Per the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), electricians in the Washington–Arlington–Alexandria metro area earn a median $75,930 a year — about $36.50 an hour — against a national median of $63,190. A solo operator can gross well past that, but the honest comparison is net: after insurance, the truck, tools, self-employment tax, unpaid admin hours, and any lead spend, a large share of the raise evaporates. The spread between solo gross and solo net is the whole game.
Ask what electricians make and you'll get three different numbers pretending to be the same number: the employee's wage, the solo's gross, and the solo's net. They differ by tens of thousands of dollars, and the whole "should I go out on my own" decision lives in the gaps. Let's put real government data under the first one and honest, clearly labeled math under the other two.
The employee baseline: real BLS numbers
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program (bls.gov/oes, occupation code 47-2111, May 2025 survey) puts electrician wages here:
| Geography | Median annual | Median hourly | Mean annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $63,190 | $30.38 | $71,490 |
| Washington–Arlington–Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV metro | $75,930 | $36.50 | $79,650 |
| Virginia (statewide) | $62,900 | — | — |
Two things worth noticing. The DC-metro median runs roughly 20% above the national median — the NoVA premium is real. And the metro figure sits well above the Virginia statewide median of $62,900, which tells you the premium is a metro effect, not a Virginia effect: the same license is worth more within commuting distance of Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington–Alexandria than in the rest of the state. Remember too that a W-2 number quietly includes things a solo must buy back: the employer's half of payroll taxes, usually some benefits, a truck you don't fuel, and zero unpaid admin.
Solo gross is not a wage
The seductive math goes: "I'll bill $120 an hour instead of earning $36.50 — I'll triple my income." But gross revenue is a business's top line, not an owner's paycheck. Between those two numbers sit every cost your old employer used to absorb. What follows is a labeled hypothetical — every figure is a "say" or a "call it," not a statistic. Build your own version with real quotes and real receipts; the shape will hold even where the numbers move.
The deduction walk (hypothetical, on purpose)
Say a competent solo in NoVA grosses $180,000 in labor revenue in a decent year. Walk it down:
| Line | Amount (hypothetical) |
|---|---|
| Gross labor revenue | $180,000 |
| Truck — payment, fuel, commercial auto, maintenance | − call it $18,000 |
| Insurance package — GL, tools coverage | − call it $5,000 |
| Tools, consumables, replacement gear | − call it $4,000 |
| Phone, software, accounting, license renewals, misc. | − call it $5,000 |
| Lead spend, if buying leads — say 15 booked jobs a month at a few hundred each all-in | − call it $12,000 |
| Health insurance, solo-purchased | − call it $9,000 |
| Pre-tax owner income | ≈ $127,000 |
Now taxes. A solo pays self-employment tax — 15.3%, both halves of Social Security and Medicare, on net self-employment earnings up to the Social Security wage base (the rate and current thresholds are on the IRS's self-employment tax page) — before ordinary income tax even starts. On our hypothetical, that's roughly $18,000 of SE tax alone, dropping the comparison-to-a-W2 number to around $109,000 before income tax — against a metro median employee who earned $75,930 with benefits, paid holidays, and none of the risk. Still a real raise. Just not the triple the gross number whispered.
And one line in that table deserves a hard look: the lead spend is the only one that isn't buying you anything durable. The truck hauls, the insurance protects, the tools work — the lead fees purchase introductions to homeowners who are simultaneously being sold to your competitors. That's the line we've done the full forensic math on: the true cost of buying leads.
The hours nobody invoices
The dollar walk above still flatters the solo life, because it prices the year in dollars and not in hours. Quoting, driving, bookkeeping, chasing checks — say it's 15 unpaid hours stacked on 50 on-the-tools hours, a 65-hour week for 50 weeks, call it 3,250 total working hours. Suddenly the divisor changes: $109,000 over 3,250 hours is about $33 an hour — under the W-2 median rate — even while the headline income looks like six figures. This is why billable ratio, not hourly rate, is the number seasoned solos obsess over, and why the full one-truck shop operating manual spends as much ink on admin load as on licensing.
The three levers, and where a network pulls them
Rate, billable ratio, acquisition cost. Everything else is commentary. A job network exists to attack the second and third: jobs arrive sold, scoped, and scheduled — no lead fees, no quoting hours, no collections — so more of your week invoices and none of your gross leaks to acquisition. That's the structural argument for how Loadside works, and it's why the comparison worth running isn't "network payout vs. my retail rate" but "network payout vs. my retail rate minus lead spend, quoting hours, and chase time." Licensed in Northern Virginia and want to run that math on real jobs? Apply here — it costs nothing, ever.
Sources and caveats: wage figures are BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 survey, occupation 47-2111 (national, Washington–Arlington–Alexandria DC-VA-MD-WV metro, and Virginia); retrieved from BLS in July 2026. The solo gross/net walk is an illustrative hypothetical, not a survey, and nothing here is tax advice — bring your own numbers to your own accountant.