Trade labour
What the labour on a kitchen remodel actually costs
Labour is the one cost on this site priced from a published government wage survey. Wages for each of the six trades this site prices are published nationally, and the spread inside a single trade is wide enough to produce a sizeable gap between two honest bids. This page separates what is measured from what we assumed, and lets you change the assumptions.
Hours, wages and the band they produce
Derived labour, at median wages
$10,167
149.0 hours across 6 trades, including $839 of general conditions.
Band across the 25th–75th percentile wage (hours and multiplier held) $8,189 to $13,025
| Trade | Hours | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | Billed rate at median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carpenters (SOC 47-2031) | 56.0 | $2,873 | $3,588 | $4,551 | $64.06 |
| Tile and Stone Setters (SOC 47-2044) | 34.0 | $1,625 | $2,002 | $2,525 | $58.89 |
| Electricians (SOC 47-2111) | 22.0 | $1,150 | $1,470 | $1,953 | $66.84 |
| Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) | 14.0 | $743 | $945 | $1,260 | $67.47 |
| Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers (SOC 47-2081) | 12.0 | $602 | $748 | $942 | $62.33 |
| Painters, Construction and Maintenance (SOC 47-2141) | 11.0 | $519 | $575 | $718 | $52.25 |
Carpenters (SOC 47-2031) carry 56 of the 149 hours in this scope, and the published gap between a 25th- and a 75th-percentile worker in that trade is worth $1,678 on this job alone. The wage gap is measured by BLS; the hours and the wage-to-billed multiplier are this tool’s.
The published wage distribution, in full
These are national 2025 figures (period A01, labelled Annual in the BLS API response) from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, checked against our saved copies of 2026-10-05. They are hourly wages paid to workers, not hourly rates charged to homeowners; the gap between those two things is the multiplier above, and that multiplier is ours.
Hourly median wage, Carpenters (SOC 47-2031), all industries, United States — series OEUN000000000000047203108, year 2025, period A01 ("Annual"), value 29.12 in the API response
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual) — BLS public API, series OEUN000000000000047203108; original retrieval recorded 2026-08-06; that copy was not retained; checked against our saved copy of 2026-10-05.
What it means for your kitchen That is what a carpenter is PAID, nationally — the right place to start when you ask what an hour of cabinet setting costs a contractor, and the wrong number to look for on your invoice.
| Occupation | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carpenters (SOC 47-2031) | $23.32 | $29.12 | $36.94 | 58% |
| Electricians (SOC 47-2111) | $23.76 | $30.38 | $40.36 | 70% |
| Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) | $24.13 | $30.67 | $40.92 | 70% |
| Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers (SOC 47-2081) | $22.81 | $28.33 | $35.69 | 56% |
| Tile and Stone Setters (SOC 47-2044) | $21.73 | $26.77 | $33.76 | 55% |
| Painters, Construction and Maintenance (SOC 47-2141) | $21.46 | $23.75 | $29.65 | 38% |
The right-hand column is the interesting one. Plumbers sit close behind the electricians at 69.6%, and carpenters at 58.4%. A kitchen that is mostly electrical and plumbing work therefore carries a wider labour band in this tool than one that is mostly cabinet setting.
Hourly 75th percentile wage, Electricians (SOC 47-2111), all industries, United States — series OEUN000000000000047211109, year 2025, period A01 ("Annual"), value 40.36 in the API response
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual) — BLS public API, series OEUN000000000000047211109; original retrieval recorded 2026-08-06; that copy was not retained; checked against our saved copy of 2026-10-05.
What it means for your kitchen A quarter of electricians are paid at or above that hourly wage and a quarter at or below the 25th-percentile figure in the table, a gap of 69.9% from the bottom of the band to the top — so before concluding that the dearer of two electrical quotes is padded, notice that the government’s own measurement of a single occupation is that wide.
How to read a labour number on a bid
A single labour line tells you little
When a bid shows one labour figure for the whole kitchen, it is not necessarily hiding anything. The useful follow-up is not to ask for the labour to be broken out, which sounds like an audit, but to ask roughly how many days each trade will be there, which sounds like planning and produces the same information.
Hours are more comparable than dollars
If one contractor bids much more labour than another, ask whether the difference is hours. Hours are a scope statement: one of them thinks the job is bigger than the other does, and finding out which is a real conversation worth having.
Where a low labour number is a warning
Labour that comes in far below the 25th-percentile band above, for the hours the work genuinely needs, can mean, among other things, that the hours are understated and change orders are coming, the crew is less experienced than the price implies, or the labour is being carried inside the material markup. All three are survivable. None of them is what the number on the page says.
The hours used on this page are illustrative. The whole-project page derives them from your actual takeoff instead, which is the version worth arguing with.
What the wage series does not measure
The table above comes straight from BLS, and it still answers a narrower question than it looks like it answers. Four limits follow from how these series are defined.
All industries pools a framer with a finish carpenter
These are the all-industries national series (as recorded from the series identifiers), so they count everyone classified in the occupation, whichever industry employs them: new-construction framing crews, commercial fit-out, shopfitting, and the remodelling carpenter who will actually set your boxes. Those are different specialisations that command different pay, so part of the spread in the last column is the distance between kinds of carpenter rather than between a good one and a bad one. It is still the right band to price against; it is the wrong band to read as a quality ranking.
National means national, and your county is not the nation
The series this site uses are national, and we say so. Treat the labour output here as a national-median shape rather than a local price — the material side of each result on this site is local already, because you typed those prices in yourself.
2025 is a reference period, not this morning
The wage figures are annual (the API labels them period A01), while the producer price indexes on the escalation page are monthly, so this table can lag pay today; the period it covers is the guide to how far.
When to stop using it altogether
- The work falls under a prevailing-wage determination or a local agreement. Then the rate is published for your jurisdiction and set by that agreement, and a national distribution tells you nothing you need.
- The person doing the work owns the company. A working owner’s hour is priced by what the business has to earn, not by what an employee in that occupation is paid.
- The trade is subcontracted at a fixed price for the task. A tile setter paid by the square foot has an implied hourly rate you can work out afterwards, but it was never an input to the price you were given.
- An apprentice does part of the work. The bid reflects the crew that shows up, not the occupation, and a supervised apprentice hour and a journeyman hour are both billed while only one of them sits at the median.
None of that makes the distribution useless. It makes it a sanity check rather than a quote.
Sources for this page
One row per occupation, naming the median series each figure was read from. The 25th and 75th percentile series behind the band are separate requests to the same programme and are listed in full, with their addresses and capture details, on the methodology page.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Median hourly wage, carpenters — the cabinet set, the demolition and the rough carpentry in this tool.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Median hourly wage, electricians — circuits, devices and panel work.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Median hourly wage, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters — rough-in and trim-out.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Median hourly wage, drywall and ceiling tile installers — patching after removals.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Median hourly wage, tile and stone setters — backsplash and countertop setting.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Median hourly wage, painters in construction and maintenance — prime and finish.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (national, 2025 annual)Seventy-fifth percentile hourly wage, electricians — the top of the band quoted above.