Electrician Salary in Tennessee 2026,
$61,090 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $61,090 a year, or $29.37 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025. The middle half falls between $48,380 and $76,060, with a full range of $39,600 to $92,160. That is 3.3% below the $63,190 national median — a narrow gap, and one Tennessee's absence of state income tax more than covers in take-home terms.

Chattanooga at $72,330, by a wide margin — more than eleven thousand dollars above the state median and nearly nine thousand above Nashville at $63,340. Memphis at $60,890, Jackson at $60,360 and Cleveland at $60,250 cluster below the state figure. Chattanooga's industrial base, anchored by automotive assembly, is what lifts it.

Not a journeyman one. The Board for Licensing Contractors at the Department of Commerce and Insurance licenses electrical contractors and issues the limited licensed electrician credential for smaller-value work, but Tennessee has no statewide journeyman or master electrician card. Journeyman licensing is municipal, so Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga and other cities each run their own examination and permit rules. Check the requirements of the city you intend to work in, not just the state's.

The upper part of this band belongs to them. The $76,060 seventy-fifth percentile and the $92,160 ninetieth reflect plant maintenance, motor control and automation work rather than residential service, and Tennessee has an unusually deep industrial base for the region — automotive assembly at Smyrna, Spring Hill and Chattanooga, the Ford BlueOval City complex in West Tennessee, and a broad supplier network. Controls and PLC capability is the specific skill that separates those wages from the general commercial rate.

Apprentices and helpers, mostly, plus residential service work in the lower-cost parts of the state. Because Tennessee has no statewide journeyman licence, there is also no statutory wage structure tied to one, so the bottom of this band is less protected than it is in licence-tiered states. Progressing out of it means getting into commercial or industrial work, which is where the state median of $61,090 and everything above it lives.

It cuts both ways. Entry is easier — there is no statewide examination standing between you and journeyman-level work, and an electrician relocating to Tennessee does not face a state reciprocity process. But it also means there is no portable credential: a Memphis journeyman card does not automatically carry to Knoxville, and each municipality sets its own rules. Employers compensate by screening on demonstrated experience, NEC knowledge and, in industrial settings, controls capability. If you intend to contract on your own account, the Board for Licensing Contractors licence is the one that matters, and its monetary limits determine the size of job you can bid.

Industrial concentration. Chattanooga's automotive assembly plant and the supplier and logistics network built around it employ maintenance and controls electricians at industrial rates, which are structurally higher than the commercial construction rates that set Nashville's number. Nashville has more volume of work — its construction market is the busiest in the state — but volume and rate are different things. The $72,330 Chattanooga figure against $60,250 for nearby Cleveland, barely thirty miles away, shows how localised that industrial premium is.

Getting out of residential work. The single biggest move in this state is from residential service into commercial and then industrial work, which is roughly the distance from the $48,380 twenty-fifth percentile to the $76,060 seventy-fifth. Controls, PLC and automation capability is the specific skill that pays, given Tennessee's manufacturing base. Chattanooga is worth relocating for if industrial work is the goal. And because there is no state licence hierarchy, the contractor licence from the Board for Licensing Contractors is the formal credential worth pursuing — it is what lets you bid work rather than take a wage.