Facility & commercial rate benchmarks · San Francisco
Commercial electrical rates in San Francisco.
Estimated median rate: $123/hr, range $84-$188/hr, for commercial and facility-side electrical work in San Francisco.
Estimated from O*NET OnLine (U.S. Dept. of Labor/ETA), from BLS OEWS metropolitan area wage estimates
Estimated median$123/hr
$84$188
What affects the rate
- Emergency vs scheduled: same-day or after-hours emergency calls run well above scheduled maintenance visits.
- After-hours and weekend work: typically carries a premium over standard business-hours rates.
- Contract vs ad-hoc: vendors on a standing contract usually price lower per hour than one-off, ad-hoc jobs.
- Code and certification requirements: trades with stricter local licensing (electrical, HVAC/gas) typically carry a premium tied to certification cost.
What's different in San Francisco
- Labour market: The Bay Area combines high union density in commercial trades with the highest cost of living in the US, driving the elevated wage and billed-rate levels seen here.
- Climate and seasonality: Mild, fog-influenced climate; the region sits in an active seismic zone, and a large stock of older buildings drives ongoing seismic retrofit work in addition to routine trade maintenance.
- Code and licensing: California's Title 24 energy code and seismic provisions apply, and San Francisco adds its own seismic retrofit ordinances (e.g. for soft-story buildings) and a notoriously slow, expensive permitting process.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this a real measured rate, or an estimate?
- This figure is an estimate, not a measured billed rate: it's San Francisco's own hourly wage for electrical work (O*NET OnLine (U.S. Dept. of Labor/ETA), from BLS OEWS metropolitan area wage estimates, 2025), multiplied by a documented 2.5-3x service multiplier that converts an employee wage into a billed commercial rate. That multiplier covers labour burden (payroll tax, workers' comp, benefits, PTO), overhead (vehicle, dispatch, insurance, licensing), utilisation (not every hour is billable), and margin. It is not drawn from actual invoices or job records. Evalystar is building toward measured, job-derived rates for this same page as real vendor data accumulates. Shown below, not hidden, so you can check the arithmetic.Wagex Multiplier= EstimateLow$33.7/hrx 2.5$84/hrMedian$44.63/hrx 2.75$123/hrHigh$62.63/hrx 3$188/hr
- Why a range instead of a single number?
- A single average hides the real spread in the underlying wage data and in the multiplier itself. We show the low, median, and high ends of the estimate so the range reflects that uncertainty honestly, rather than implying more precision than a modelled figure can support.
- Is this a residential or commercial rate?
- Commercial. This figure tracks facility-side electrical work for businesses, property managers, and multi-site operators in San Francisco. Commercial rates typically run above residential rates for the same trade, reflecting insurance, code compliance, and scheduling requirements that residential work doesn't carry.