Lineman Salary in Tennessee 2026,
$83,660 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Tennessee figure is $83,660 a year, or $40.22 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $58,240 at the 10th percentile to $105,000 at the 90th. That is 12.2% below the national median of $95,320. The row is SOC 49-9051, Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers, which is broader than the job title, and Tennessee employs 3,900 on it at a location quotient of 1.41.

Knoxville at $99,780, then Memphis $97,150, Johnson City $96,530, Cleveland $93,910 and Morristown $92,250 — and every one of them is above the statewide median of $83,660. That is the most important thing on this page: the rural cooperative workforce outside the metros is what pulls the state figure down, so a metro post is worth substantially more than the headline suggests.

No. Tennessee does not license power-line workers and there is no state trade credential. Entry is through an apprenticeship — several years of structured on-the-job training and classroom instruction with a municipal utility, rural electric cooperative or line contractor — plus employer qualification on the specific voltages, equipment and procedures, all under federal OSHA standards for electric power generation, transmission and distribution work.

Because of who employs them. Most Tennessee electricity is distributed by municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives supplied by the Tennessee Valley Authority — public and member-owned bodies whose pay scales are structured and publicly accountable rather than competitively bid. The national median of $95,320 is lifted by investor-owned utilities in higher-cost states. The Tennessee metros still pay well, from Morristown $92,250 up to Knoxville $99,780; it is the rural cooperative half of the workforce that brings the state median to $83,660.

It applies to exactly the income that varies most. Storm restoration and outage response generate large and unpredictable overtime, and in a progressive-tax state those hours are taxed at the highest marginal rate the worker faces. Tennessee levies no income tax on earned income at all, so a lineman working a heavy restoration season toward the $105,000 top decile keeps the whole of it apart from federal tax. Among the peer states here, only Florida at $86,870 shares that treatment.

Because the state median is being held down by employment that no metro row captures. Tennessee's rural electric cooperatives serve large territories outside the metropolitan statistical areas, and they employ a substantial share of the state's 3,900 line workers on member-owned pay scales that are lower than the municipal utility and contractor rates in Knoxville, Memphis and the Tri-Cities. When the metro figures — $92,250 to $99,780 — all exceed the statewide $83,660, the arithmetic can only work one way.

Two things. First, SOC 49-9051 is Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers, broader than the job title and covering both transmission and distribution work across utilities and contractors. Second, this is an annual figure for a trade whose earnings depend heavily on storm and outage overtime, which varies year to year with the weather. A lineman comparing offers should look at the base hourly rate, the overtime rules and the storm-restoration policy separately, rather than at an annual total.

Employer and location, then responsibility. Moving from a rural cooperative to a municipal utility or a line contractor working the metro and transmission systems is the largest single step, and it is most of the distance from the $66,190 twenty-fifth percentile to the $96,980 seventy-fifth. Above that, crew leader and troubleman responsibility, plus storm restoration schedules, reach the $105,000 top decile — and with no Tennessee income tax, restoration overtime converts to take-home more completely here than almost anywhere.