Electrician Salary in Massachusetts 2026,
$79,420 Median | BLS Data by City

Massachusetts electricians earn a median $79,420 a year, $38.18 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $57,860 and $100,480 and a full range of $46,990 to $128,210. That is 25.7% above the $63,190 national median, and the very wide middle half is the licensing effect — unlicensed helpers and licensed journeymen are two different labour markets.

Boston-Cambridge-Newton at $79,910, then Barnstable Town at $78,570, Springfield at $77,420, Amherst Town-Northampton at $76,980 and Worcester at $75,510. Under five thousand dollars covers the entire state, so Massachusetts is close to pay-neutral on geography for this trade — a direct consequence of statewide individual licensing.

Through the Board of State Examiners of Electricians, within the Division of Occupational Licensure. You register as an apprentice, accumulate the required on-the-job hours under a licensed electrician together with the classroom instruction Massachusetts mandates, and then sit the state journeyman examination. The licence is personal, portable across Massachusetts, and renews with continuing education on the state electrical code.

The master licence is what stands behind most of the state 90th percentile of $128,210. It requires additional years of licensed journeyman experience plus a separate examination, and it permits the holder to pull permits and qualify a contracting business — the step from performing work to being responsible for it. In practice it is the difference between an employee's ceiling and a business owner's.

Barely, on wages — Boston-Cambridge-Newton's $79,910 is under five hundred dollars above the state median of $79,420, and Springfield pays $77,420 in a far cheaper housing market. What Greater Boston offers instead is work type: institutional, hospital and life sciences construction with the shutdown overtime and specialty scope that reach the state 75th percentile of $100,480.

Individual licensing plus a high-value construction market. Licensing journeymen constrains who may work unsupervised, which limits supply in a way contractor-only states do not; and Greater Boston's institutional, hospital and life sciences construction is technically demanding, heavily inspected and schedule-driven. Put a supply constraint next to that kind of demand and a 25.7% premium is the predictable result.

It spans two populations that share a code. The $46,990 tenth percentile is apprentices and unlicensed helpers; the $100,480 seventy-fifth percentile is licensed journeymen doing specialty work. Reading the state median of $79,420 as 'what a Massachusetts electrician earns' averages across a licence boundary that determines almost everything about the job. Look at where in the ladder you sit, not at the middle.

Substantially. Institutional and life sciences work in Greater Boston runs to compressed schedules with planned shutdowns, night work and weekend coverage, and the differentials on those are how a licensed journeyman moves from the state median of $79,420 toward the $100,480 seventy-fifth percentile. OEWS captures the wages but not the hours, so two Massachusetts journeymen at the same figure may be working very different weeks.