JIB Pay Deals Confirmed: What the New Rates Mean for M&E

The JIB pay deals are now locked in on both sides of M&E, and for once everyone gets a decent amount of certainty about where wages are heading. The electrical industry has agreed a three year deal running through to 2028, and the plumbing, heating and HVAC side has a two year deal covering 2026 and 2027. The first rises have been in pay packets since January, but I'm still speaking to plenty of businesses who haven't sat down and worked out what it means for their own pay structures. So here's the full picture.

The electrical deal: around 14% over three years

The headline on the electrical side is a three year agreement between the ECA, SELECT and Unite, agreed through the JIB. The rises for graded operatives break down like this:

• From 5 January 2026: 3.95% increase
• From 4 January 2027: 4.6% increase
• From 3 January 2028: 4.85% increase

Compound those together and you're looking at roughly 14% on rates by the start of 2028. There's more in the deal than the headline number too. Apprentice rates rise 2% in 2027 and 3% in 2028, and from 2028 weekly sick pay goes up by £10 a week during weeks 3 to 24, taking an Approved Electrician to £210 a week on top of statutory sick pay.

What's interesting is the shape of it. The rises get bigger each year rather than front loading the money, which tells you the industry expects demand for electricians to keep climbing. With the grid upgrades, EV infrastructure and data centre work in the pipeline, that feels like a fair bet.

The mechanical side: 3.4% a year for two years

Over on the JIB-PMES side, covering plumbers, pipefitters, gas, heating and HVAC operatives under the National Working Rule Agreement, the deal is two rises of 3.4%. The first landed on 5 January 2026 and the second comes in on 4 January 2027. Lodging allowance has also moved up from £51.59 to £53.40 a night, and sickness benefit rises 2.7% this year and 5.3% next.

It's a more modest deal than the electrical one, and quite a step down from the 7% and 5% rises the mechanical trades saw in 2024 and 2025. Reading between the lines, employers have pushed for predictability after a few years of chunky inflation driven settlements.

What this means if you're hiring

Plenty of M&E businesses don't pay JIB rates directly, but make no mistake, these agreements set the benchmark for the whole market. Candidates know the numbers, agencies know the numbers and your competitors know the numbers. A few things worth doing off the back of this:

• Check your rates against the new benchmarks now. The 2026 rises have been live since January. If your packages were borderline before, they may already be behind.
• Budget for 2027 and 2028 early. The rises are published years in advance, which is rare. Use that. You can build them into project pricing and salary reviews rather than getting caught out.
• Look at the whole package, not just the hourly rate. Sick pay, lodging, travel and overtime arrangements all moved in these deals. In my experience it's often these details, not the base rate, that decide whether an offer gets accepted.
• Mind the electrical and mechanical gap. If you run mixed teams, have a think about how you keep things feeling fair across trades.

If you want to see how this sits alongside wider salaries in our patch, our M&E and FM salary guide for 2026 covers where packages are sitting across Hampshire, Surrey and Dorset.

And if you're on the tools

If you're an electrician, the next three years of your JIB rate are already written down, which is a useful thing to have in your back pocket when weighing up offers. Just remember the rate is only part of the story. The right question isn't just what the hourly rate is, it's what the package looks like once you factor in travel, overtime rates, pension and whether the work is local or has you living out of a Travelodge.

On the mechanical side, 3.4% a year is steady rather than spectacular, and with the market for good gas and HVAC engineers as tight as it is at the moment, the strongest candidates will continue to do better than the headline rate by moving or negotiating well. If you're not sure where you sit against the market, it costs nothing to ask.