Research

HyreElectrical research

We read the model code, the federal safety notice, the municipal fee sheet or the utility tariff ourselves, and publish the figure with the document it came from.

Updated September 5, 2026 · Data as of September 2026

16 studies published each with its method and sources

5 states with verified license records FL, UT, NV, CA, TX — not a national sample

74% of the store is Florida disclosed first, never footnoted

What this is

Original analysis of the American home electrical system, computed from primary sources and published with its method: Census Bureau housing tables, Consumer Product Safety Commission publications and investigation records, state licensing boards, and filed utility tariffs.

Every study names its source files, publishes its derivation, and states its limitations above the fold rather than in a footnote.

Research is attributed to the HyreElectrical Research Desk, never to an individual — the analysis is the organization’s.

HyreElectrical does not perform, supervise or warrant electrical work, and takes no payment for placement, ranking or favorable mention.

The four rules this desk works to

Primary sources only. Code statements come from NFPA 70 as the model code. Safety statements come from CPSC. Permit fees come from the city or county fee sheet.

Utility charges come from the filed tariff. We do not cite a blog that cites a source; we open the source, and we record the date we opened it.

Our contractor store is not a national sample. It holds 16,369 companies across five states, and 74 percent of it is Florida.

Any figure built on it is titled to those states in the headline, not in a note at the bottom.

National claims on this site rest on federal data or they are not made.

Fact, calculation, analysis and recommendation are four different things. A source fact is attributed to the source. A calculation says HyreElectrical calculated it. An interpretation says it is an interpretation. We never put our reading in an agency’s mouth.

Where a number cannot be traced, we publish the shorter page. A study that needs a figure we cannot source does not get the figure invented, padded around, or borrowed from a site that also could not source it. It gets published without that section, and the gap is named.

The studies

10.9 h EIA-861 2024 · CSV published Power outage hours by state, 2024 The average US electricity customer lost power for 10.9 hours in 2024, and 2.2 of those outside major storm days. South Carolina led at 50.8 hours. Customer-weighted from the reliability figures 710 utilities filed on EIA Form EIA-861. Read the page 67.1M Flagship · Census + CPSC The electrical panels insurers won’t cover, and how many homes were built when they were installed 67.1 million US housing units were built between 1950 and 1989 — the era of Federal Pacific Stab-Lok and Zinsco panels — and 34.7 million in the window containing the aluminum branch-wiring years. Carriers decline these homes over products the CPSC never recalled and, in the Federal Pacific case, closed its investigation on without ever reaching a finding. Read the page 1962 Census ACS B25034 · reference table What was typically installed, by the decade your home was built Ten construction eras mapped to the wiring method, grounding practice and NEC edition that governed new homes in each. The 1962 code was the first to require a grounding conductor on every branch circuit. A reference for the build era, not a diagnosis of the wiring in place today. Read the page 51 State statutes and boards What “licensed electrician” actually means, state by state Thirty-five states license the individual electrician, eleven license only the contracting business, and five leave it entirely to cities and counties. Two corrections to the list everyone repeats: Missouri does operate a statewide electrical contractor license that political subdivisions are required to recognize under RSMo 324.925, and the widely cited Kansas transfer to the State Fire Marshal in 2027 rests on a bill the legislature recorded as died. Each row carries its own verification status rather than a complete-looking matrix. Read the page 12,114 Florida DBPR · CSV published Inside the Florida electrical market: 12,114 verified contractors One in eight licensed Florida electrical contractors holds a Registered license, which under s. 489.505 F.S. may contract only in the jurisdiction that issued it — and the ratio swings from 3.4% in Fort Myers to 24.2% in Jacksonville. The single-state study the Florida records can honestly support, with the county cut deliberately withheld because the data will not carry it. Read the page EC / ER Ch. 489 Part II · regulatory explainer Certified or registered? How Florida licenses its electricians Certification is the state examining the person; registration is the state recording that a city did — which is why one license is statewide and the other stops at a jurisdiction line. Includes the inversion nobody mentions: under s. 489.5335 a locally issued journeyman license must be recognized across Florida, so the tradesman’s card travels while the contractor’s registration does not. Read the page 6.3× BLS OEWS + 12 fee schedules · CSV published Panel upgrade cost, decomposed Twelve municipal and state electrical fee schedules, priced against one identical modeled 200 A service change: the permit component alone runs $91.42 in Orlando to $580.00 in San Francisco — a 6.3× spread against only a 2.1× spread in metro median electrician wages. No national average is assembled, and the page explains why. Read the page 66.1M EIA RECS 2020 · circuit-gap calculation Water heating is the next circuit problem EIA counts homes by water-heater fuel. Nobody had connected that to the NEC branch-circuit requirement a heat pump water heater needs — a dedicated 240V circuit most gas-heated homes do not have near the tank. HyreElectrical calculation: 66.07 million US homes currently heat water with gas, propane or oil and would need circuit work, not just an appliance swap, to convert. Read the page 21.7M Census ACS B25036 · cross-validated vs EIA RECS 21.7 million renters in hazard-era homes 48.7% of every renter-occupied home in America was built in the 1950-1989 hazard-era window that houses Federal Pacific, Zinsco and aluminum branch wiring — and the tenant living there has no legal standing to commission the fix. Cross-validated against an independent EIA survey (20.6M, within 5%). Read the page 65.6M EIA RECS 2020 HC3.1-3.8 · circuit-gap calculation The induction circuit nobody mentions The gas-stove debate runs almost entirely without reference to whether the kitchen has the circuit. EIA counts 65.56 million US homes cooking on electricity against a dedicated 40A or 50A 240V circuit under NEC Table 220.55 — cross-tabbed by tenure, housing type and Census division, with dual-fuel ranges left as an honest unresolved middle case rather than forced into either bucket. Read the page 40.8M EIA RECS 2020 HC7.1-7.8 · NEC 220.83 calculation 40.8 million homes have no central AC A retrofit AC’s nameplate load gets zero demand-factor discount under NEC 220.83 — unlike the loads this site’s own panel-upgrade page already covers under 220.82. New England and Pacific are genuinely the lowest-central-AC divisions in RECS, though the public tables cannot isolate the Pacific Northwest specifically — stated plainly rather than claimed. Read the page 20.7M DOE AFDC + Census ACS B25032 · renter-lockout calculation The home EV-charging gap, by state 3.56 million EVs registered against 20.65 million renter households in buildings of five or more units — locked out of home Level 2 charging by building size and lease authority, not electrical capacity. The correlation between a state’s EV intensity and its locked-out share is weak (r = 0.37), and the page says so rather than forcing a growth narrative onto it. Read the page 51 BLS QCEW NAICS 23821 · original composite index Electrician shortage index, by state An original 51-jurisdiction workforce-tightness index, built transparently from BLS QCEW establishment density and location quotient — equal-weighted, published alongside the density-only and LQ-only rankings so a reader who distrusts the blend can check either input alone. Swapping the denominator from housing units to population moves California 19 places. "Shortage" is not a quantity federal statistics measure, and the page says so above the fold. Read the page 20% DOE AFDC + NREL utilization · new to this site Public ports boomed. Home capacity stalled. 255,551 public EV charging ports are counted exactly. Home-charging capacity never has been. Public DC fast charging runs at just 20% peak-hour utilization and under 10% on average, network-wide — while public build-out tracks corridor policy, not local EV density (r = -0.50 against state adoption intensity). Read the page 42.6M EIA RECS 2020 HC6.1-6.9 · NEC 220.82(C) calculation Electric heat: resistance vs heat pump 42.57 million US homes already heat with electricity, and RECS splits that into six equipment rows nobody had grouped before: 25.4 million resistance vs 17.2 million heat pump. Resistance share runs 67.1% in the lowest income bracket down to 48.7% in the highest — the two draw very differently on a panel, and the income skew is the under-reported part. Read the page 27.2% EIA RECS 2020 HC11.1 · cross-tabbed against hazard-era panels Energy insecurity, home age and income 27.2% of US households — 33.58 million — report going without food or medicine, an unhealthy indoor temperature, or a disconnection notice over an energy bill. Income is an 8x gradient and tenure a 2x one; construction era tracks more weakly than the contract predicted, with the real break falling at 1990, not 1950-1989. Reported honestly rather than forced to match the expected narrative. Read the page 32.6M EIA RECS 2020 microdata · NWEIGHT baseline series How many US homes are actually fully electric? Three correct answers exist to "how many homes have no gas" — 49.2 million, 38.0 million and 32.6 million — depending on whether the question means no gas heat, no fossil fuel anywhere, or true all-electric across all four end uses. No published EIA table answers the strict version; this reconstructs it from raw RECS 2020 microdata and cross-checks the result against three already-published figures before trusting it. Published as a baseline for future editions to measure against. Read the page

What this desk will not do

The research desk will not publish a national price for electrical work. Labor rates, the adopted code edition, whether the utility is involved and the state of the existing wiring move the invoice too far for a national average to help anyone. Cost questions are answered on the cost pages, locally, or not at all.

It will not rank electricians. A license evidences that a firm may contract for the work. It is not a quality score, and we do not manufacture one.

It will not give DIY instructions for live work. Reading a panel label is safe. Removing a dead front is not, and no page on this site will tell you to.

Questions

Who writes this research?

The HyreElectrical Research Desk — the organization, not a named individual. Analysis is credited organizationally because that is what it is: work done against public documents by the desk, checked before publication. Where expert commentary appears on this site it is sourced from named, verifiable people outside it.

Can I reuse these figures?

Yes, with attribution to HyreElectrical and a link to the study. Please carry the caveat with the number, because several measures are proxies and say so. The sources and method sections give you what you need to rebuild any table yourself, which we would rather you did than take our arithmetic on trust.

How often is this updated?

Each study carries its own retrieval date and is revisited when its underlying source publishes a new vintage — annually for the Census tables, and whenever the agency revises for CPSC material. Where a figure has gone stale we would rather pull it than leave it up looking current.

Written and audited by

HyreElectrical Research Desk

Primary-source research and fact checking

We read the model code, the federal safety notice, the municipal fee sheet or the utility tariff ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.

Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. HyreElectrical does not perform, supervise or warrant electrical work. Authorship is organizational: this desk, not a named persona.

16: original research studies published
5: states with verified license records
16,369: electrical companies in those records
74%: of the store is Florida — disclosed first, not footnoted

How this desk works

Primary sources only. Code statements come from NFPA 70 as the model code. Safety statements come from CPSC. Permit fees come from the city or county fee sheet. Utility charges come from the filed tariff. We do not cite a blog that cites a source; we open the source.
Our contractor store is five states, and 74% of it is Florida. Any figure built on that store is titled to those states and names the concentration in the first screen. It is not a national sample of electricians.
Load calculations on this site are a published simplification in the shape of NEC 220.82 — first 10 kVA at 100%, remainder at 40%, HVAC at 100%, EVSE at 125%. They are labeled as not a stamped calculation. A licensed electrician using the adopted edition does that work.
No national price for a panel upgrade is shipped. Labor rates, the adopted code edition, whether the utility is involved, and the state of the existing wiring move the invoice too far for a roundup to help. The cost pages publish named permit fees and the variables that move the price instead.
We do not perform electrical work, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.

Data as of September 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.

Need the work done, not just the numbers?

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HyreElectrical does not perform, supervise or warrant electrical work. Research on this site is published for information and is not advice on a specific property. We take no payment for placement, ranking or favorable mention.