They’ve always been known as one of the higher earning trades, but how much do electricians really earn?
For the last five years we’ve been putting together our hugely popular guide on tradie earnings, and as electrical contractors are one of our largest clients groups here at Trade Risk, we have a huge amount of data to rely on.
Our latest figures for 2023 show the average annual taxable income for an electrical contractor is $96,338. This is a pre-tax figure based on information received from hundreds of electricians from across Australia.
This compares favourably to the tradie average of $90,940, and the overall national average for 2023, which according to the ABS is $99,221.
Electricians were second only to boilermakers in our 2023 list of the top ten earning trades, and were comfortably ahead of plumbers in third place.
Steady growth in electrician earnings
We’ve been tracking average tradesman incomes for the last seven years, and aside from a very small dip in 2019, each year they have shown steady growth.
The following table shows the growth in average electrical contractor incomes over the last nine years.
| Year | Income | Growth $ | Growth % |
| 2023 | $96,338 | +$4,883 | +5.3% |
| 2019 | $91,455 | -$333 | -0.4% |
| 2018 | $91,788 | +$2,814 | +3.2% |
| 2017 | $88,974 | +$3,666 | +4.3% |
| 2016 | $85,309 | +$3,397 | +4.1% |
| 2014 | $81,912 | – | – |
* We didn’t publish reports from 2020 to 2022.
The growth from year to year is incredibly stable, with growth of between 3.2% and 4.3% every year.
That consistent growth gives us confidence in the long term reliability of our figures, and of course it’s good news for sparkies to have a consistently growing income year after year!
Comparisons to other reports
Over the nine years that we’ve been tracking incomes, we’ve reached a point where we are very confident in the accuracy of our numbers. After all, they do come from genuine electricians declaring their incomes for insurance purposes. We’re not trying to guess or estimate anything.
That said, it’s still worthwhile comparing our figures to others that exist out there. Unfortunately most of the “how much do tradies earn” types of lists out there look at hourly call-out rates for electricians, rather than taxable annual income.
So it’s a little difficult to find comparable figures, but here’s what we could find:
Both of these figures are lower than ours, however they appear to be based more on electricians on wages or salary, rather than self-employed electricians like most of our clients.
Plenty of electricians in our data earned less than the figures from PayScale and Indeed, but a lot more earned more than that, bringing the overall average up.
Important information about our figures
The data used for this report comes from thousands of electricians who have declared their taxable incomes to Trade Risk for their personal accident insurance / income protection applications.
These electricians are predominantly self-employed, and often operate as a sole trader or a small business with a small number of staff.
Our figures are unlikely to include electricians who work on large union sites, although there certainly could be some.
Can we help you?
As an electrical contractor one of your greatest assets is your knowledge and your ability to earn an income. $96k is a pretty good average (and plenty on our list were $100k+) so if something was to happen and you lost that income, it wouldn’t be good!
Here at Trade Risk we specialise in income protection insurance for tradies, and especially for electricians as one of our largest client groups.
For a quote on personal accident insurance please click here, or call us on 1800 808 800 to speak with an expert.
We can also assist with all of your business insurance needs including public liability and more.
We hope our guide on how much electricians earn has been useful for you, and if there’s anything else we can assist with please get in touch.
Author: Shane Moore. Last updated: 27/09/2023.
