Master Electrician Salary in Texas 2026,
$58,570 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Texas figure is $58,570 a year, or $28.16 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 7.3% below the national median of $63,190, with no state income tax deducted. That covers the whole electrical trade; master electricians sit toward the $71,130 seventy-fifth percentile and the $80,300 ninetieth rather than at the median. The band starts at $37,920 for apprentices.

Through the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and only after working as a licensed journeyman. Texas runs a statutory ladder — apprentice, residential wireman, journeyman, master — and each rung requires documented on-the-job hours under supervision plus an examination. The master licence is the one that matters commercially: it permits supervision of other electricians' work and allows a business to hold an electrical contractor's licence with the master as its licence holder. That is the difference between working for a contractor and being one.

Beaumont-Port Arthur at $61,380, then Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos $60,390, Midland $59,530, Corpus Christi $59,410 and Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands $59,180. The Gulf coast petrochemical corridor and the Permian Basin lead rather than the big residential construction markets — industrial maintenance and turnaround electrical work pays above house wiring in this state.

No, and the distinction is important. SOC 47-2111 covers Electricians as a single occupation, pooling apprentices earning around the $37,920 tenth percentile with master electricians running crews. The $58,570 median describes the middle of the whole trade. A master electrician should read the $71,130 seventy-fifth percentile and $80,300 ninetieth as the relevant markers, and remember that a master who holds a contractor's licence and takes business profit is only partly captured by a wage survey at all.

In take-home terms, yes. The 7.3% gap to the $63,190 national median is smaller than the state income tax an electrician would pay in most other states, and in a trade with heavy overtime the untaxed treatment of premium hours compounds the advantage. Texas property tax is the offsetting cost, and it is among the higher effective burdens in the country. For a master electrician forming a contracting business, the state franchise tax on entities above a revenue threshold is the other consideration.

Because the rungs carry legal authority rather than just recognition. A residential wireman may wire dwellings but not commercial work. A journeyman may perform general electrical work but only under the supervision of a master. A master may supervise and may serve as the licence holder for an electrical contractor, which is what allows a business to contract in its own name. Each of those boundaries changes what work an individual can be assigned and therefore what they can be paid. In states without a ladder, an experienced electrician and a very experienced one differ only in reputation; in Texas they differ in what the law permits them to do, which is why the band from $46,670 to $71,130 tracks licence tier so closely.

It pools four licence tiers into one number. The band from $37,920 to $80,300 is really four overlapping distributions — apprentice, residential wireman, journeyman, master — and the median sits in the journeyman range rather than describing any particular tier. The estimate also measures employees on payrolls, so a master electrician taking profit from their own contracting business is largely outside it. And OEWS reports annual wages, so the substantial overtime that Gulf coast turnaround work generates shows up as wage variation rather than as hours.

Licence tier first, and decisively — the ladder is the structure of this trade here, and the master licence is the rung that converts a tradesman into someone who can supervise and contract. Sector second: petrochemical, refinery, industrial maintenance and data centre work pays above residential construction, which is why Beaumont-Port Arthur at $61,380 and Midland at $59,530 sit where they do. Turnaround and shutdown overtime third, which is untaxed at state level in Texas. And business ownership fourth, which the master licence makes possible and which moves an electrician out of this wage data entirely.