Loudoun County’s electrical contractors had 5,615 people on payroll in 2019. In the fourth quarter of 2025 they had 13,352, and by March 2026 14,022, a 138% increase in six years. That is what a few gigawatts of datacenter construction does to one trade in one place, and the same curve is now running in Franklin and Licking counties in Ohio, in Maricopa, in Washoe, in Fulton. The median electrician did not get rich: the BLS median hourly wage for the trade rose 12.5% nationally between May 2019 and May 2025 while CPI rose 25.6%. The money went to the counties with campuses, to travelers on per diem, and to the contractors that can field a named crew. If you are wiring a plant expansion in 2026 you are bidding against that market whether you know it or not.
This piece covers the BLS wage tables for electricians and pipefitters in ten datacenter metros, the county payroll data that shows where the crews went, the apprenticeship pipeline that cannot refill them before 2028, the travel-card and per diem terms that set the real price, and, behind the wall, the three contract clauses that protect a plant project and the three metros where a 2026 job can still be staffed.
Source: BLS OEWS 47-2111 via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table (compiled from BLS OEWS May 2019 and May 2025 metro tables; as of May 2025)
The median electrician in Reno went from $26.48 to $35.00 an hour (+32.2%), in Columbus from $23.93 to $31.11 (+30.0%), in Portland from $39.30 to $50.53 (+28.6%) and in Phoenix from $23.23 to $29.43 (+26.7%), while Salt Lake City moved from $28.15 to $30.11 (+7.0%) and Atlanta from $25.39 to $28.20 (+11.1%).
Ten Metros, One Wage Table
We pulled the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics rows for electricians (SOC 47-2111) and for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) in the ten metros that matter for datacenter power: Washington (Loudoun), Columbus, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, Salt Lake City, Reno and Portland-Hillsboro. May 2025 came from the BLS API; May 2019 came from the archived metro tables. The sheet lives as a labor tab in the Large-Load Cost Table, next to the study fees and security deposits for the same 15 markets, because a buyer needs both numbers before a site decision.
The national median electrician earned $30.38 an hour in May 2025, up from $27.01 in May 2019, a 12.5% raise against a 25.6% rise in CPI. Construction average hourly earnings for all employees rose 28.6% over the same window (FRED CES2000000003, $30.69 to $39.47), so the electrician median lagged its own industry by 16 points. The OEWS median is a three-year rolling sample that includes residential and service electricians, and it is a poor instrument for a market being pulled by 300 MW campuses. It is still the number your estimator’s labor rate is anchored to, which is the problem.
Employment tells the other half. Phoenix went from 11,130 to 17,240 electricians (+54.9%), Salt Lake City from 4,090 to 5,710 (+39.6%), Columbus from 5,610 to 7,210 (+28.5%), Atlanta from 11,080 to 13,430 (+21.2%), Dallas from 17,350 to 20,930 (+20.6%) and Washington from 13,830 to 16,580 (+19.9%). Chicago fell from 19,390 to 17,720 (a loss of 1,670) and Portland from 7,510 to 7,340. National electrician employment rose 10.0%, from 688,620 to 757,220.
Source: BLS OEWS via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
Dallas has the most electricians of the ten at 20,930, then Chicago at 17,720 and Phoenix at 17,240; Reno has 1,490 and Memphis 2,770, which is why a single 200 MW build in either metro clears the local book.
| Metro | Electricians May 2019 | May 2025 | Median $/hr 2019 | 2025 | Change | Median annual 2025 | 90th pct annual 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 688,620 | 757,220 | $27.01 | $30.38 | +12.5% | $63,190 | $108,510 |
| Washington (Loudoun) | 13,830 | 16,580 | $29.53 | $36.50 | +23.6% | $75,930 | $121,570 |
| Columbus | 5,610 | 7,210 | $23.93 | $31.11 | +30.0% | $64,700 | $94,410 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 17,350 | 20,930 | $23.75 | $28.37 | +19.5% | $59,010 | $81,660 |
| Phoenix | 11,130 | 17,240 | $23.23 | $29.43 | +26.7% | $61,210 | $86,800 |
| Atlanta | 11,080 | 13,430 | $25.39 | $28.20 | +11.1% | $58,650 | $84,000 |
| Chicago | 19,390 | 17,720 | $40.99 | $49.21 | +20.1% | $102,350 | $124,070 |
| Memphis | 2,450 | 2,770 | $23.80 | $29.27 | +23.0% | $60,890 | $84,890 |
| Salt Lake City | 4,090 | 5,710 | $28.15 | $30.11 | +7.0% | $62,620 | $88,640 |
| Reno | 1,310 | 1,490 | $26.48 | $35.00 | +32.2% | $72,800 | $102,250 |
| Portland (Hillsboro) | 7,510 | 7,340 | $39.30 | $50.53 | +28.6% | $105,090 | $134,380 |
Source: BLS OEWS May 2019 (archived metro tables) and May 2025 (BLS API). CSV: oes-wages-by-metro-2019-2025.csv
Two things in the table are not obvious from the chart. Chicago and Portland, the two metros with a median above $49, are the two that lost electricians, so the high-scale locals are the ones exporting travelers to the Sun Belt campuses. And the four metros with a median under $30 in 2025 (Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Memphis) are the four where a datacenter GC paying $60 to $70 an hour all-in plus per diem faces the least local resistance, which is exactly where the pipeline went. Salt Lake City’s $30.11 is the fifth-lowest median in the table and it moved the least, 7.0% in six years, on a 39.6% increase in headcount; that combination appears nowhere else in the ten.
The one-year change is where the 2025 acceleration shows, and the OEWS metro tables do not publish it cleanly, so we use the QCEW contractor payroll instead. Average annual pay per electrical-contractor employee rose 11.9% in Ohio between 2024 and 2025, 11.7% in Nevada, 8.6% in Virginia, 8.2% in Georgia, 8.0% in Illinois, 7.9% in Utah, 7.1% in Arizona and 6.5% in Texas, against 5.3% nationally and a 2.4% rise in CPI between May 2024 and May 2025 (FRED CPIAUCSL). Oregon (2.2%) and Tennessee (2.9%) were the only two of the ten states below the national rate. Ohio’s number is the Intel and datacenter build in Licking County arriving in the payroll data at once: contractor employment in the state went from 35,263 in 2024 to 43,064 in Q4 2025 while pay per head rose 12%, which is what a market looks like when it is paying travelers.
The Median Hides the Traveler Market
The IBEW’s own magazine, in its June 2025 cover story on the datacenter surge, says the quiet part: “Between 45% and 70% of the entire budget for data center construction goes to the electrical subcontractor,” and “multiple locals are facing single data center projects that require two, three, sometimes four times their current membership.” Local 446 in Monroe, Louisiana has 500 members and the Meta Holly Ridge campus needs 1,000 to 2,000 electricians for five to ten years; the local’s scale is just under $30 an hour and the job “will likely pay far above that.” Local 26 in Washington “does close to 97% of the work” in Northern Virginia. Local 24 in Baltimore, with 2,400 members, needed 1,000 on site at the Frederick campus by August 2025 with peak “double that. Or triple.”
That is where the wage went. The 90th percentile electrician in the Washington metro made $121,570 in May 2025, in Chicago $124,070, in Portland $134,380, against medians of $75,930, $102,350 and $105,090. A Cheyenne business manager told Cowboy State Daily in April 2026 that one datacenter crew’s journeymen reached $190,000 a year including benefits and per diem because “the company had bid that they wanted to maintain the same workforce.” Casper-area journeymen average about $120,000 with benefits. The viral $260,000 figure is real for a few travelers in Texas and, as the same locals say, “you become a slave to that money.”
Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
The gap between median and 90th percentile is $45,640 in Washington, $29,450 in Reno and $29,290 in Portland, and it is the traveler and datacenter premium that a plant project has to match or design around.
The datacenter premium is a per diem and a named crew, not a scale increase, which is why the BLS median cannot see it. Microsoft’s Brad Smith said the company has electricians commuting from 75 miles or relocating to fill sites, and called electrical talent the number one problem slowing its US datacenter expansion. Bloomberg reported in December 2025 that some Oracle datacenters for OpenAI slipped from 2027 to 2028 in part on labor, as reported by Fortune; Oracle disputed the report and said its projects remain “on schedule and on plan.” Either way the crew that did not show up at Oracle’s site was on somebody else’s, and in 2026 that somebody is not a plant owner paying scale.
Contractor Payrolls Tell the Real Story
The QCEW county files for electrical contractors (NAICS 23821, private) are the cleanest series we found for where the crews actually are. They count employees on contractor payrolls in the county where the work is, so a traveler from Local 613 working in Loudoun shows up in Loudoun. Loudoun went from 5,615 in 2019 to 8,546 in 2024 and 13,352 in Q4 2025, and its average weekly wage in the trade was $2,383 in Q4 2025, an annualized $123,900 against $86,846 in 2019 (+42.7%). Franklin County (Columbus) went from 4,687 to 7,774 (+65.9%); Licking County, home of the New Albany campuses, was suppressed by BLS in 2019 for having too few employers to publish, had 516 in 2024, 1,402 in Q4 2025 and 1,811 in Q1 2026.
Source: BLS QCEW NAICS 23821 via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
Loudoun +137.8%, Fairfield County, Ohio +119.9%, Washoe +92.7%, Ellis County, Texas +83.3%, Franklin +65.9%, Maricopa +54.0% and Fulton +53.3% are the datacenter counties; Cook County fell 3.0% and Washington County, Oregon (Hillsboro) fell 9.5% even with the Hillsboro campuses, because Portland’s electricians already earned $50 an hour and the work went to travelers who are counted at home.
Maricopa County alone added 9,918 electrical-contractor employees between 2019 and Q4 2025, more than the entire electrician workforce of Columbus. Statewide the picture is the same: Arizona contractors went from 22,199 to a 2025 average of 33,813 (+52.3%), Ohio from 29,462 to 40,745 (+38.3%), Virginia from 27,967 to 37,829 (+35.3%), Utah from 16,900 to 21,975 (+30.0%), Texas from 92,711 to 115,836 (+24.9%). Illinois grew 4.9% and Maryland 1.2%. National private electrical-contractor employment rose from 964,618 to 1,127,622 (+16.9%) and average annual pay from $66,157 to an estimated $87,516 (+32.3%), so the contractor payroll beat inflation by 7 points while the OEWS median lost 13.
Source: BLS QCEW NAICS 23821 via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
Texas at 115,800 is larger than Ohio, Virginia and Georgia combined; Arizona’s 11,600 added jobs and Ohio’s 11,300 are the two biggest absolute gains outside Texas.
Wage Growth Against Headcount Growth
Put the two BLS series side by side and the metros sort into three groups. Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Columbus, Dallas and Atlanta grew headcount 20% to 55%, which means the supply response worked and wage growth stayed in the teens or twenties. Reno and Portland grew wages 29% to 32% with headcount flat or down, which is a book that emptied. Chicago is the odd one: wages up 20.1% on the highest base in the sample and headcount down 8.6%, a metro that is exporting electricians to the campuses at travel rates.
Source: BLS OEWS via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
Salt Lake City is the only metro where headcount growth (39.6%) exceeded wage growth (7.0%) by more than 30 points; Reno is the mirror image at 32.2% wage growth on 13.7% headcount growth.
The pipeline behind those curves is documented but not evenly. CBRE counted 6,350 MW under construction in North America’s primary markets at the end of 2024, more than double the 3,077 MW a year earlier, with the primary markets being Northern Virginia, Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth and Hillsboro. Atlanta alone had 3,450 MW under construction in 2024 per CBRE, more than its operating inventory. In the first half of 2025 CBRE recorded 538.6 MW of net absorption in Northern Virginia and an 80% surge in under-construction capacity, and JLL put H1 absorption at 647 MW in Northern Virginia and 575 MW in Dallas. Every one of those megawatts is 45% to 70% electrical work by budget.
The connection side of the same markets is in our Large-Load Cost Table: Dominion quoting up to 7 years for 100 MW connections, AEP Ohio’s 85% minimum bill for 12 years, Texas SB6’s $100,000 screening study fee and uniform security per MW. The comparison across all 15 markets is in What 50 MW Costs in 15 US Markets, and the deposit math is in the Large-Load Interconnection Cost tool. A developer who has posted $2.5 million of security and waits four years for a substation will pay any per diem to hit the energization date, which is why labor is the last thing a plant buyer wins on price.
Pipefitters Are Next
The mechanical side of a datacenter is chilled water, and the pipefitter series is a year or two behind the electrician series. Pipefitter medians rose 33.9% in Phoenix ($22.89 to $30.65), 30.5% in Portland, 27.8% in Washington ($27.04 to $34.55), 23.2% in Reno and 21.8% in Columbus, while Chicago rose 9.9% and Memphis 7.3%. National pipefitter employment grew 5.2%, from 442,870 to 465,840, half the electrician rate.
Source: BLS OEWS via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
Pipefitters beat electricians on wage growth in Phoenix (33.9% vs 26.7%), Washington (27.8% vs 23.6%), Atlanta (19.5% vs 11.1%), Salt Lake City (19.0% vs 7.0%) and Portland (30.5% vs 28.6%), and lost in Chicago, Memphis, Columbus, Reno and Dallas.
Columbus pipefitter headcount grew 42.3% and Reno 42.7% in six years, the two largest gains of any trade in any metro in this sample. Chicago lost 10.6% of its pipefitters and Atlanta 12.5%, which for a plant with a process chiller replacement means the crew is coming from out of town at the terms in the table below. The chiller lead times that make the schedule worse are in the Lead-Time Monitor and in Chillers Are the 60-Week Problem; a 60-week chiller and a crew that costs 30% more than the estimate is the standard 2026 mechanical package.
The Apprentice Pipeline Cannot Close the Gap by 2028
Registered apprenticeship is a four to five year program and its output is small against the demand curve. The Department of Labor’s national results show 81,552 completers across all occupations in FY2019, 82,379 in FY2020 and 96,915 in FY2021, with new entrants of 252,271, 222,243 and 241,849. Electricians were the largest single occupation with 47,483 active apprentices in the federal workload in FY2019 and 71,812 in the expanded RAPIDS count for FY2021. By FY2024, 679,105 apprentices were enrolled across all industries and 35.7% were in construction; ABC estimated the construction programs produced fewer than 40,000 completers that year.
Source: US DOL ETA, Registered Apprenticeship National Results FY2019 to FY2021
Completers rose from 51,386 in FY2008 to 96,915 in FY2021, an average of about 3,500 a year, while new entrants roughly doubled from 132,782 to 241,849 over the same period.
Against that: ABC projected in January 2025 that construction needed 439,000 new workers in 2025 and 499,000 in 2026; the figures cited by Fortune put nearly 30% of union electricians between 50 and 70 and about 20,000 retirements a year. Google’s April 2025 grant to the electrical training ALLIANCE aims to train 100,000 electrical workers and 30,000 new apprentices and lift the pipeline 70% in five years. A first-year apprentice entering in 2026 is a journeyman in 2030 or 2031. Nothing in the pipeline changes 2026 or 2027 supply.
The AGC and NCCER workforce survey released August 28, 2025 (about 1,400 firms) found 92% of firms hiring had trouble filling positions, 45% had project delays from labor shortages, seven in eight raised base pay, 57% said applicants lacked skills or licenses, and 28% were hit by immigration enforcement in the prior six months, 75% of firms in Georgia. That last number matters for Atlanta specifically and we come back to it behind the wall.
Travel Cards, Per Diem and the Daybook
The union hall’s referral rules are public, and they define the terms under which a crew shows up in your county. We read the Local 26, Local 134 and Local 48 pages and the Oregon prevailing wage book so the table below is the language, not a summary of it.
Source: IBEW Local 26, 134 and 48 public pages; Oregon BOLI PWR Jan 2025; Cowboy State Daily Apr 2026; Fortune Mar 2026; IBEW Electrical Worker Jun 2025; BLS QCEW
| Term | Where | What it says | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travel letter age | IBEW Local 26 (DC, NoVA, MD) | Letter of Introduction dated within one year, paid dues receipt, termination slip; daybook signing 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. only; 30-day re-sign between the 1st and 25th | Local 26 travelers page |
| Portability | IBEW Local 26 | A traveling contractor may bring a limited number of its own employees; each must have been on payroll at least 2 weeks before traveling | Local 26 travelers page |
| Short call | IBEW Local 134 (Chicago) | A short call is 14 calendar days or less; a Book 2 call over 14 days in any local removes you from Local 134’s residential book | Local 134 referral rules 2024 |
| Journeyman package | IBEW Local 48 (Portland, Hillsboro) | $65.50 wage plus $33.24 fringe, $98.74 per hour, effective January 1, 2026 | Local 48 wage information |
| Shift differential | Oregon BOLI prevailing wage, electricians, Jan 2025 | Swing plus 10% to 17%, graveyard plus 15% to 31%, high time 1.5x to 2x base above 50 ft | Oregon PWR book |
| Zone pay | Oregon BOLI prevailing wage, Jan 2025 | Plus $1.25 per hour at 30 to 40 miles from the reference city, plus $10.00 beyond 100 miles (carpenter schedule) | Oregon PWR book |
| Per diem crew | IBEW Local 415 (Cheyenne) | One datacenter crew’s journeymen at about $190,000 a year including benefits and per diem; contractor bid to keep the same crew | Cowboy State Daily |
| Commute radius | Microsoft | Electricians commuting from 75 miles or relocating temporarily | Fortune |
| Scale vs job pay | IBEW Local 446, Meta Holly Ridge | Scale just under $30 per hour, job pays far above; 500 members vs 1,000 to 2,000 needed | IBEW Electrical Worker |
| Remote-site wage signal | Storey vs Washoe County, NV | Contractor average weekly wage $2,909 in Storey (TRIC) vs $2,420 in Washoe, Q4 2025 | BLS QCEW |
CSV: travel-card-per-diem-terms.csv
The Storey County row is the cleanest per diem signal in public data: contractor payroll per employee 20% higher one county east of Reno, where the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center campuses are and where nobody lives. Every other row is a rule a plant owner can read before bidding, and none of them appears in a typical electrical subcontract exhibit.
A journeyman in Portland costs the contractor $98.74 an hour before markup, overtime or per diem, and a graveyard shift under Oregon prevailing wage adds 15% to 31% on top. When a datacenter GC compresses a schedule it buys second and third shifts at those differentials and pays zone or per diem for anyone outside the local’s radius. A plant project that budgets straight time at the OEWS median of $36.50 in Washington or $31.11 in Columbus is 40% to 60% under the real 2026 cost of a crew that shows up on the date in the schedule. The same escalation logic for material is in the Copper and Wire Price Sheet and in Copper at $6.77; labor needs its own clause, and we give the language below.
What a 300 MW Campus Does to the County
Licking County, Ohio is the cleanest natural experiment we have. BLS suppressed its electrical-contractor employment in 2019 because the handful of firms there could be identified; by 2024 the county had 516 electrical-contractor employees, by Q4 2025 1,402, by Q1 2026 1,811, and its neighbor Franklin County went from 4,687 to 8,399 over the same window. Fairfield County, the other neighbor, went from 402 to 811. Every one of those people was hired away from somewhere: a school district electrical bid in Lancaster, a plant expansion in Newark, a residential service company in Columbus. AEP Ohio had paused new datacenter requests with 30 GW in queue in March 2023, the tariff that followed is in the Large-Load Policy Tracker, and the labor market did not wait for the tariff.
Source: FRED CPIAUCSL and CES2000000003; BLS OEWS; BLS QCEW NAICS 23821; Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table compilation
CPI rose 25.6% and construction hourly earnings 28.6% between May 2019 and May 2025; the national electrician median rose 12.5%, national contractor pay per employee 32.3%, and Loudoun contractor pay per employee 42.7%.
The plant owner’s problem is not the median rate; it is that the marginal electrician in a datacenter county is priced at the datacenter’s per diem, and a 2 MW service upgrade competes for the same 14 people. The utility side of that upgrade, the pad-mount wait, the AHJ timeline and the CIAC, is in The 2 MW Plant Service Upgrade Nobody Budgets Right; the gear is in Transformer Lead Times Hit 160 Weeks and the Lead-Time Monitor. Labor is the third queue and the only one without a published price, which is why we put the BLS rows in the model.
Where the Estimator’s Rate Comes From
I sat through six months of diligence on an electrical contractor in 2024 and read every labor line in its bids. The rate on the estimate was the same number for eighteen months: the owner’s sense of what a journeyman cost, not a series. That is normal. A nonunion contractor’s estimator carries a blended rate per crew and updates it when someone quits for more money; a union contractor carries the local’s package and adds a markup. Neither rate contains the per diem, the shift differential or the retention bonus that the datacenter GC in the next county is paying this quarter, because those are project costs, not wage rates, and they land in the change order.
So the estimate you receive for a 2026 plant job in Columbus will carry a journeyman rate near the Local 683 package or the open-shop equivalent of $31 to $38 an hour base, and the crew that shows up will have been offered $10 to $20 an hour more plus $100 to $150 a day to go to New Albany instead. The contractor covers the gap by staffing your job with apprentices at a higher ratio, by stretching the schedule, or by asking for a change order in month four. The 212 public change orders we read for What 212 Public Change Orders Show About Electrical Contractors are that story told 212 times. The fix is not a lower rate; it is a rate that is indexed, a crew that is named, and a schedule whose float you own, which is the paid section.
What to Do Monday
Ask three questions before you sign the electrical subcontract. First, what is the labor rate assumption in the bid, by classification, and is it indexed; if it is a flat number with no index it is the estimator’s guess at scale and it will be wrong by the per diem. Second, who is the foreman and how many of the journeymen are on the contractor’s payroll today, in this local’s jurisdiction; the Local 26 portability rule says a traveling contractor can bring people who have been on payroll two weeks, so “our crew” can mean anyone hired last month. Third, what does the schedule assume about shifts, and is the shift differential priced or hidden in a contingency; the Oregon book puts graveyard at 15% to 31% and every local has an equivalent.
Then re-run the schedule. The Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule takes your PO dates and gear classes and returns the energization month from the Monitor’s published lead times; if the switchgear lands in week 60 and the crew is only committed for weeks 30 to 50, you have bought a demobilization and a second per diem. Price the gear with Quote Check against the Public Bid-Tab Price Book so the material line is not hiding a labor problem, and write the RFQ per How to Write an RFQ for Capital Equipment in 2026. Change orders on electrical work are where the labor overrun lands; the public record on that is in What 212 Public Change Orders Show About Electrical Contractors, and the delay math is in Liquidated Damages at 0.5% a Week.
Behind the paywall: the three clauses we would put in every 2026 plant electrical subcontract (labor escalation indexed to a public BLS series with a shared band, a named-crew clause with substitution rules and a book letter, and a schedule-float clause that says who owns the float and what triggers per diem), and the three metros where a plant can still staff a 2026 project, starting with the one where the median electrician wage rose 7.0% in six years while headcount grew 39.6%. The wage rows sit in the labor tab of the Large-Load Cost Table.