For electricians
Before you sign that subcontract, check these three things.
An electrical subcontract names a scope and a price. The clauses that decide whether the job pays are about timing and risk: when you are paid, how much is held back, and what you are responsible for if something goes wrong on site.
This subcontract makes your payment depend on the owner paying and asks you to cover claims you did not cause.
Payment depends on the owner paying
Wording like “conditioned upon” can make your payment depend on the owner paying (“pay if paid”), not only delay it (“pay when paid”), and there is no outside date.
Ask for
Check which one it is and whether there is an outside date, and ask for payment within a set number of days.
- Indemnity reaches claims you did not causeMedium · Liability
- Retainage held until the whole project endsLow · Payment
The numbers
In May 2025, there were 757,220 wage and salary jobs for electricians in the U.S., with a median annual wage of $63,190.
These figures count jobs, not people, and do not include self-employed work — so they say little about how many electricians work freelance or run their own business.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national estimates for SOC 47-2111. Public domain.
Pay-when-paid, retainage and indemnity
- Payment timing — “Pay when paid” can delay your payment until the owner pays the contractor; “pay if paid” can make it depend on that payment. Check which one it is and whether there is an outside date.
- Retainage — Look at how much is held back from each payment and when it is released.
- Indemnity — A clause making you cover losses beyond your own work can be broader than your insurance. Check what it covers.
Check the subcontract before you mobilize
The price is agreed up front; the payment terms decide when you see it. Free: one analysis every 30 days, no card. Each analysis gives a risk read of the key clauses, quotes the contract's own words for its findings, and turns each flagged clause into a specific ask.
Analyze my contract — free- Encrypted in transit & at rest
- Files auto-deleted after 30 days
- Never used to train models
- Informational — not legal advice