Electrical Engineer Salary 2026,
What Electrical Engineers Actually Earn

How much do electrical engineers make in 2026?

Electrical engineers have a dedicated BLS occupation: OEWS May 2025 puts the SOC 17-2071 national median at $120,630 a year ($58.00 an hour), with the bottom 10% near $76,550 and the top 10% at $184,300. The occupation covers 198,750 workers and spans an unusually wide set of industries, which is why the band is so broad. At the top sit semiconductor and integrated-circuit design, power electronics for electrification and data-centre work, and specialised defence electronics — fields where a small number of employers compete for scarce skills. In the middle sit utility, industrial and building power engineering, controls and instrumentation. At the lower end sit smaller consulting and manufacturing roles in lower-cost regions. Licensure splits the occupation almost cleanly in two. Engineers designing building power systems, utility infrastructure or anything a public authority reviews follow the PE route — ABET degree, FE exam, four years of qualifying experience under a PE, then the PE Power or PE Electronics exam. Engineers designing products inside a manufacturer are covered by the industrial exemption in most states and rarely license at all. Neither path is better paid by default; they are different markets. Employment is projected to grow 7.2% through 2034 with roughly 11,700 openings a year. → Full electrical engineer career guide, career path, credentials & placement →

Note: $120,630 blends every experience level and every setting in this occupation. For pay by level alone, see Pay by Level below.

Published (BLS): BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 17-2071, United States national estimate. Public, methodologically rigorous, but sampled on a rolling 3-year basis and published ~10 months after collection — so it reflects wages that are already 1–2 years old by the time you read them.

Level and certification medians: distributed across the published BLS percentile range for this SOC code (P10 through P90) according to the credential tiers this occupation actually hires at. They are modeled reference points, not separately surveyed wages.

State and metro figures: modeled — the BLS national median multiplied by the GlobalCybers state wage index, and for metros by the published metro index for that state. They are estimates of local pay, not BLS state or metropolitan-area observations, and are labelled as modeled in the tables below.

No verified placement sample:GlobalCybers does not yet publish a placement median for this role, so no "verified" figure appears anywhere on this page.

Full site methodology & data sources →