Occupation / job
Electrical and Electronics Drafters
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Electrical and Electronics Drafters pays $76,870 at the midpoint, 54% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
17,920 people work as Electrical and Electronics Drafters. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
Technician and drafting roles suit people who want the technical work without the liability of the stamp, and who are good at being exactly right about details someone else specified.
No verified preparation time is on file for Electrical and Electronics Drafters. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $61,430 and a quarter above $96,730: a 1.6x ratio, $35,300 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
The bottom quarter of Electrical and Electronics Drafters earns $61,430 or more — $11,410 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Three quarters of the field is well paid and the last quarter is still paid better than most of the country.
Avoid it if you would find it frustrating to execute someone else’s design decisions without the authority to change them.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 17,920 figure counts people already working as Electrical and Electronics Drafters, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
At 1.6x between $61,430 and $96,730 this is a normally shaped occupation. $76,870 is what the middle of Electrical and Electronics Drafters earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $61,430 at the 25th percentile, $76,870 at the midpoint, $96,730 at the 75th. $35,300 separates the quarter of Electrical and Electronics Drafters at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $96,730. Reaching it from the $76,870 midpoint is $19,860 a year; reaching it from the $61,430 that the bottom quarter of Electrical and Electronics Drafters earn is $35,300.
The climb from $76,870 to $96,730 is $19,860; the drop to $61,430 is $15,440. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Electrical and Electronics Drafters and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $36.95 at the midpoint for Electrical and Electronics Drafters, $29.53 at the 25th percentile and $46.50 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $76,870 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $76,870 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Electrical and Electronics Drafters, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else