How the numbers are built

Market wages: BLS OEWS

The wage range on every page is the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025 release, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS surveys about 1.1 million establishments over three years and publishes, for each occupation and area, employment and the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th and 90th percentile wages, hourly and annual. The figures are straight-time wages reported by employers: no overtime, no per-diem, no benefits, no self-reported numbers.

• Trades are matched to Standard Occupational Classification codes (for example electricians 47-2111, plumbers/pipefitters/steamfitters 47-2152, HVAC 49-9021). Insulation workers combine two codes; their percentiles are employment-weighted. Where BLS suppresses an estimate the page says so rather than guessing.
• Areas are the United States, each state, 393 metropolitan statistical areas and 135 non-metropolitan areas. Only the 50 largest metros by construction employment have their own pages; the rest appear in state tables.
• Annual figures are the BLS convention of hourly wage × 2,080 hours.
• Career-stage bands (apprentice, journeyman, master) are an approximate reading of the percentile distribution, labelled as such. BLS does not publish wages by experience level.

History and inflation

Trends use OEWS releases from 1999 to 2025 for states (2005 onward for metros), with occupation codes mapped across the 2010 and 2018 SOC revisions and metro codes mapped across delineation changes. Real ("in today's dollars") series divide by the CPI-U annual average (all urban consumers, all items) and multiply by the latest year's average. BLS advises against strict time-series use of OEWS: the estimation method changed in 2021 and wage recording changed in 2022. Charts shade those years; treat small movements as noise.

Cost-of-living adjustment

"Adjusted" figures divide the wage by the Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parity for the state or metro (US = 100, latest year available). It is a broad all-items index, not a trade-specific cost of living.

Union and prevailing wage: Davis-Bacon determinations

Federal construction contracts above $2,000 must pay at least the wage and fringe in the Department of Labor's wage determination for the county and construction type (Building, Residential, Heavy, Highway). Skilled Wages downloads every active general determination from SAM.gov (4,235 documents as of 2026-09-28), parses the plain-text rate tables, and records for each classification the base wage, fringe, the rate identifier and its date.

• Union vs survey. Identifiers like ELEC0134-001 06/02/2025 mean the rate comes from a collective bargaining agreement (the union scale for that local). Identifiers starting SU come from a Department of Labor wage survey; SA are state-adopted; UAVG are union averages. The site labels these plainly and hatches survey rates on maps.
• Trade mapping. Determinations use hundreds of classification labels. A rules table maps them to the site's trades and picks one representative class per determination (for example the inside-wireman journeyman rate for electricians, the common or Group 1 rate for laborers). Every classification, mapped or not, is still shown in the county lookup.
• Overlaps. Where more than one determination of the same type covers a county (common for Heavy work), the most specific one is shown and the alternatives are listed in the lookup.
• Stale rates. A survey rate whose identifier is eight or more years old is flagged. Davis-Bacon is a floor: an old survey rate can sit far below the current market.
• Not the official determination. Every table links to the determination number and revision on SAM.gov. Confirm the current text before bidding or paying.

Employment and county pay

State and metro construction employment is the BLS Current Employment Statistics construction supersector, monthly, not seasonally adjusted, from 1990 where available (through 2026-08). Where a state or metro publishes only the combined mining, logging and construction series, the chart says so. County contractor pay is the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages: average annual pay and average weekly wage for private establishments in the relevant contractor industry (for example NAICS 23821 electrical contractors), latest annual averages, with suppressed cells left blank. Job outlook figures are the BLS Employment Projections program, national, for the current ten-year period.

Refresh schedule and safeguards

• OEWS: annually, when BLS publishes the May data (usually the following spring).
• Construction employment: monthly. County pay: quarterly. Cost-of-living and projections: with the annual rebuild.
• Davis-Bacon: weekly, after the Department of Labor's Thursday modifications. Changes are listed on the change log.
• Every refresh aborts if a source shrinks or shifts implausibly (row counts, medians, unmapped classifications), so a broken download cannot silently replace good data.

Licences and attribution

All federal data used here is in the public domain. Please cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor (SAM.gov), the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau as the sources. Skilled Wages is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any agency. The site's own tables are free to reuse with a link; CSV downloads are provided.