Occupation / job
Helpers--Electricians
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
Helpers--Electricians pays a median $42,670 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.53 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
63,630 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Helpers--Electricians is still a distinguishing thing to have.
Helper roles are the paid entrance to a trade. They suit people who will trade a low starting rate for time on a site next to someone who already knows how the work is done.
How long it takes to become one of the 63,630 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Helpers--Electricians earn under $36,830 and a quarter over $48,470: 1.3x, and $11,640 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
A quarter of Helpers--Electricians earn under $36,830, which is $13,190 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if you need the entry rate to be liveable immediately — the helper year is deliberately the cheap one.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 63,630 figure counts people already working as Helpers--Electricians, 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
A 1.3x ratio from $36,830 to $48,470 makes $42,670 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
In cash terms the middle half of Helpers--Electricians runs $36,830 to $48,470 — $11,640 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $42,670.
The 75th percentile is $48,470. Reaching it from the $42,670 midpoint is $5,800 a year; reaching it from the $36,830 that the bottom quarter of Helpers--Electricians earn is $11,640.
$5,840 down to $36,830, $5,800 up to $48,470: the midpoint of Helpers--Electricians is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $20.51 at the midpoint for Helpers--Electricians, $17.70 at the 25th percentile and $23.30 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Helpers--Electricians. The self-employed are excluded, so $42,670 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Helpers--Electricians, the hourly figure is $42,670 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else