Electrician Salary in Hawaii 2026:
$96,460 Median

A median $96,460 a year, or $46.38 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 52.7% above the national median of $63,190. The middle half falls between $70,460 and $120,740 and the full band runs $45,730 to $124,590. The 25th percentile alone exceeds the national median, so three quarters of Hawaii electricians out-earn the typical American one.

Oahu, marginally: Urban Honolulu at $100,270 against Kahului-Wailuku on Maui at $98,480, with the statewide row at $96,460. About four thousand dollars separates the table, which is negligible against a band nearly eighty thousand dollars wide. Licence tier and sector, not island, are what determine an electrician's pay in this state.

Through the Hawaii Board of Electricians and Plumbers at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, which licenses journeyman and higher electrician grades on documented experience and examination and licenses electrical contractors separately. The licence is statewide, which matters in an island state — it lets a qualified electrician work across the islands without re-credentialing, though the practical cost of moving between them is another matter.

Isolation, mostly. A contractor short of licensed electricians on Oahu cannot bring a crew across a state line for a fortnight; the labour has to be here already or has to be flown in and housed at the most expensive rates in the country. That gives the local licensed workforce genuine leverage. Add construction costs inflated by shipping every material into the state, sustained military and visitor-economy building work, and renewable installation demand, and the result is a 52.7% premium over the national median.

More so than almost any other occupation in this unit. A 52.7% nominal premium is large enough to survive a serious cost adjustment, unlike the physical therapy or dental hygiene figures in this same state, which sit at the national rate. Housing is still the dominant offset, and the 11% top income tax rate plus the general excise tax take a real share. But an electrician is one of the few workers on this site for whom moving to Hawaii is defensible on the numbers alone.

Because a trade cannot be delivered remotely and cannot be surged from outside at short notice. A hospital short of a pharmacist can recruit nationally over months and pay a relocation package; a contractor short of licensed electricians on a Honolulu job site needs people this week, and there is no adjacent labour market. That asymmetry is why Hawaii's electrician premium of 52.7% exceeds its pharmacist premium of 15.8% and dwarfs the national-rate pay its physical therapists and dental hygienists receive. The general lesson across this unit is that Hawaii pays most where the work is physically fixed to the islands and least where the workforce can be imported.

It reports wages as paid, so the overtime typical of construction schedules is inside the number rather than beside it. It counts employees, leaving self-employed electricians and small contractors outside the survey — and in Hawaii, contracting brings the general excise tax on gross receipts into the picture in a way a payroll job does not. With about 3,070 electricians the sample is reasonable but the metro table covers only two islands. And the whole band sits against the highest construction and housing costs in the country.

Licence tier first — the progression toward journeyman and master through the Board of Electricians and Plumbers is what the eighty-thousand-dollar band is measuring. Sector second: commercial, military facilities and renewable energy installation above residential and light commercial, roughly the distance from the $70,460 twenty-fifth percentile to the median and beyond. Renewable and storage qualifications third, given Hawaii's energy commitments and the sustained solar work they have generated. Crew responsibility and contractor licensure fourth, which is what the $124,590 ninetieth percentile describes. Island choice contributes about four thousand dollars.