How many electricians are there in the US? 757,220, about as many as lawyers

There were 757,220 electricians on US payrolls in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey. The same survey counts 754,500 lawyers. The country employs 2,720 more electricians than lawyers, a difference of 0.4%.

OEWS counts wage and salary jobs. It leaves out the self-employed, so an electrician who runs a one-person business and pays no salary to himself is missing, and so is a solo lawyer. Another 63,630 people work as electricians' helpers, a separate occupation code that is not in the 757,220.

Next to other trades

Electricians are the largest licensed trade on the list: 1.6 electricians for every plumber and 3.8 for every electrical engineer. They hold 16.0% of the 4,739,450 construction trades jobs. Plumbers and electricians earn almost the same median wage, $63,800 and $63,190. The bottom tenth of electricians earns $42,640 a year or less and the top tenth $108,510 or more.

By state

Texas has the most electricians, 76,770, ahead of California at 73,310 even though California has 4.1 million more jobs. Wyoming has the highest share of its workforce in the trade, 10.5 electricians per 1,000 jobs. New Jersey has the lowest of any state at 3.2. The national figure is 4.9.

Pay varies more between states than between the trades above. The median electrician in Oregon earns $101,310 and in Illinois $99,560. In Arkansas the median is $49,070. A Texas electrician's median, $58,570, is $41,000 below the Illinois one.

Where electricians outnumber lawyers

Electricians outnumber lawyers in 39 of the 54 areas OEWS reports (50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands). North Dakota has 3.4 electricians per lawyer, Wyoming 3.3 and Iowa 2.9. Ohio has 28,950 electricians and 19,950 lawyers.

The count tips the other way in the places with big legal markets. New York has 0.44 electricians per lawyer, and California 0.77. Washington DC employs 33,070 lawyers and 2,440 electricians, 13.6 lawyers for every electrician.

Electricians per contractor licence

Two states publish their contractor rolls, which lets us compare the number of employed electricians with the number of firms licensed to do electrical work.

A contractor licence belongs to a business, not a person, and a firm with a C-10 licence can hold other classes too. Owners who pay themselves no wage are on the licence roll but not in OEWS. The ratio is a rough size of the typical shop, and in both states it is small.

How we counted

National and state counts are BLS OEWS May 2025, cross-industry, SOC 47-2111 Electricians, read from the national and state files BLS publishes (national_M2025_dl.xlsx and state_M2025_dl.xlsx). The state rows sum to 760,010 because they include the territories and are estimated separately from the national figure. Lawyers are SOC 23-1011. The California figure is the count of licences with a C-10 classification and status Clear on the Contractors State License Board list by classification, downloaded in September 2026. The Washington figure is the count of active registrations of type Electrical Contractor on the Department of Labor and Industries contractor file (data.wa.gov), updated 15 September 2026. We hold no national roll of individual electrician licences; most states license journeymen separately and few publish the file.

Source: ProfessionLens, October 2026.