What "Plus Per Diem" Actually Means on a Traveling Commercial Job

You will see it on almost every traveling commercial job posting: an hourly rate, then the words "plus per diem." On a data center build two hundred miles from where you live, that second number can decide whether the job is worth taking. Almost no posting explains what it covers, how it is figured, or when it stops. Here is what per diem actually is on a commercial or industrial electrical job.

Per diem is Latin for "per day," and in practice it is a flat daily allowance an employer pays to cover lodging and meals while you are working away from home. It is not a bonus, and it is not part of your hourly rate. The benchmark most contractors work from is the federal per diem table published by the General Services Administration. For fiscal year 2026, covering travel performed October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026, the standard continental U.S. rate is $110 a day for lodging and $68 a day for meals and incidental expenses. GSA held those rates at fiscal 2025 levels and added no new non-standard locality areas; higher-cost metros carry their own tables, with meal tiers running from $68 to $92. The rates reset every October 1.

Private contractors are not bound by that table, and most use it as a ceiling rather than a floor. How the allowance is paid varies more than the amount does. Some shops pay per day worked, others pay seven days a week for as long as you are on the job. Some pay one combined figure; others split lodging from meals, or put you in company housing and pay only the meal portion. Nearly all of them require that you keep a permanent residence far enough from the jobsite that you cannot reasonably drive home each night. Per diem ends the day the job ends or the day you are laid off.

When you are weighing two offers, keep the two numbers apart. A $100-a-day allowance paid five days a week is $500 a week, which reads like $12.50 an hour on a forty-hour check. It is not. It disappears when the project does, it does not follow you to the next call, and it is not the figure your next base wage gets set against. A high per diem on a short data center job and a lower one on a long industrial contract are not the same offer.

The most expensive misconception concerns public work. Contractors sometimes tell workers that per diem counts toward the prevailing wage package. It does not. The Department of Labor is explicit that travel and subsistence payments incidental to employment, and the value of board, lodging, or other facilities furnished mainly for the contractor's benefit, are not fringe benefits under Davis-Bacon, and it lists crediting travel, per diem, or lodging against the fringe obligation as a common violation. Your per diem sits on top of the prevailing wage and fringe, never inside it.

The other thing worth asking about is tax. Whether the allowance reaches you untaxed depends on how your employer's reimbursement plan is set up and on where your tax home sits, so ask payroll before you treat the whole figure as take-home. For how base wages themselves compare across commercial specialties and markets, see the AmpScouts Commercial Electrician Salary Guide.