// TRADE RATES
What US trades actually get paid
Ten trades, national hourly wages, straight from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No survey of ours, no rounded-up guesses, and no numbers you cannot check yourself.
Across the ten trades below, median hourly wages run from $17.71 to $55.28, covering 7,735,960 employed people nationally. These are wages paid to workers. They are not what a customer pays, and not what you should charge.
// THE NUMBERS
US trade wages, May 2025
National, all industries. The middle 50% column is the 25th to 75th percentile: half of everyone in that occupation is paid inside that band, a quarter below it and a quarter above.
| Trade | SOC | Median | Mean | Middle 50% | Employed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General contractor | 11-9021 | $55.28 | $59.79 | $42.57 to $72.91 | 380,360 |
| Plumber | 47-2152 | $30.67 | $34.70 | $24.13 to $40.92 | 465,840 |
| Electrician | 47-2111 | $30.38 | $34.37 | $23.76 to $40.36 | 757,220 |
| HVAC technician | 49-9021 | $29.33 | $31.14 | $23.25 to $37.05 | 409,670 |
| Carpenter | 47-2031 | $29.12 | $31.55 | $23.32 to $36.94 | 670,090 |
| Roofer | 47-2181 | $26.65 | $27.95 | $22.24 to $31.44 | 135,490 |
| Handyman | 49-9071 | $23.84 | $25.86 | $19.64 to $30.10 | 1,529,700 |
| Painter | 47-2141 | $23.75 | $26.64 | $21.46 to $29.65 | 225,190 |
| Landscaper | 37-3011 | $18.82 | $20.33 | $17.40 to $22.52 | 952,640 |
| Cleaning business | 37-2011 | $17.71 | $18.64 | $15.50 to $21.18 | 2,209,760 |
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, National, all industries. Retrieved 2026-08-26. Download the table as CSV.
// THE DISTINCTION THAT MATTERS
A wage is not a charge-out rate
This is the mistake that costs contractors money. The BLS number is what lands in someone's pay. Charging that, or a little over it, leaves nothing to run a business on.
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The wage
What the worker is paid. The figures in the table above.
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Payroll burden
Employer FICA alone is 7.65% of wages, published by the IRS. On top come unemployment insurance, workers' compensation and anything toward health cover or paid time off, which vary by state and trade.
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Overhead
Vehicle, insurance, tools, software and everything else the job does not bill for directly.
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Non-billable hours
Quoting, driving, chasing invoices. Paid for out of the hours that do bill, which is why the divisor matters more than the rate.
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Margin
What is left, and the only part that grows the business.
// BY TRADE
Every trade, with the numbers behind it
Each page carries the full BLS spread for that occupation and the overhead model that turns the wage into a rate you can quote.
- General contractor $55.28median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Plumber $30.67median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Electrician $30.38median hourly wage See the numbers →
- HVAC technician $29.33median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Carpenter $29.12median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Roofer $26.65median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Handyman $23.84median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Painter $23.75median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Landscaper $18.82median hourly wage See the numbers →
- Cleaning business $17.71median hourly wage See the numbers →
// GUIDES
Beyond the wage table
The questions the table alone does not answer.
- What an apprentice costs you Entry-level trade pay, what it costs fully burdened against a qualified hire, and why the US has no national apprentice wage scale. Read the guide →
- W-2 vs 1099, what each costs Employer taxes on an employee against a subcontractor's invoice, and the IRS test that decides which one you actually have. Read the guide →
- What a service call fee has to cover The four ways contractors structure one, and the cost floor yours has to clear before it earns anything. Read the guide →
// METHODOLOGY
How this page is put together
Every wage figure comes from one place: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, national across all industries. Nothing is averaged with anything else, adjusted, or rounded up to read better.
Each trade is matched to the closest published SOC occupation, and the code sits in the table so you can check it. Two of those matches are approximations worth naming rather than hiding. General contractor maps to Construction Managers, a supervisory occupation rather than a licensed GC. Handyman maps to general maintenance and repair workers, which is broader than the trade as most people use the word.
Each trade page carries the median for all 50 states and DC, from the same release. What is still not here: metro-level estimates, day rates, call-out fees and apprentice wages. BLS publishes metro figures and those are a fair next step. The other three have no comparable published US source, and these pages do not carry numbers they cannot point at.
The overhead percentages used on the trade pages and in the calculator are starting assumptions, clearly labeled as such, not published statistics. They exist so the arithmetic has somewhere to begin, and every one of them is meant to be replaced with your own figure.
// CHANGE LOG
What changed, and when
First publication. Ten trades from the BLS May 2025 OEWS release, with the median for all 50 states and DC on each trade page.
// READY WHEN YOU ARE
Charging right but not winning enough work?
Knowing your number is half of it. The other half is being found by the people who will pay it. That part we can help with.
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