“Am I paying enough to keep my guys?” Most owners answer that with a feeling, and find out they were wrong when someone gives notice. It can be a comparison instead. Three checks answer it: what your trade pays in your area, how fast that figure is moving, and what the larger outfits offer on top of pay. All three come from free government data.
Setting the pay line in a job ad is a different job, covered in Writing a Help-Wanted Ad That Tradespeople Answer. This article is about the people you already have.
Check your trade in your area, not a national number
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program publishes wages by occupation for the nation, each state, and metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, so a rural shop has figures too. The current set is the May 2025 estimates; the help-wanted article shows how to look up your occupation and town in CareerOneStop’s Salary Finder.
A national figure hides a wide spread. For carpenters, BLS’s Occupational Outlook Handbook gives a national median of $29.12 an hour ($60,580 a year) in May 2025, with the lowest 10% earning less than $40,410 a year and the highest 10% more than $99,910. The handbook’s median for carpenters in residential building construction was $60,600.
Areas differ in ways a general impression misses. BLS’s May 2025 release for the Atlanta metro area shows it paying more than the nation overall but less in construction:
| Group | United States | Atlanta metro |
|---|---|---|
| All occupations | $33.54 | $34.57 |
| Construction and extraction occupations | $31.42 | $28.26 |
An owner who judged construction pay by the area’s average wage would have the wrong picture there. Look up the occupation your people actually do, in your own area.
Put each person on the scale
OEWS reports percentile wages, which BLS describes as boundaries: the median is the line between the lower-paid half of workers in that job and area and the higher-paid half. The help-wanted ad article walks through reading the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th. For keeping people, use them to place each person, one at a time:
| Who | Where their base rate sits | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| New helper, still learning | Near the 25th percentile | Normal, if there is a clear path up |
| Solid hand who works without watching | Below the median | Worth a raise before someone else offers one |
| Lead who can run a job alone | At or under the median | A gap worth closing first |
| Anyone above the 75th | Paid near the top of the area | If they leave, look at the other reasons first |
Compare like with like. The OEWS technical note says its wages are “straight-time, gross pay, exclusive of premium pay.” They include the base rate, incentive pay and production bonuses, and leave out overtime, shift differentials, nonproduction bonuses and the employer’s cost of benefits. They also leave out the self-employed. So set your people’s base hourly rate against the table, not their paychecks in a month full of overtime.
Bring the figure up to date
The OEWS figures describe May 2025, and BLS’s own FAQ says the survey “is less useful for looking at changes over time.” For how fast pay is moving, BLS has a different measure, the Employment Cost Index. For the 12 months ended June 2026, it shows:
Say the carpenter median of $29.12 from May 2025 rose at the construction industry’s 3.5%. That would put it at about $30.14 a year later. The periods do not line up exactly and the index covers the whole industry, not one trade, so treat the result as a rough update, not a new benchmark. The point is direction: a rate that matched the market when the figures were gathered is likely behind it now.
How often people leave construction jobs
BLS’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey counts quits each month as a percent of employment. In construction the rate was 1.8% in August 2026 (a preliminary figure), against 2.1% for all private industry, and it ran between 1.4% and 1.8% in the months the table shows.
That is a monthly rate. If 1.8% held for a full year, it would work out to roughly 21 or 22 quits for every 100 jobs, though some of those would be the same job turning over twice. For a crew of five, that is about one quit a year at the industry’s pace. If you are losing more than that, pay is one place to look, and the rest of this list is another.
What the bigger outfits offer besides pay
Health coverage is one place small shops fall behind. BLS’s benefits survey for March 2026 found that among private industry workers:
| Workers | Have access |
|---|---|
| At establishments with 1 to 49 workers | 55% |
| At establishments with 500 or more workers | 90% |
| In construction, extraction, farming, fishing and forestry occupations | 75% |
With 90% access at establishments of 500 or more workers, coverage may well be part of the offer when a bigger contractor recruits your lead. A small shop has options short of a group plan; see Health Benefits for a Small Crew: QSEHRA and ICHRA, and for retirement, Retirement for a Small Contractor.
Other things a worker weighs are in your hands too:
A once-a-year pay check
- When BLS publishes a new year of OEWS estimates, look up each role you employ in your own area.
- Place each person’s base rate against the percentiles, as in the table above.
- Adjust the benchmark roughly by the latest Employment Cost Index for construction.
- Close the biggest gaps first, starting with the people you could least afford to lose.
- Price the raises in. A dollar more an hour costs you more than a dollar once payroll taxes and insurance ride on it; Your Real Hourly Cost shows the math, and Raising Your Prices covers passing it on.
- Tell each person where they stand and what the next step pays.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and vary by state; check with the agency named above or a professional for your situation.