Electrician Salary in Virginia 2026,
$62,900 Median | BLS Data by City

Virginia electricians earn a median $62,900 a year, $30.24 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $49,410 and $78,190 and a full range of $40,780 to $105,720. That is level with the $63,190 national median, though the top of the Virginia band is well above what the median suggests.

Charlottesville at $62,980, then Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford at $62,490, Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk at $62,350, Staunton-Stuarts Draft at $62,150 and Harrisonburg at $61,880 — a spread of barely a thousand dollars. The genuinely high-paying Northern Virginia data centre and federal construction market is counted inside the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria multi-state metro and does not appear as a Virginia area at all.

Through the Board for Contractors at the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. Virginia issues tradesman licences at journeyman and master level on documented work experience plus approved vocational training and a trade examination. It is a single statewide licence rather than a set of local ones, and the master licence is what carries contracting authority.

Yes, and it is the defining feature of this trade in Virginia. The Loudoun County corridor hosts one of the largest sustained electrical construction and mission-critical maintenance programmes anywhere, and the rates, overtime and per diem attached to it pull journeymen from across the state. Those jobs sit in the upper half of the Virginia band, toward the $78,190 seventy-fifth percentile and beyond, but they are counted in a multi-state metro rather than a Virginia one.

Virginia's income tax tops out at 5.75% on taxable income above seventeen thousand dollars, so a $62,900 salary is taxed at an effectively flat rate, and no Virginia city or county levies an income tax. The local charge tradesmen actually notice is the tangible personal property tax on vehicles, which applies to a work truck and varies considerably between Virginia localities.

Because the state figure averages two very different markets. The Northern Virginia construction economy — data centres, federal facilities, institutional work — pays well above national rates, but it is a minority of Virginia's 23,630 electricians. The rest of the state runs a residential and light commercial market with a deep supply of tradesmen, lower cost of living and rates to match. Blending them produces a $62,900 median that describes neither market accurately, which is why the $40,780 to $105,720 band matters more than the midpoint.

It is a straight wage figure. Data centre and industrial work in Virginia runs heavy scheduled overtime, and shutdown and commissioning work carries per diem, so individual annual earnings in the upper half of this band frequently reflect hours rather than rate. In the other direction, self-employed master electricians running small shops are largely outside the payroll survey. The median is a fair reading of employed electricians in Virginia; the tails are less reliable in both directions.

The master licence and the sector. Getting the master tradesman licence from DPOR changes what you are permitted to do and is the largest single step. After that, the move from residential service into commercial, industrial and mission-critical work is what carries a journeyman from the $49,410 twenty-fifth percentile toward the $78,190 seventy-fifth. Controls, instrumentation and medium-voltage skills, and low-voltage and fibre work tied to the data centre programmes, each carry premiums, and foreman responsibility on a large Virginia project adds another.