climb.

Georgia’s state income tax is the line you can compare across states, and it’s modest here: $1,357 at entry, $2,497 at the median, $3,476 at the 75th percentile, and $3,881 at the top. FICA, by contrast, is flat as a share of pay until you hit the Social Security cap, which no electrician on this table reaches, so it scales straight up from $2,844 to $6,426. Federal tax does the heavy lifting at the top, more than quadrupling from $2,423 at entry to $10,094 at the 90th percentile. Knowing which tax is driving your bill matters when you’re deciding whether a cross-state move or a side of self-employment income is worth it.

Here’s the comparison that matters most and that no quick AI answer will give you. Take that same $58,320 median and earn it in Texas instead. Texas has no state income tax, so the net take-home there is $48,899 against Georgia’s $46,402. That’s a gap of $2,497 a year, the exact amount a Georgia electrician pays in state income tax at the median. Over a 30-year career, that difference is real, but it’s only half the picture.

Net pay minus local housing is the number that actually matters. A Texas electrician keeps $2,497 more on paper, but if rent or a mortgage in their metro costs more than the same housing in Augusta or Macon, that advantage shrinks or disappears. Run your own number through the Georgia paycheck calculator and then weigh it against what you’d actually pay to live. If you want help estimating withholding and deductions at filing time, a tool like TurboTax walks through the federal and Georgia state pieces together.

ThePayGuide may earn a commission from links on this page at no cost to you. See our editorial policy.

How to earn more as an electrician in Georgia

The percentile ladder isn’t fixed. The difference between the median at $58,320 and the 75th percentile at $76,490 is $18,170, and that’s the gap you’re trying to close. Here’s how electricians in Georgia move up:

• Get and upgrade your license. Georgia licenses electrical contractors at the state level. Moving from working under someone else’s license to holding your own, and then to a master-level credential, is the clearest path from the median toward the $76,490 to $84,000 range. Licensed contractors who can pull permits and run jobs sit at the top of the pay band.
• Specialize in higher-value work. Industrial controls, motor work, low-voltage and data, solar, and EV charging installation all pay above general residential. Augusta’s industrial base shows what specialized work does to wages, with the metro’s $59,660 median leading the state.
• Move toward the volume markets. Atlanta employs 13,430 of Georgia’s 21,650 electricians. More jobs means more chances to specialize, lead crews, or jump to a higher-paying employer. The Atlanta median of $58,650 also beats the south Georgia metros by roughly $8,000.
• Lead crews or move into estimating. The top of the field, the 90th percentile at $84,000, is where foremen, project leads, and estimators land. Taking on responsibility for a job’s outcome, not just your own tools, is how you get there.
• Add credentials and code knowledge. Staying current on the National Electrical Code and stacking certifications signals you can handle complex work. Self-paced courses through a platform like Coursera can cover the electrical theory, project management, and renewable-energy topics that support a move into higher-paying specialties.

Job outlook for electricians in Georgia

Georgia employs 21,650 electricians as of the BLS 2025 data. Electrical work is one of the more durable skilled trades because the demand is physical and local: every new home, warehouse, data center, and solar array in the state needs licensed electricians, and that work can’t be sent offshore or automated away. Atlanta’s continued growth, the metro’s data-center boom, and steady industrial activity around Augusta and Savannah all keep the trade in demand.

For anyone weighing the field, the combination of a low entry barrier (you earn while you learn through an apprenticeship) and a clear climb from $37,180 to $84,000 makes it one of the more reliable paths to a middle-class income in Georgia without a four-year degree. When you’re ready to look at openings, job boards like ZipRecruiter list electrician and apprentice roles across the state’s metros.

Related and higher-paying trades in Georgia

Electricians, plumbers, and HVAC techs pay close together in Georgia, and the differences are smaller than people assume. Compared against the electrician median of $58,320: a plumber in Georgia earns a median of $57,200, which is $1,120 less than an electrician. An HVAC technician earns a median of $56,390, which is $1,930 less than an electrician. So in this state, the electrician trade edges out both of its closest skilled-trade neighbors at the median, though the gaps are small enough that experience and specialty matter far more than the choice of trade.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) 2025; ThePayGuide tax modeling for tax year 2026. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.