Trade labour
What the labour on a kitchen remodel actually costs
Labour is the only part of a kitchen the United States government actually measures. Wages for every one of the six trades a kitchen employs are published nationally, and the spread inside a single trade is wide enough to explain most of the 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 from the published wage spread $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. That is a real, measured spread between two competent crews, before anyone marks anything up.
The published wage distribution, in full
These are national figures from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme for the May 2025 reference period, retrieved by machine. 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 for Carpenters in All Industries in the United States 29.12 (2025 Annual)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) — BLS public API, carpenter median hourly wage
What it means for your kitchen The title is the scope statement, and it is worth reading slowly: that is what a carpenter is PAID, anywhere in the country, in whatever industry employs them — so it is 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 is therefore inherently harder to price from a distance than one that is mostly cabinet setting, and that is a structural fact about the trades rather than anything about the contractors bidding.
Hourly 75th percentile wage for Electricians in All Industries in the United States 40.36 (2025 Annual)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) — BLS public API, electrician 75th percentile hourly wage
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 almost nothing
When a bid shows one labour figure for the whole kitchen, it is not hiding anything — it is simply how most small contractors write. The useful follow-up is not "break out your labour", which sounds like an audit. It is "roughly how many days will each trade be here", which sounds like planning and produces the same information.
Hours are more comparable than dollars
Two contractors in the same county pay broadly similar wages. If one bids forty per cent more labour than the other, the difference is usually hours, and hours are a scope statement. Either 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, means one of three things: 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 is the most solid thing on this site, and it still answers a narrower question than it looks like it answers. Four limits are visible in the series titles themselves, which is a good argument for printing them rather than summarising them.
“All Industries” pools a framer with a finish carpenter
The programme counts 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.
“in the United States” means national, and your county is not the nation
The same percentiles are published by metropolitan area, and the variation between metros is wider than the variation this page shows. We use the national series and say so. Treat the labour output here as a national-median shape rather than a local price — the material side of every result on this site is local already, because you typed those prices in yourself.
“2025 Annual” is a reference period, not this morning
The wage series is published once a year against an annual reference period, so it lags in a way the monthly producer price indexes on the escalation page do not. In a year when trade pay moves quickly this table is the most out-of-date thing on the site, and the retrieval date printed beside it is the only honest guide to how far behind it might be.
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, which is the only thing any published national figure can honestly be.
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 retrieval dates, on the methodology page.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, carpenters — the cabinet set, the demolition and most of the rough carpentry.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, electricians — circuits, devices and panel work.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters — rough-in and trim-out.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, drywall and ceiling tile installers — the patching that follows every removal.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, tile and stone setters — backsplash and countertop setting.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Median hourly wage, painters in construction and maintenance — prime and finish.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025)Seventy-fifth percentile hourly wage, electricians — the top of the band quoted above.