What does a Journeyman Electrician (Commercial) earn?

We place this role between $58,000 and $88,000 a year at mid experience, before overtime, bonus and on-call. The federal occupation this role reports under is Electricians (SOC 47-2111), May 2025.

What credentials should a Journeyman Electrician (Commercial) have?

The credentials that command a premium in this seat are State License, OSHA 30. Requirements vary by state and by what the job actually involves, so treat these as what moves an offer rather than a legal minimum.

COMMERCIAL ELECTRICAL - ROLE PROFILE

Journeyman Electrician (Commercial)

We place this role between $58,000 and $88,000 a year at mid experience, before overtime, bonus and on-call.

The role

What the job actually is.

Installs and troubleshoots commercial power and lighting under a licence: branch circuits, panels, feeders, conduit, gear and the terminations that connect them. Reads the drawings, lays out the work, and on most jobs directs an apprentice.

Pay

What this role pays.

That band is mid experience, built from our own engagement history. Experience and region move it - the salary calculator applies both.

The federal occupation this role reports under is Electricians (SOC 47-2111), May 2025. Nationally it reports a median of $63,190 , with the middle of the market between $42,640 and $108,510. BLS counts this job inside that occupation rather than publishing it separately, so the figures cover a slightly wider group than this exact title.

Where it pays most.

Electricians across the metros we cover, May 2025. BLS publishes a median for 100 of them and withholds the rest, where the local sample was too small to be reliable.

Highest-paying metros - Electricians
Metro	Median	Employed there
Portland	$105,090	7,340
Chicago	$102,350	17,720
Seattle	$101,780	9,750
San Francisco	$92,830	9,060
San Jose	$91,030	5,480
Detroit	$81,990	11,210
Minneapolis	$81,890	8,810
Boston	$79,910	13,410
McAllen	$46,930	670
El Paso	$48,140	1,380
Little Rock	$48,200	1,870

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. The last three rows are the lowest-paying metros in the same set. Headcount is metro-wide across every industry, not this trade alone.

Journeyman Electrician (Commercial) vs Master Electrician.

Both are licensed; the master's licence is the one that carries the permit. The journeyman is the seat that gets filled in volume on commercial work, and the one our own closed searches in this trade are concentrated in. The screen is the state licence plus whatever the site demands - typically OSHA 30, and NFPA 70E for anything near energised equipment. BLS counts apprentices, journeymen and masters as one occupation, which is why the percentile spread below is as wide as it is.

Master Electrician: what it pays and what the search takes

Credentials

Credentials that move an offer.

State License
OSHA 30

Licensing is a state question, not a national one. The Commercial Electrical hiring page carries the state-by-state position, and every market page names the authority for that state.

Screening

What separates a strong candidate.

Everyone who applies for this seat will claim the experience. These are the things that distinguish the people who have it, and the questions that find out.

What to look for

Conduit bending described as routine - offsets, saddles, large-diameter rigid
Has worked live-adjacent under NFPA 70E and can describe the boundary rules
Commercial and industrial service sizes rather than residential panel swaps

Questions that find out

How do you size a feeder for a 200A three-phase panel, and what in the code drives it? A strong answer Starts from the calculated load rather than the panel rating, then conductor ampacity with ambient correction and adjustment for current-carrying conductors in the raceway, limited by the termination temperature rating at both ends - which is the step most people skip. Then overcurrent protection, the equipment grounding conductor, and voltage drop on a long run. Naming the chain matters more than reciting article numbers.
Walk me through your lockout-tagout sequence on a 480V panel. A strong answer Notify who is affected, identify every source rather than the obvious one, shut down in order, open the disconnect, their own lock and their own tag, release stored energy including a VFD DC bus, then verify dead with a correctly rated meter proved on a known live source before and after. Treats the verification itself as energised work and dresses for it.
What is the difference in how you treat a grounded conductor and an equipment grounding conductor on a sub-panel? A strong answer Bonded together only at the service. At a sub-panel the neutral sits on an isolated bar, the grounding conductors on a bonded bar, and the bonding screw or strap comes out. Can say why rather than just what: bonding them downstream puts normal neutral current onto the grounding conductor and the raceway, which is a shock path and a nuisance-trip source.
How do you size a feeder, and which code sections are you working from? A strong answer Should answer consistently with the first feeder question, which is partly why it is asked twice in different words. Load calculation, ampacity table with correction and adjustment factors, termination temperature limits, overcurrent protection, grounding conductor sizing, voltage drop. Someone working from memory of one job will drift between the two answers.
A three-phase motor hums but will not start. Walk me through your troubleshooting. A strong answer Single-phasing is the first thought and they say so: all three legs measured at the motor rather than at the panel, fuses or a breaker pole open, contactor contacts, overload, a burned or loose lug, and voltage imbalance. Then mechanical - locked rotor, a seized load, a brake that has not released - with amps compared against the nameplate. Does not just keep resetting it.
What is your process for proving a circuit dead before you put hands on it? A strong answer Live, dead, live on a known source with a meter rated for the voltage and the category. Every combination, phase to phase and phase to ground, not just the one they expect. Treats the circuit as live until the meter says otherwise and treats the testing itself as energised work.
When do you run MC cable rather than pipe and wire on a commercial fit-out, and who makes that call? A strong answer The specification and the inspector decide, not the installer. MC where it is permitted and the ceiling is accessible and speed matters; pipe where the environment, mechanical protection, or future changes call for it. The important half of the answer is the second half: a change from the specified method is an RFI or a documented substitution, not a field decision.
Tell me about a panel schedule you found wrong in the field and what you did about it. A strong answer Traced and verified rather than trusting the sticker, corrected the whole schedule rather than only the circuit they came for, left a typed schedule behind, and told whoever owns the drawings. The weak version of this story ends with them finding the right breaker and moving on.
How do you lay out and bend a conduit run so it passes inspection and stays serviceable? A strong answer Plans the route before bending: accessibility, support spacing, where the pull points go, staying within the allowed total bend between them, correct radius, fill calculated rather than eyeballed, expansion where the structure needs it, and room left for the next trade and the next change. Neat parallel runs are a by-product of planning, not the goal.
What is your approach to terminating large conductors in a switchgear lineup? A strong answer The right lug for the conductor material and size, conductor cleaned and prepared, antioxidant where it belongs, no sharp bend at the lug, phase rotation and barriers right - and torqued to the manufacturer specification with a calibrated wrench, recorded. Skipped torque is one of the great quiet causes of switchgear failure and they should say so without prompting.
A breaker trips at night and never during the day. How do you chase it? A strong answer Treats it as a load question before a breaker question: what runs at night and not in the day - exterior lighting, heaters, irrigation, defrost, a timer or contactor picking up. Considers condensation and moisture causing a ground fault overnight. Puts a recording meter or logger on it rather than guessing, and reads the trip type for what it says about the cause.
What do you check before energising a new panel? A strong answer Insulation resistance tested, terminations torqued and documented, phase rotation confirmed, conductors matched to breakers and to the schedule, bonding and grounding verified, unused openings closed, no debris or tools left inside, covers on, and the people nearby told before it goes live.
The building will not allow a shutdown. How do you handle work near energised equipment? A strong answer Pushes back first, and knows the ground to push back on: energised work needs a real justification, and inconvenient is not the same as infeasible. Offers a window at night or a weekend. If it genuinely has to be live, then a permit, the boundaries worked out, protection matched to the incident energy, insulated tools, barriers and a second person.
Walk me through laying out lighting from a reflected ceiling plan. A strong answer Reads the ceiling grid off the plan and sets out from finished surfaces rather than framing, coordinates with ductwork, sprinkler and structure before a single box goes up, checks fixture types against the schedule rather than assuming, and confirms switching, zoning and controls. Knows which fixtures need independent support rather than hanging off the grid.
What is your process for labelling and as-builts? A strong answer Labels as the work goes in rather than at the end, typed panel schedules, circuit identification at the devices, and drawings marked up daily rather than reconstructed from memory in the last week. Records concealed and underground work before it is covered, because after that it is archaeology.
What would make you refuse to do a piece of work? A strong answer Something specific rather than a general commitment to safety. Energised work with no justification or no protection, a missing permit or inspection, being asked to conceal something that will not pass, materials that do not match the specification, work outside what their licence covers, or being too tired to be safe. Says who they would tell and what they would do next.

The mistake this seat invites

Taking a state licence as proof of commercial capability. Licensing rules vary by state and many journeyman licences are earned on residential hours.

Where the role goes next

Journeymen progress to foreman, then general foreman or master electrician, with the licence being the gate on the second path. Candidates ask this in the first conversation, and an employer who cannot answer it loses the people who had other options.

Interview kit for this role

All interview questions for this role in the question bank.
Printable interview scorecard built from these questions and signals.
The Commercial Electrical hiring kit - every role in the trade, with credentials and offer risks.
Offer calculator starting from this role's pay band.

The search

What the search actually takes.

Across 11 closed commercial electrical searches in 2026 year to date, our median was 30 days from first contact with the candidate to hire. That is not a time-to-fill benchmark - our clock starts when we reach the candidate, not when the requisition opened. The full distribution is in the Hiring Index.

Searches we have closed in this seat

4 of them were for this exact seat rather than the trade in general. Each is written up in full on our placements page: what the opening was, what made it hard, and what the person we placed brought.