Contents
Key points
- A fully burdened electrical rate usually runs $85 to $150 an hour. Ours worked out to about $92 before materials, using a real four-step pricing method with example inputs, not a guess.
- The billable-hour ratio, the share of your day you can actually invoice, changes your true hourly cost more than any other input.
- True labor cost is not the wage. Add payroll tax and benefits, typically 25 to 35 percent above wage, before building a rate on top of it.
- Hiring changes every number. A helper billed at $60 an hour but paid $40 can lose money once payroll tax and workers comp are counted.
- A price only earns money on jobs you win. The shop that answers the phone gets the callback.
This electrical pricing guide is for the shop owner working out what to charge, not the homeowner shopping for one. Fully burdened rates for electrical contractors usually run $85 to $150 an hour, but that range only shows where other shops landed. It does not tell you your number.
Below you will find hourly rates by tier and the billable-hour ratio that changes everything. Then comes one full worked calculation, using example overhead and labor numbers to walk a real pricing method all the way to a price list for common jobs. Copy the numbers, or swap in your own and build your own price book.
Time and materials vs flat rate
Electricians price work two ways. You bill for the hours worked plus parts, or you quote one flat price before you start. Most shops use both: hourly for the odd jobs that are hard to size up, flat rate for the common ones.
Time and materials
You charge for actual hours plus the parts you use. It protects you on jobs where you cannot guess the time, like tracing a short in old wiring. The downside is the customer does not know the total until the job is done.
Flat rate
You give one price before you start. The customer knows the total up front, which builds trust and wins more jobs. You keep the reward if the job goes fast, and you carry the risk if it runs long, so the price only works if the time estimate under it is honest.
Hourly rates by tier
Rates climb with experience and license level. Apprentices bill $40 to $60 an hour, journeymen $60 to $90, and master electricians $90 to $100, based on figures from Housecall Pro. Real shops land near this range too. One owner of a $1.7 million a year residential electrical business charges an $85 service fee plus $140 an hour, with helpers billed at $95 an hour.
A target profit margin of 10 to 20 percent per job is common on top of these rates. Where you land in a tier range depends on your own costs, which the worked calculation below solves for.
The billable-hour ratio: the number that changes everything
Not every clocked hour is a billable hour. Driving, picking up parts, writing quotes, and paperwork all eat into the day. The billable-hour ratio is the share of your working hours you can actually invoice, and it is the single biggest lever on your true hourly cost. Skip it and your rate will be too low to survive on.
Here is how to find your own ratio. Say a full-time year runs about 2,080 hours, 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. The worked calculation below uses a shop that can only bill 1,500 of those hours. That is 1,500 divided by 2,080, or about 72 percent. The other 28 percent goes to driving, quoting, ordering parts, and paperwork. This ratio is what turns your annual overhead into an overhead cost per billable hour in step one.
Move the ratio and the rate moves with it, holding overhead and labor cost the same. At a 90 percent ratio (1,872 billable hours), $60,000 of overhead costs about $32 an hour to carry, and the fully burdened rate from the calculation below drops to about $82 an hour. At a 50 percent ratio (1,040 billable hours), overhead climbs to about $58 an hour and the rate rises to about $113 an hour. Nothing about your skill or your prices changed in that comparison. Only the share of the day you can bill did.
One electrician framed the real test plainly. He asked whether most of a shop's hours are billable, and said that if they are not, the answer is to lower prices, advertise, or both, and that if they are, the answer is to raise prices or hire. If your crew sits idle most of the day, no hourly rate fixes that on its own. If they are booked solid, you are underpriced.
The worked calculation: from your costs to a rate
Here is the arithmetic, using the method and numbers from a Housecall Pro worked example. Follow it once with your own numbers and you have your rate for good.
Step one: overhead per billable hour
Start with your annual overhead: truck, insurance, tools, and shop costs. Say it is $60,000 a year. Divide that by your billable hours for the year. In this example that is 1,500 hours, the 72 percent billable-hour ratio from the section above. That is $60,000 divided by 1,500, or $40 an hour. Every billable hour has to carry $40 of overhead before you have earned anything.
Step two: true labor cost
Your labor cost is not the wage alone. Add payroll tax and benefits, typically 25 to 35 percent above the base wage. In the worked example, a $30 an hour technician plus $5 payroll tax plus $3 in benefits comes to $38 an hour of true labor cost.
From break-even to your billable rate
Step three: apply your margin
Add overhead and labor together. That is $40 plus $38, or $78 an hour. This is your break-even rate, the point where you cover costs and earn nothing. To turn a profit, divide by one minus your target margin instead of just adding a percentage on top. At a 15 percent margin, that is $78 divided by 0.85, or about $92 an hour. That divisor matters, because a straight 15 percent markup on cost quietly undercharges you.
Step four: materials and the service call fee
Materials are not billed at cost. A typical markup is 20 to 50 percent. On top of labor and materials, most shops add a service call or trip fee to cover the drive out, billed separately and typically $100 to $200. In the source example, a two-hour job has $76 of true labor cost and $80 of overhead. Fold in the 15 percent margin and materials and it sells for about $210. Add a $100 service call fee and the final customer price is $310.
Turn that rate into a price list
The $92 an hour figure from step three is now your fully burdened labor rate, before materials or the trip fee. Apply it to a menu of common jobs and you get an actual price list. These numbers are our arithmetic, built from that $92 rate, a 40 percent materials markup, and a $100 service call fee, using the time estimates below. They are not a market survey and not a competitor's table. Swap in your own rate, markup, and time per job, and the same math gives you your own price list.
- Single outlet or switch: about 30 minutes of labor ($46) plus $10 of materials marked up to $14, plus the $100 service call fee. Total: about $160.
- GFCI outlet install: about 45 minutes of labor ($69) plus $25 of materials marked up to $35, plus the service call fee. Total: about $204.
- Ceiling fan install on existing wiring: about 1.5 hours of labor ($138) plus $35 of materials marked up to $49, plus the service call fee. Total: about $287.
- Dedicated appliance circuit, like a microwave or dishwasher: about 3 hours of labor ($276) plus $80 of materials marked up to $112, plus the service call fee. Total: about $488.
- EV charger circuit, 240 volt: about 4 hours of labor ($368) plus $220 of materials marked up to $308, plus the service call fee. Total: about $776.
- Panel replacement, 200 amp: about 8 hours of labor ($736) plus $900 of materials marked up to $1,260, plus the service call fee. Total: about $2,100.
- Whole-house rewire, priced per opening: about 1 hour of labor per outlet, switch, or fixture ($92) plus $20 of materials marked up to $28. About $120 per opening, with no separate trip fee since it is one continuous job.
- Diagnostic visit: the $100 service call fee covers the first hour of troubleshooting. Additional hours bill at the $92 rate.
Check your price list against the market
Sanity check the menu against published ranges before you use it. The panel replacement line above works out to about $2,100, above Housecall Pro's own published range of $1,200 to $2,000 and near the top of a homeowner-facing range of $1,100 to $2,500 from HomeGuide. If your own derived number lands above the market like this, it usually means one of two things: the market is underpricing the job, or your overhead, time estimate, or materials cost needs a second look.
Drop your own numbers into the free electrical estimate template and you have a price list ready to send on the next call.
What changes when you hire your first electrician
A solo operator and a shop with employees are not priced the same way. Payroll tax, workers comp, and benefits change every number the moment someone else is on the clock. One solo industrial contractor charges $125 an hour for labor plus a 15 percent materials markup, and plans to pay apprentices $25 an hour while billing $40, and journeymen $40 while billing $60.
Other shops bill higher. One contractor described an industrial company that bills $60 an hour for helpers paid $17, and $80 an hour for licensed electricians paid $30 to $35. A reply in that same thread warned that billing $60 an hour for labor you pay $40 an hour will lose money once workers comp, payroll tax, and insurance are added. Run the true labor cost math from step two on every employee's wage before you set their bill rate, not just your own.
After-hours and emergency pricing
Sources do not agree on the after-hours multiplier, and they do not even agree on the shape of it. Some price it as a percentage: a homeowner-facing marketplace guide says emergency or after-hours service can add 50 to 100 percent over standard rates. Others price it as a flat add-on instead: Housecall Pro's own guidance is to add $100 to $200 on top of the base rate for nights, weekends, and holidays. Pick whichever structure fits how you already quote, since both are sourced and neither is the consensus.
What homeowners expect to pay
It helps to know what your customer already thinks the job costs, since that shapes how they react to your quote. A homeowner-facing cost guide puts electrical work at $40 to $100 an hour, with a typical call-out or first-hour fee of $75 to $125. Our worked rate above came out to $92 an hour before materials, near the top of what homeowners expect, before the service call fee is even added. If your quotes run higher than that range, be ready to explain why. Licensing, insurance, and the true cost of running a shop all sit inside your number.
Build a price book you can reuse
Once you have your hourly rate and a handful of derived job prices, write them down. A price book is just this menu kept somewhere you can find it: your rate by tier, your materials markup, your service call fee, and prices for the jobs you quote most. Update it once a year, or whenever your overhead or wages move.
A price only earns money on the jobs you win. You do the math, quote a fair price, and then the phone has to be answered for the job to turn into a paycheck. EveryDial picks up when you cannot, so the calls you worked hard to price into a fair number turn into booked jobs instead of a voicemail the next electrician answers first.
EveryDial answers your phone and books the job when you're on a ladder or under a panel. Free to try.
See what missed calls are costing you with our missed-call cost calculator. Lock in job terms with our free electrical contract template. If you are still building the budget these numbers plug into, read our electrical business plan guide.
Frequently asked questions
How do I price my electrical work?
Work out your fully burdened hourly rate first: annual overhead divided by billable hours, plus true labor cost including payroll tax and benefits, then apply your margin. From there, price flat-rate jobs by multiplying that rate by your honest time estimate and adding marked-up materials. The worked calculation and price list above walk through the full method with example numbers you can swap for your own.
How much should an electrician charge per outlet?
It depends on your own burdened rate, not a national average. Using the $92 an hour rate derived in this guide, a single outlet or switch swap taking about 30 minutes works out to roughly $160 once materials and the service call fee are added. Build the same number with your own rate and time estimate instead of copying this one.
What should I charge for labor to wire a 1500 square foot house?
There is no honest single number without knowing your own rate and the number of openings, meaning outlets, switches, and fixtures, in the house. As a placeholder only, not a measured or sourced count, assume about 100 openings for a home that size. At the $120 per-opening price derived above, that is roughly $12,000 for labor and materials alone, before the panel, permits, or your final walkthrough. Always count the actual openings on the house you are quoting instead of trusting this placeholder.
How to estimate electrical labor cost?
Start with your technician's wage, then add payroll tax and benefits, which typically run [25 to 35 percent above the base wage](https://build-folio.com/contractor-guides/electrical-contractor-pricing-guide/). In our worked example, a $30 an hour wage plus $5 payroll tax and $3 in benefits came to $38 an hour of true labor cost. Multiply that by the hours the job takes to get your labor cost for that job.
How to quote for an electrical job?
Decide whether the job fits time and materials or a flat rate. For a flat rate, take your fully burdened hourly rate, multiply by your honest time estimate, add marked-up materials, then add your service call fee. That is the same method used to build the price list above.