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Real DataDOL RAPIDS + BLS OEWS · not recruiter estimates

What trades
actually pay.

Real apprentice starting wages by state, straight from federal DOL apprenticeship records — not a recruiter's guess. Pick a trade below.

$19.04/hr
National avg starting wage — Electrician
Minnesota
Highest avg start: $24.70/hr
$9.04/hr
Gap between highest and lowest paying state, same trade, same first year
Top 5 states — avg Electrician starting wage
1New York*$27.17/hrn=78
2Minnesota$24.70/hrn=1707
3Alaska$24.61/hrn=777
4Washington*$23.34/hrn=141
5California$22.96/hrn=7939
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How much do electrician apprentices make?

Nationally, electrician apprentices start at an average of $19.04/hr, per DOL RAPIDS FY26 Q1 Public Use File (as of 2026-03-18). That varies a lot by state — Minnesota averages $24.70/hr while North Carolina averages $15.66/hr, a $9.04/hr gap for the same first-year work.

Why does apprentice pay vary so much by state?

Apprentice wages are usually set as a percentage of the local journeyman scale, and journeyman scale itself is set locally — by prevailing wage law, cost of living, union density, and how much competition there is for workers. A state with strong prevailing-wage enforcement and high union density (like the ones at the top of this table) sets a floor most contractors have to meet. A state without either can post whatever the market will bear.

Where does this data come from?

The starting-wage numbers above come from DOL RAPIDS FY26 Q1 Public Use File, a federal dataset of individual apprenticeship registrations — not a survey, not a recruiter estimate. Journeyman median figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. Both are cited inline; states with a sample under 5 apprentices are excluded from ranking entirely, and the two states that underreport to the federal system are flagged, not hidden.