Employee wage
What an employed tradesperson is paid. Official ONS data measures this. It is not what a customer is charged and it excludes the self-employed entirely.
Sourced from official ONS data
UK trade pricing · 2026
What should a tradesperson charge?
A sustainable charge-out rate is not somebody else's day rate copied from a forum. It is the annual income you need, plus the real cost of running the business, spread over the days you can genuinely bill, with room for risk and profit. Use the calculator, then sense-check it against official employee-pay data and your local market.
The short answer
There is no honest single UK day rate. On our worked example below (£40,000 target income, £15,000 overheads, a 10% margin), a sole trader needs roughly £291 to £407 a day ex VAT, depending only on how many days a year they can actually bill.
That is a worked planning example built from stated assumptions, not a claimed market rate and not a quotation for any particular job. Change the inputs and the answer changes. Use the charge-out rate calculator with your own figures, then sense-check against the official employee pay data.
The formula behind it
Required sales = (target income + annual business overheads) ÷ (1 − operating margin). Divide that by realistic billable days for a day rate, then by billable hours for an hourly rate.
Four different numbers people call “the rate”
These measure different things and are not interchangeable. Published trade rate figures are often hard to rely on because it is not stated which of them is being quoted.
Business charge-out rate
The selling rate a self-employed trade needs to cover labour, overheads, non-billable time, risk and profit. Higher than a wage, because a wage leaves most of those costs with the employer.
Calculated from your own figures
Worked example
Our own illustration built from stated assumptions, shown above. It demonstrates the method. It is not evidence of what the market pays.
Our calculation, not a market rate
Consumer-facing market estimate
What householders are quoted, as published by other sites. We do not publish these figures, because we have no verified sample behind them.
Not published here
A fifth figure, the subcontract labour rate, sits between a wage and a customer-facing rate: what a contractor agrees to pay for labour before any CIS deduction. We have no verified UK sample for it, so we publish no figure. Every rate figure we publish is ex VAT unless labelled otherwise.
UK trade charge-out rate calculator
Start with your own numbers. “Target income” is what the business needs to produce for you before personal tax, not an employee salary and not turnover. Overheads should include every business cost that cannot be billed separately.
Planning result
£340/day ex VAT
£45.27/billable hour
- Income + overhead cost base
- £55,000
- Required annual sales
- £61,111
- Billable days assumed
- 180
Formula: (target income + annual overheads) ÷ (1 − margin) ÷ billable days. This is planning arithmetic, not a market quote, wage recommendation or tax calculation. Materials and project-specific risk are not included.
The billable-days trap
A calendar can hold roughly 260 weekdays; your business cannot invoice all of them. The example below keeps the same £40,000 target income, £15,000 overheads and 10% margin, and changes only the number of days sold.
| Billable days | Required sales | Day rate ex VAT | At 7.5 billable hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150 | £61,111 | £407 | £54.32/hour |
| 180 | £61,111 | £340 | £45.27/hour |
| 210 | £61,111 | £291 | £38.80/hour |
Worked planning example, not a claimed market rate. Every figure is calculated from the underlying unrounded required-sales total (£61,111.11), then rounded for display: day rates to the nearest pound, hourly rates to the nearest penny. Dividing a displayed day rate by 7.5 will therefore land a few pence either side of the hourly figure shown.
Official employee-pay benchmarks, not subcontract rates
The latest granular official benchmark available is the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), April 2025 provisional. These are median gross hourly earnings excluding overtime for full-time employee jobs across the UK. They show what employees were paid; they do not include the business costs or profit needed in a subcontract or customer rate.
| Occupation | SOC 2020 | Median employee hourly pay |
|---|---|---|
| Electricians and electrical fitters | 5241 | £19.02 |
| Bricklayers | 5313 | £16.54 |
| Roofers, roof tilers and slaters | 5314 | £15.91 |
| Plumbers & heating and ventilating installers and repairers | 5315 | £18.00 |
| Carpenters and joiners | 5316 | £17.00 |
| Construction and building trades n.e.c. | 5319 | £17.50 |
| Plasterers | 5321 | £16.44 |
| Floorers and wall tilers | 5322 | £16.33 |
| Painters and decorators | 5323 | £16.17 |
| Construction and building trades supervisors | 5330 | £20.22 |
| Construction operatives n.e.c. | 8159 | £15.27 |
| Groundworkers | 9121 | £16.00 |
How to use this table: as a wage context check only. Occupation titles and codes are reproduced exactly as ONS publishes them. ASHE excludes the self-employed, does not measure what contractors invoice and cannot tell you the correct rate for your region, skill, responsibility, travel, tools or job. Some occupation samples are small; suppressed ONS cells have not been republished here.
Looking for labouring work? ONS publishes no occupation group called “labourer”. In our judgement the closest published categories are Construction operatives n.e.c. (8159) and Groundworkers (9121), and those are the figures our labourer question answers with. That is our reading of the classification, not an ONS mapping.
Looking for labouring work? ONS publishes no occupation group called “labourer”. In our judgement the closest published categories are Construction operatives n.e.c. (8159) and Groundworkers (9121), and those are the figures our labourer question answers with. That is our reading of the classification, not an ONS mapping.
What your charge-out rate has to recover
Unpaid time
Quoting, surveys, travel, collections, admin, training, snagging and gaps between jobs.
Vehicle and travel
Fuel, servicing, tyres, insurance, finance or depreciation, parking and dead mileage.
Tools and equipment
Replacement, hire, repairs, calibration, consumables, storage and security.
Business running costs
Insurance, accounts, software, phone, advertising, memberships and premises.
Time off and resilience
Holiday, sickness, weather disruption, callbacks, bad debt and an emergency buffer.
Profit
Money retained after operating costs so the business can invest, absorb risk and remain viable.
If you employ people, the wage is still not the labour cost. Most workers receive at least 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday; employer National Insurance for category A is 15% above the applicable threshold in 2026–27; and eligible staff normally require at least a 3% employer pension contribution on qualifying earnings.
CIS, VAT and the number on the invoice
CIS is a deduction, not a rate discount
HMRC’s standard CIS deduction is 20% for a registered subcontractor, 30% if unregistered and 0% with gross payment status. The deduction is an advance payment towards tax and National Insurance. It should not be treated as the contractor taking 20% off the commercial value of your work.
Always label VAT clearly
The VAT registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover. Say whether rates are ex VAT or inclusive. For qualifying construction supplies between VAT- and CIS-registered businesses, the domestic reverse charge may apply instead of normal VAT collection. Confirm the treatment for the actual supply with HMRC guidance or an accountant.
Hourly, day rate or fixed price?
| Basis | Best suited to | Main risk | Protect it with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly | Short, uncertain or diagnostic work | The customer cannot see the final cost | Minimum charge and clear updates |
| Day rate | Labour support and changing site priorities | Unclear day length or travel expectations | Hours, breaks, travel and scope in writing |
| Fixed price | Defined work with measurable outputs | Hidden conditions or scope creep | Written assumptions, exclusions and variation process |
| Price work | Repeatable measured outputs | Quality or access makes output unpredictable | Specification, measurement and acceptance standard |
Common questions about trade labour rates
How much should a self-employed tradesperson charge per day?
There is no honest universal figure. Add the annual income you need to your real business overheads, divide by one minus your target operating margin, then divide by realistic billable days. The calculator on this page uses that formula and shows every assumption.
Is an employee hourly wage the same as a customer charge-out rate?
No. Employee pay excludes many costs carried by a self-employed trade business: non-billable quoting and travel, vehicle and tools, insurance, training, admin, bad debt, unpaid time off and profit. ONS employee earnings are a useful benchmark, not a price list.
How many billable days should a tradesperson use?
Use your own records where possible. A five-day working week does not create 260 billable days: holidays, sickness, training, quoting, travel, collections, snagging, admin and gaps all reduce the total. The worked table shows how strongly 150, 180 and 210 days change the required rate.
Does a CIS deduction mean I should reduce my rate?
No. CIS deductions are advance payments towards tax and National Insurance, not a discount and not the same as your final tax bill. HMRC states that contractors normally deduct 20% for registered subcontractors, 30% for unregistered subcontractors and 0% for gross payment status.
Should VAT be included in a quoted day rate?
State clearly whether a figure is before or after VAT. UK VAT registration is generally required once taxable turnover exceeds £90,000. Construction supplies between VAT- and CIS-registered businesses may fall under the domestic reverse charge, depending on the customer and supply.
What is a realistic labourer day rate?
We do not publish one, because no official source measures it. ONS reports employee pay, and the closest categories to labouring work are construction operatives n.e.c. at £15.27 median hourly and groundworkers at £16.00. Those are employee wages, not charge-out rates: a self-employed labourer still has to cover travel, tools, insurance, unpaid time and time off, so an invoiced rate sits above the wage figure. Use the calculator with your own overheads rather than copying a figure from a forum.
Should I charge hourly, daily or price the whole job?
Use the basis that matches the uncertainty. Hourly or day rates suit open-ended labour and support work; fixed prices suit defined outcomes when scope, access and risk are understood. Whatever the customer sees, your internal price should still be built from a sustainable hourly or daily floor.
Sources, limits and update policy
Employee benchmarks come from ONS ASHE Table 14.6a, 2025 provisional edition, full-time employee jobs, median hourly pay excluding overtime, United Kingdom. Occupations are coded to SOC 2020: every workbook in that edition is titled “Occupation SOC20 (4)”. The ONS web address for this dataset still contains “soc2010” from earlier editions; the data published there is SOC 2020.
On all twelve medians shown above were re-checked cell by cell against the downloaded ONS workbook. All twelve matched. We also checked the workbook’s own notes sheet and found no correction affecting these occupations; we did not audit ONS’s wider revisions history. Tax-year inputs were checked against current GOV.UK guidance on , and the method behind the calculator was last reviewed on . This page was first published on .
What the figures on this page do and do not represent
- They do represent: official median hourly pay for employed tradespeople, and a worked charge-out calculation built from assumptions stated in full.
- They do not represent: what UK subcontractors invoice, what householders are quoted, what any individual should charge, or a price for a specific job.
- Why a charge-out rate exceeds a wage: a wage buys hours already covered by an employer for holiday, sick pay, tools, vehicle, insurance, pension and admin. A self-employed rate has to fund all of that from the hours it can actually bill, plus profit and risk.
- Regional and business variation: overheads, travel distance, competition and cost of living differ across the UK. ONS publishes regional breakdowns; we do not restate them here because the sample behind a regional charge-out figure would be ours, and we do not yet have one.
- VAT: every rate figure we publish is ex VAT unless labelled otherwise; the calculator can additionally show a VAT-inclusive customer total. Whether VAT applies to your invoice depends on registration and, for construction supplies between VAT- and CIS-registered businesses, possibly the domestic reverse charge.
- Not a quotation: this page cannot price your job. Access, specification, condition, programme, risk and contract terms all move the number, and none of them are known here.
- ONS ASHE Table 14: occupation by four-digit SOC
- GOV.UK employer rates and thresholds, 2026–27
- GOV.UK CIS deductions
- GOV.UK VAT domestic reverse charge
- GOV.UK VAT thresholds
This page offers general business-planning information, not personalised tax, employment-status, legal or accounting advice. Rates vary by competence, responsibility, region, access, urgency, equipment, risk and contract terms.
Help build a real subcontract-rate dataset
Official employee data cannot answer what UK subcontractors actually invoice. We will publish contractor-supplied figures only when each cell can show trade, region, basis, collection window and a meaningful sample size.