A general maintenance and repair worker earns a median of $23.84 an hour, which is roughly the middle of the American labour market: every occupation in the country runs to $24.51. A licensed plumbing firm bills $114.20 for one hour of one worker's time, and an electrical firm bills $111.55. Do not read those two numbers as one comparison. The first is a WAGE and the second is a BILL, and a bill carries a whole business: in the plumbing class, a firm's own workers cost it $47.75 an hour once benefits are counted, and everything above that is the office, the insurance, the bond, the licence, the permit desk, the van and the hours nobody pays for.More
Those billed rates are real and federal, which is rarer than it sounds. The Economic Census publishes both the receipts and the construction-worker HOURS of the plumbing and electrical classes, so receipts divided by hours is a published billed rate rather than a survey or a guess. A handyman carries less of that apparatus, and his price shows it. How much less we cannot tell you, because we have no published billed rate for handyman work: the rate in the box is the one you were quoted, and the arithmetic is done on your number rather than ours. Nor can we tell you how much of the difference is the LICENCE specifically, because the Census's expense lines do not break licensing, bonding and insurance out from the rest of the office, and we are not going to guess at a split we cannot see. What we will not do is set the $23.84 wage against the $114.20 bill and call the space between them the price of a licence: a firm bills far above what it pays its workers whether it holds a licence or not, and the honest wage comparison is wage against wage, where a plumber earns $30.67 and an electrician $30.38 against the maintenance worker's $23.84. So the question this page exists for is not whether the handyman is cheaper. It is whether the job you have in mind legally requires a licensed trade where you live, because if it does, the difference on this page evaporates and takes your permit and possibly your insurance claim with it. And here is the part we are going to repeat until it is boring: WE HAVE NOT READ YOUR STATE'S LICENSING LAW. We have not read any state's licensing law. We are not going to tell you which jobs need a licence, because we do not know, and it changes from state to state and often from city to city. Your local building department knows, and will tell you for nothing.
The difference, and it is a saving only if the job needs no licence
$157
Your handyman, at the rate you were quoted, for the worker-hours above$300
The same worker-hours at the licensed trade's published billed rate$457
For scale, and not a bill: those hours at the occupation's median WAGE$95
The difference above is a saving only if the job needs no licence, and one question decides
that. A licensed plumbing firm bills $114.20 per worker-hour and an electrical firm $111.55, both
published by the Economic Census. We have no published billed rate for handyman work, so the other side of the
comparison is the rate YOU were quoted, and the number above is the size of the difference between the two.
Whether that difference is yours to take is not an arithmetic question at all. It is whether the job legally
requires a licensed trade where you live, and if it does, the difference was never yours to take.More
WE HAVE NOT READ YOUR STATE'S LICENSING LAW, AND WE HAVE NOT READ ANY STATE'S. So this
page will not tell you which jobs need a licence. It does not know. Licensing is set by states and often by
cities, it differs for plumbing, electrical work, gas and structural work, and a page that guessed at it would be
worse than useless to you. What you should do costs nothing: ring or email your local building department, describe
the job in one sentence, and ask three things. Does this work require a licensed trade. Does it require a permit
and an inspection. Can the person I am about to hire pull that permit. Then ask your insurer's own policy wording
what it says about unpermitted work, because that is the sentence that decides a claim, and we have not read your
policy either.
The gap is a business, not a markup, and we are not going to imply otherwise. Out of the
plumbing class's $114.20 an hour: the trade's own workers cost it $47.75 once benefits are counted, and the rest is
office and supervisor pay, liability cover, bonding, licensing, the vehicle, fuel, rent, depreciation and the
hours nobody bills. What is left after every expense the Census publishes is an UPPER BOUND on margin rather than
margin itself. That distance between a bill and a wage is what a firm IS, licensed or not, which is why we will not
hand you the $23.84 wage and the $114.20 bill as though the space between them were the price of a licence. The
handyman's lower price is not evidence that anybody is being cheated. The likeliest reason for it is that he
carries less of that apparatus, though we have not seen his books, and the apparatus is what a permit and an
inspection require.
And we cannot tell you whose work is better, because we have not got a number for it. We have no
measure of workmanship, callbacks or defect rates for a handyman or for a licensed firm. So this page does not say
the handyman will do the job as well, and it does not say he will do it worse. It says what the classes bill and
what the occupations earn, and it stops there.
And this is a CLASS mean, so it does not bound one firm's quote. The middle 80% of state means
run $97.01 to $126.27 for the plumbing class and $92.47 to $121.55 for the electrical class, and those are
averages of averages: real firms spread wider than that in both directions. A quote above this range is
information, not proof of anything.
§ 02 What the difference actually buys
The job at your handyman's rate$300
The same worker-hours at the licensed trade's published rate$457
The difference, which is a saving only where no licence is required$157
These jobs across a year, at your handyman's rate$900
The wage is BLS's and it is exact. The two billed rates are the Economic Census's, for the trade CLASSES, and they are class means rather than a bound on any firm's quote. The handyman's rate is yours, because we have no published billed rate for handyman work. And the licensing question is your building department's: we have not read any state's law, and we will not pretend to.
Recommended next steps
The gap between your handyman and the licensed class's rate is real but modest on a job this size, which leaves the licensing question doing all the work. If the job needs a licensed trade, then a permit and possibly an insurance claim are on one side of the scale and a difference of this size is on the other. Ring the building department before you decide. The call is free, and on a gap this small the answer to it settles the matter either way.
A maintenance and repair worker earns a median of $23.84 an hour, or $49,590 a year, against $24.51 an hour for every occupation in America.More
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC 49-9071 (Maintenance and Repair Workers, General), 1,529,700 employed. The middle 80% run from $17.00 to $37.11 an hour and the mean is $25.86. So this is an occupation that sits at about the middle of the American labour market, which is worth holding on to when you are told a handyman is a bargain: he is being paid the going rate for the country.
A licensed plumbing firm bills $114.20 per worker-hour, and an electrical firm $111.55.More
2022 Economic Census, in 2025 dollars, and it is a genuine published billed rate rather than a survey: the Census gives the classes' receipts AND their construction-worker hours, and one divided by the other is a rate. Materials and subcontracted work are already removed from it, so it is not parts. It is a CLASS mean and it does not bound one firm's quote: the middle 80% of state means run $97.01 to $126.27 for plumbing and $92.47 to $121.55 for electrical, and real firms spread wider than state averages ever do.
A bill is not a wage, and the space between them is the business rather than the licence.More
Out of the plumbing class's $114.20 an hour, the trade's own workers cost the firm $47.75 with benefits counted; the electrical class's workers cost $48.20. The remainder is office and supervisor pay, liability insurance, bonding, licensing, the permit paperwork, the van, fuel, rent, depreciation and the hours nobody bills. What survives all of that is an upper bound on margin, not margin. Read that before you read the wage figures above: a firm bills far more than it pays its workers whether or not it holds a licence, so the distance from $23.84 to $114.20 is not a licence premium, and we will not sell it to you as one. The licence, the bond and the insurance are in there, but the Census does not break them out from the rest of the office, so we cannot tell you how big they are.
The wage comparison that holds is wage against wage, and it is a modest difference.More
Same survey, same instrument, same year: a maintenance and repair worker earns a median of $23.84 an hour, a plumber $30.67 and an electrician $30.38. That is what the labour market pays for the licensed trades over general repair work, and it is a good deal smaller than the difference between what a firm bills and what it pays. Whether it reflects training, scarcity, the licence itself or the work being harder, we do not know and this page will not pretend to.
So the question that decides the job is not the price. It is whether the work legally requires a licensed trade where you live.More
And we cannot answer it. We have not read any state's licensing law, we are not going to list which jobs need a licence, and any page that hands you such a list without naming the state and the city is guessing on your behalf. Ask your local building department: does this work need a licensed trade, does it need a permit and an inspection, and can the person I am hiring pull that permit. It costs a phone call. Then read what your own insurance policy says about unpermitted work, because we have not read that either.
You are billed per WORKER-hour, on both sides of the comparison.More
The Census field is 'construction workers annual hours', so a firm that sends two people for two hours bills four hours while the clock on the wall shows two. The same arithmetic applies to a handyman with a mate. Ask how many people are coming, before they arrive rather than when the invoice lands, and then compare like with like.
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The wage varies 2.6-fold across the country, and BLS's survey leaves out the self-employed.More
The occupation's median runs from $11.16 an hour in Puerto Rico to $29.00 in the District of Columbia across the 54 areas BLS publishes. And OEWS excludes the self-employed by its own account, which for handyman work is a large exclusion: the 1,529,700 counted are on somebody's payroll. That is a reason to read the wage as context and never as a price, and never to divide anything by that headcount.
Sourced: the wage (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, SOC
49-9071: median $23.84/hr, $49,590/yr, 1,529,700 employed, against $24.51/hr for all occupations) and the two
billed rates (2022 Economic Census, receipts over construction-worker hours, in 2025 dollars: $114.20 for the
plumbing class, $111.55 for the electrical class). Ours: the $75 default rate, which is a
placeholder, and the tier boundaries. Yours: the hours, the rate you were quoted, and the
licensing question, which only your building department can answer.More
Why we can price a plumber's firm and not a handyman. A billed rate is receipts divided by
hours, and the Economic Census is the rare place that publishes both, for construction classes. We looked in two
places for a handyman equivalent. BLS gives the OCCUPATION's wage and no billed rate at all. The Census
construction files give receipts and hours, and we enumerated all 90 kinds of work across the 19 construction
classes in our composition file: not one of them is general handyman repair, the nearest being a remodeling
contractor. What we did NOT search, and we would rather say so than let you assume we were thorough: the Census's
Other Services sector, which covers repair and maintenance, any state licensing board's published rates, and any
paid trade survey. So the handyman's rate here is your number, not ours.
Rule 22, and it cuts twice on this page. The BLS occupation is "Maintenance and Repair Workers,
General", which is wider than the man who comes to your house: it also counts the maintenance technician at an
apartment block, a school, a hotel and a factory. And the billed rates are CLASS rates. The plumbing class is
40.9% heating and air-conditioning and only 25.2% plumbing; the electrical class is a tidier thing to point at,
being 69.3% electrical installation and service work. Neither is a job. Both are buckets.
BLS excludes the self-employed, and on this page that exclusion is unusually large. Its own FAQ says
so in one word: "Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No." A great many
handymen are exactly that, so the 1,529,700 counted are the ones on somebody's payroll, and the median wage is
their wage. We therefore never divide anything by that employment count, and neither should anyone else.
And a wage is not a price, on either side of this page. $23.84 an hour is what an employed
maintenance worker earns. It is not what your handyman keeps out of his rate: he pays both halves of payroll tax
if he is self-employed, buys the van, the tools, the ladder and the insurance, and does not bill the driving, the
quoting or the week nobody rang.
Where every number above comes from
Wage data
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national. Maintenance and Repair Workers, General (SOC 49-9071): 1,529,700 employed, median $23.84/hr, $49,590/yr, mean $25.86/hr, 10th percentile $17.00/hr, 90th percentile $37.11/hr. All occupations (SOC 00-0000): median $24.51/hr
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, by state. A median wage published for 54 areas, from $11.16/hr in Puerto Rico to $29.00/hr in the District of Columbia
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics FAQ: 'Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No.' Many handymen are self-employed, so the count above is the ones on a payroll
Census, 2022 Economic Census (EC2223BASIC): receipts, materials, subcontracts, payroll and construction-worker HOURS for the plumbing class (NAICS 238220) and the electrical class (NAICS 238210). Receipts over worker-hours gives $114.20 and $111.55 per worker-hour in 2025 dollars
Census, 2022 Economic Census, Kind of Business (EC2223KOB): the plumbing class is 40.9% heating and air-conditioning and 25.2% plumbing; the electrical class is 69.3% electrical installation and service work. A class is a bucket, not a job
Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.
We have not read any state's licensing law. Not one. So this page does not say which jobs need a licence.
Licensing is set by states and frequently by cities, and it differs by trade: plumbing, electrical, gas and structural work are treated differently from hanging a door. Asking your building department is free and takes a phone call, and it is the single thing on this page we would insist you do. A calculator cannot do it for you, and one that pretends to is doing you harm.
The billed rates are CLASS means, and a class is not a job.
The plumbing class (NAICS 238220) is 40.9% heating and air-conditioning and 25.2% plumbing. The electrical class (NAICS 238210) is 69.3% electrical installation and service work. Both rates are averages across the firms in those classes, and averages do not bound the quote in your hand: the middle 80% of state means run $97.01 to $126.27 and $92.47 to $121.55 respectively, and firms spread wider than states do.
The gap between the two prices is a business, not a markup, and calling it profit would be the easy lie here.
Insurance, bonding, licensing, the permit office, the supervisor, the van, fuel, rent, depreciation, the apprentice, the unbilled driving and quoting, self-employment tax, and the weeks the phone does not ring. The residual after every expense the Census publishes is an upper bound on margin, and we do not guess where the margin actually sits inside it.
A WAGE and a BILL are different instruments, and the distance between them is not the price of a licence.
This page's first draft set the maintenance worker's $23.84 an hour beside the plumbing class's $114.20 and told you the space between them was the licence. That was wrong, and it was wrong in the loudest type on the page. A firm bills far above what it pays its workers whether it is licensed or not: in the plumbing class, the firms' own workers cost them $47.75 an hour with benefits counted, and the rest is the office, the van, the insurance and the unbilled hours. The licence, the bond and the permit desk are inside that, but the Census does not itemise them, so how much of the bill is the licence is a number we do not have. The wage comparison that survives is wage against wage: $23.84 for a maintenance worker, $30.67 for a plumber, $30.38 for an electrician.
We have no measure of workmanship, so this page says nothing about who does the job better.
No callback rate, no defect rate, no inspection-failure rate, for a handyman or for a licensed firm. So we do not tell you the handyman will do the job as well as a licensed trade, and we do not tell you he will do it worse. The page prices hours. Whether a particular person should be doing a particular job is a judgement about that person, and where the law has an opinion about it, the building department will tell you what it is.
The BLS occupation is wider than the man in your kitchen (Rule 22), and it excludes the self-employed.
SOC 49-9071 is 'Maintenance and Repair Workers, General', which counts the maintenance technician at an apartment block, a school, a hotel and a factory alongside the self-employed handyman. And OEWS leaves out the self-employed altogether, so the 1,529,700 in the count are on a payroll. We never divide anything by that number, and the wage is context rather than a price.
Hours means PERSON-hours on both sides. Two people for two hours is four.
The Census counts construction-WORKER hours, so the licensed rate is per person per hour, and a firm that sends a mate bills twice. The handyman's rate should be read the same way. Ask the head count before anybody arrives.
The $75 default rate is OURS, and it is a placeholder rather than a finding.
We have no published billed rate for handyman work, which is why the box is yours to fill in. Type what you were actually quoted, and if it was a flat price for the job, divide it by the person-hours first.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a handyman cost?
We cannot give you a national handyman rate, because we have no published billed rate for handyman work and we are not going to invent one. What we can give you is the other side of the comparison: a licensed plumbing firm bills $114.20 per worker-hour and an electrical firm $111.55, both published by the Economic Census. Put the rate you were quoted into the box, put the person-hours next to it, and the page will show you the size of the difference between the two. Do not let anyone show you the maintenance and repair occupation's median WAGE of $23.84 an hour and call that a handyman's price: a wage is not a bill, and the space between them is a business rather than a licence. Then go and find out whether the job needs a licence, because that decides whether the difference is yours.
Can a handyman do plumbing or electrical work?
That is a legal question about your state and often your city, and we have not read any state's licensing law, so we are not going to answer it. Anybody who answers it for you without asking where you live is guessing. The answer is free: ring your local building department, describe the job in a sentence, and ask whether it requires a licensed trade, whether it requires a permit and an inspection, and whether the person you are about to hire can pull that permit. Ask your insurer's policy wording about unpermitted work while you are at it. Those three questions cost you an afternoon and can save you a very great deal more than the difference this calculator prints.
Why does a licensed plumber cost so much more?
Because you are buying a different thing. Out of the plumbing class's $114.20 per worker-hour, its own workers cost the firm $47.75 once benefits are counted. The rest is office and supervisor pay, liability insurance, bonding, licensing, the permit paperwork, the van, fuel, rent, depreciation and the hours nobody bills: the driving, the quoting, the emergency you cancelled. What is left after every expense the Census publishes is an upper bound on margin, not margin. None of that is a markup on the same product. It is the apparatus that lets the firm pull a permit and stand behind the work, and where the law requires that apparatus, it is what you are paying for.
Is the handyman being underpaid, or the plumber overcharging?
Neither claim is one we can make, and we will not imply either. The maintenance and repair occupation earns a median of $23.84 an hour, which is about the middle of the American labour market ($24.51 for every occupation there is). A plumber's wage sits higher, at $30.67, and an electrician's at $30.38. Those are wages. The $114.20 and $111.55 are what firms BILL, and the space between the two is insurance, bonding, licensing, vehicles, office staff and unbilled hours rather than somebody's pocket. And both billed figures are class averages: they say nothing about the individual firm quoting you, in either direction.
What actually goes wrong if I use a handyman for licensed work?
We are going to be careful here, because this is the part of the page where being wrong could cost you your house insurance. The things at stake are the permit, the inspection and your policy. Whether the work you have in mind requires a licensed trade, whether a permit is needed, whether an unlicensed person can pull one, and what your insurer does about unpermitted work are four separate questions with four different answers in every state, and we have read none of them. Ask the building department the first three. Read the policy for the fourth. What we can tell you is the arithmetic: the difference in price is real, it is the size of the number above, and it is only a saving if the answer to all of that comes back clean.
Am I being billed for one person or two?
Ask, because it doubles the number. The licensed rate on this page is per WORKER-hour, straight out of the Census's own field name, so two people for two hours is four billed hours. A handyman who brings a mate is doing the same arithmetic to you, whether or not he says so. Get the head count and the hours in writing from both, and only then compare the rates: comparing a one-man quote with a two-man quote is not comparing anything.
