Washington · Electrical
Electrical contractors in Washington: market size, permits, and job values
2,200 electrical contractors operate in Washington. Median job value is $5,266 and top-quartile contractors land jobs of $20,019+. Sourced from 409M building permits (2022-2024) and 365K specialty trade contractor records.
2,200
Electrical contractors in Washington
All revenue tiers
$5,266
Median job value
Trade median: $5,686
$20,019
Top-quartile job value
75th percentile
$95/hr
Median bill rate (national)
Level benchmark
Permit volume trend, Washington
Building permits are the leading indicator of contractor demand. Washington logged 858K permit records in 2023, the last fully reported year, up +17% over 2022.
2022
733K
2023
858K
+17% YoY
2024
581K
still reporting
2024 counts are still filling in (late-arriving records inflate prior years), so treat the raw 2024 drop as a reporting lag, not real contraction. Census data shows US permitted units were roughly flat from 2023 to 2024. Demand is expanding. Most electrical contractors who fail in growth markets fail on cash flow, not sales, get the AR collection and progress billing tight before scaling crews.
Electrical seasonality (2023, national)
Peak month: Aug. Slow month: Feb. Plan cash and crew capacity against this curve.
Competition: who you're up against
Washington has 8,085 HVAC/plumbing/electrical contractors total. Of those, 1,616 are in the $1-25M revenue band, the typical ICP for fractional-CFO support. The Seattle metro is the largest concentration. The average company has been in business 26 years.
27/yr
Median permits/contractor (state)
68/yr
Top 25% (p75)
198/yr
Top 10% (p90)
What this means for your P&L
The market is expanding, your books need to match.
Growing markets cover up bad finance habits. The electrical contractors who scale to $10M+ in expansion phases are the ones who keep DSO under 50 days, hold service-agreement margin above 38%, and price labor to their local top quartile. Want to see where you actually sit?
Other trades in Washington
Electrical contractors in other states
Permit data from public county tax-assessor and building-permit records (73.7M property records, over 400M permit records, 2022-2024). Contractor density from public company records (494M company locations). Bill-rate benchmarks from Level's proprietary contractor benchmark research (2,242 contractors, $13.25B in job revenue, 2.5M+ invoices). All data anonymized and aggregated. See the full Level Index.