Lineman Salary in Ohio 2026,
$93,150 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Ohio figure is $93,150 a year, or $44.78 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $58,840 at the 10th percentile to $111,760 at the 90th. That is 2.3% below the national median of $95,320. The row — SOC 49-9051 — covers electrical power-line installers and repairers generally, so it includes distribution and transmission workers at utilities and at contractors.

Canton-Massillon, at $109,300, well ahead of Akron $96,340, Youngstown-Warren $95,490, Cincinnati $93,150 and Cleveland $91,120. A gap that size in a 4,260-person occupation usually reflects employer mix rather than local costs — utility transmission crews and organised contractor work pay differently from general distribution, and where those crews are based moves a metro median.

No. Ohio has no state credential, examination or registry for power-line work. The electrical licensing the state does operate, through the Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board, covers electrical contractors doing building wiring rather than utility transmission and distribution. Entry runs through apprenticeship — jointly administered utility and IBEW programmes, or utility and contractor-run schemes — typically three to four years with documented hours and classroom instruction, plus a commercial driver's licence from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles for the trucks.

Through an apprenticeship, and the competition for places is the real barrier. Utilities and IBEW locals run joint programmes; contractors and rural electric cooperatives run their own. Entry typically requires a high school diploma, a clean driving record and often a pre-apprenticeship or lineworker school certificate, and the apprenticeship then runs three to four years with documented on-the-job hours and classroom work. A CDL is required for bucket and digger derrick trucks, and federal OSHA qualified-worker rules govern energised work.

Substantially, and it is part of why the upper half of this band exists. Ohio's distribution system carries real storm exposure, and restoration work — including mutual-aid deployments to other states — comes with long hours at premium rates. The distance from the $93,150 median to the $104,200 seventy-fifth percentile is often more about hours worked in bad weather than about rank. Note that Ohio's municipal income tax follows where work is performed, so out-of-city restoration work has withholding consequences worth clarifying with the employer.

It says apprenticeship, clearly. The distance from the $58,840 tenth percentile to the $73,510 twenty-fifth is the apprenticeship step schedule, which raises pay on a defined timetable as documented hours accumulate. From there to the $93,150 median is the completion of that programme and journeyman classification. Above it, the $104,200 seventy-fifth percentile and $111,760 ninetieth are only about seven and a half thousand dollars apart, because journeyman scale is journeyman scale — the remaining variation is transmission versus distribution work, specialised live-line qualification, overtime and storm restoration, and crew leadership. There is no long tail of individually negotiated compensation the way there is in unlicensed office occupations.

Because the apprenticeship does the work a licence would. Ohio issues nothing, but no employer will put an unqualified person on an energised conductor, and federal OSHA rules on qualified-worker status make that a legal position rather than merely a prudent one. Entry is therefore controlled by apprenticeship places rather than by examination, and apprenticeship places are limited by how many crews a utility or contractor can supervise. That is a tighter constraint than most licensing schemes impose, and it is why a trade with no state credential sustains a $93,150 median and a $58,840 floor — the floor is an apprentice wage, not an untrained one.

Toward transmission and capacity. The national 6.6% growth projection understates what is happening in specific markets, and Ohio has two: heavy industrial load on an already dense transmission network, and a rapidly growing data centre cluster whose interconnection requirements are substantial. Add grid hardening against storm damage and the replacement of infrastructure installed decades ago, and the pro-rated figure of about 350 openings a year in Ohio is best read as a floor. The constraint is the same one that always binds this trade: an ageing journeyman workforce retiring faster than apprenticeships can replace it, which is good news for anyone who secures a place.