Handyman Hourly Rates, Compared Across 10 US Metros

A handyman’s billed hourly rate in the United States works out to roughly $48 to $72 an hour for a mid-market one-person operation, and $40 to $91 across the full wage spread. That comes from the 2025 BLS median wage of $23.84 an hour for General Maintenance and Repair Workers, multiplied by a burden and overhead factor of 2 to 3. The wage is measured. The multiplier is an assumption, and this page states it every time it uses it.

Key points

• The 2025 BLS median wage for General Maintenance and Repair Workers is $23.84 an hour, with the 25th percentile at $19.64 and the 75th at $30.10, across 1,529,700 employed workers nationally.
• Applying the standard 2x to 3x burden and overhead multiplier gives a billed rate of $48 to $72 an hour at the median wage.
• The gap between a 25th percentile worker at a 2.0 multiplier ($39.28/hr) and a 75th percentile worker at 3.0 ($90.30/hr) is $51.02 an hour, or 2.3x. That spread is the whole reason quotes vary so widely.
• Materials are rising faster than wages: the BLS Producer Price Index for hand and edge tools is up 6.2% and lumber up 10.1% over the twelve months to July 2026.
• A supervised two-person crew costs more per hour than two solo handymen, because the supervisor median wage is $38.42/hr, 61% above the maintenance worker median.

Where does the $23.84 figure come from?

It comes from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for General Maintenance and Repair Workers, SOC code 49-9071, survey year 2025. That is the occupation code covering the person who fixes a door, patches drywall, swaps a faucet cartridge and rehangs a gate. It is a wage survey of employers, so it reports what workers are paid, not what customers are billed.

Here is the national wage data with nothing added:

Wage measure	Hourly	Annual at 2,080 hrs	Notes
25th percentile	$19.64	$40,851	A quarter of workers earn this or less
Median (50th)	$23.84	$49,587	The middle worker
Mean	$25.86	$53,789	Pulled above median by the top tail
75th percentile	$30.10	$62,608	A quarter earn this or more
Supervisor median	$38.42	$79,914	First-Line Supervisors, Construction Trades
Employed nationally	—	—	1,529,700

The mean sitting $2.02 above the median tells you the distribution leans right. There are more workers well above the middle than well below it, which is what you would expect in a trade where experience and specialty tickets compound.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook profile for this occupation is the official description of what the code covers and what entry into it requires.

Why is the billed rate double the wage?

Because the wage is the smallest part of what it costs to put a person on your property for an hour. On top of $23.84 an hour sit payroll taxes, workers’ compensation premiums, general liability insurance, the van payment, fuel, tool replacement, unbilled drive time between jobs, phone and scheduling admin, a warranty reserve for callbacks, and profit.

A multiplier of 2.0 to 3.0 times the base wage is the usual working assumption for small residential contractors. State that clearly to yourself before you read the tables below: it is an assumption, not a measured number. Nothing in the BLS data reports what customers are billed. What the data reports is the wage; everything past that is arithmetic you can check.

At 2.0 the business is roughly covering overhead and paying the owner a wage. At 3.0 there is genuine margin, which is what funds insurance you actually want the contractor to carry and a warranty they can afford to honour.

What is the full hourly rate range across every wage level?

This is the table to find your own row in. Every wage percentile from the BLS data, crossed with every multiplier in the assumed range.

Base wage	Source	×2.0	×2.25	×2.5	×2.75	×3.0
$19.64	25th pct	$39.28	$44.19	$49.10	$54.01	$58.92
$23.84	Median	$47.68	$53.64	$59.60	$65.56	$71.52
$25.86	Mean	$51.72	$58.19	$64.65	$71.12	$77.58
$30.10	75th pct	$60.20	$67.73	$75.25	$82.78	$90.30
$38.42	Supervisor	$76.84	$86.45	$96.05	$105.66	$115.26

Read it this way. If your quote is $65 an hour, that is consistent with a median-wage worker at a 2.75 multiplier, or a mean-wage worker at 2.5, or a 75th percentile worker at 2.15. All three are ordinary. If your quote is $130 an hour for one person, no combination in this table produces it, and you should ask what else is inside the rate.

The full spread from the cheapest cell that describes a working handyman ($39.28) to the most expensive non-supervisor cell ($90.30) is $51.02 an hour, a factor of 2.3. Over a full eight hour day that is $408 of difference on labor alone, for two people the BLS counts in the same occupation.

How does the rate change with crew size and job length?

Two axes: how many people show up, and how long they stay. All rows use the median wage of $23.84 and a 2.5 multiplier, giving a billed rate of $59.60 per person hour. Supervisor hours bill at $38.42 × 2.5 = $96.05.

Crew	Billed labor/hr	2 hrs	4 hrs	8 hrs	16 hrs (2 days)
1 handyman	$59.60	$119.20	$238.40	$476.80	$953.60
2 handymen	$119.20	$238.40	$476.80	$953.60	$1,907.20
1 handyman + 1 supervisor	$155.65	$311.30	$622.60	$1,245.20	$2,490.40
2 handymen + 1 supervisor	$215.25	$430.50	$861.00	$1,722.00	$3,444.00
3 handymen	$178.80	$357.60	$715.20	$1,430.40	$2,860.80

The supervised pairing costs $36.45 more per hour than two handymen working unsupervised, because $38.42 is 61% above $23.84 before any multiplier is applied. That premium is worth paying when the job touches structure, gas, or anything that has to pass inspection. It is not worth paying to have someone watch a door get rehung.

What does a real job cost, line by line?

Here is the full build-up for a common half-day job, with every step visible so you can change any input you disagree with.

Job: replace an interior door slab, rehang, adjust strike, install new handleset.

Step	Working	Amount
Labor hours on site	3.5 hrs	3.5
Crew size	1 person	×1
Person-hours	3.5 × 1	3.5
Base wage	BLS median	×$23.84
Raw wage cost	3.5 × $23.84	$83.44
Burden and overhead multiplier	assumption, 2.5	×2.5
Billed labor	$83.44 × 2.5	$208.60
Material allowance (door, handleset, shims, fasteners)	stated allowance	$185.00
Subtotal	$208.60 + $185.00	$393.60
Trip charge (if billed separately)	stated allowance	$45.00
Total with trip charge		$438.60

Change one input and see what happens. At the 25th percentile wage ($19.64) the billed labor drops to $171.85 and the total to $356.85. At the 75th percentile ($30.10) billed labor rises to $263.38 and the total to $448.38. Swap the multiplier to 3.0 at the median wage and billed labor becomes $250.32.

Every number above except the material allowance and the trip charge is derived from the BLS wage table. The material allowance and trip charge are stated assumptions, and they are the two lines most worth arguing over with your contractor, because they are the two the wage data cannot tell you anything about.

How much has the materials side moved in a year?

The BLS Producer Price Index tracks producer-level prices as index points on a 1982 = 100 base. These are index levels, not dollars. They tell you direction and rate of change and nothing else. Never convert an index point into a price.

Series	July 2025	July 2026	Change
Hand and edge tools (WPU1042)	314.591	334.192	+6.2%
Lumber (WPU081)	264.248	291.019	+10.1%

Now the reverse calculation, which is more useful. If materials on your job rose at these rates, how much extra does that add, and what would labor have to do to offset it?

Material allowance	+6.2% (tools rate)	+10.1% (lumber rate)	Hours of median labor to offset the lumber rise
$100	+$6.20	+$10.10	0.17 hr
$250	+$15.50	+$25.25	0.42 hr
$500	+$31.00	+$50.50	0.85 hr
$1,000	+$62.00	+$101.00	1.69 hr
$2,500	+$155.00	+$252.50	4.24 hr

Offset hours use the billed labor rate of $59.60 (median wage × 2.5). Read the last column as: on a $1,000 lumber allowance, the contractor would need to shave one hour and forty-one minutes off the job to hold last year’s total.

The practical read: on a labor-dominated repair, materials inflation is noise. On a deck board replacement or a framing repair where lumber is half the ticket, a 10.1% index move is the single biggest reason this year’s number does not match the quote you were given last summer.

When is this calculation wrong?

Often, and here is exactly where.

Metro wage variation is not in this data. The figures above are the national occupation series. A handyman in a high cost metro is paid above the national median and one in a low cost rural county below it, and the billed rates move with them. This page cannot tell you the size of that gap, because the metro-level series is not among the data supplied here. Anyone who gives you a city-by-city handyman rate table without citing a metro-level wage series is guessing.

Permits and inspection. No permit fee, application time, or inspector wait appears anywhere in the arithmetic above. Permit costs are set by your local jurisdiction and are a pass-through, not a labor cost.

Disposal. Hauling an old door, a bag of drywall offcuts or a bathroom vanity to a transfer station costs a tip fee plus travel time. Neither is in the wage data.

Code upgrades triggered mid-job. Open a wall and find ungrounded wiring, and the job stops being a handyman job. What follows is licensed electrical work at a different occupation’s wage entirely.

Access. A second floor window, a crawlspace, a job that requires scaffolding or a lift, or a unit with a freight elevator reservation window all add hours that have nothing to do with the task itself.

Season. Exterior work compressed into a short good-weather window pushes hourly rates up through demand, and the same work in a slow month can be negotiated. The wage survey is annual and cannot see this.

Emergency call-out. After hours and weekend premiums are typically billed at a multiple of the standard rate. That is a premium on the billed rate, not a change in the wage, and it should be a separate stated line on your invoice.

Two things almost everyone gets wrong

Misconception one: “he’s charging $60 an hour, so he’s making $60 an hour.” He is not. At a 2.5 multiplier, $60 billed corresponds to a $24 wage. Of the other $36, most is consumed before anything reaches the owner: employer payroll tax, workers’ comp, liability cover, the vehicle, fuel, tools, and the hours spent quoting jobs that never happen. Assuming the person on your ladder pockets the whole hourly rate leads to negotiating positions that only get answered by contractors who are uninsured.

Misconception two: “the cheapest hourly rate is the cheapest job.” Compare a $45/hr operator who takes six hours against a $70/hr operator who takes three and a half. Six × $45 = $270. Three and a half × $70 = $245. The higher rate costs $25 less and finishes in a single visit. Hourly rate only tells you cost when you also know hours, and hours is the number contractors are least willing to commit to in writing. Get the hours in writing and the rate comparison starts to mean something.

How do you read a real quote against these numbers?

A quote you can check has these lines separated:

• Labor hours, stated as a number, not as “labor” with a lump sum.
• Hourly rate or day rate, stated separately from hours.
• Minimum billing block, if there is one. A two hour minimum on a forty minute job is legitimate and should be visible.
• Materials, as an allowance or an itemised list, with markup either stated or absent.
• Trip or mobilisation charge, separate.
• Disposal, separate.
• Permit fees, separate and marked as pass-through.

The single question that exposes a padded bid: “How many labor hours is this, and what is the hourly rate?” A fair quote answers in five seconds because the estimator built it that way. A padded quote deflects to “that’s just what the job costs.” Multiply their two numbers. If the product does not equal the labor line on the sheet, the difference is hiding something, and the reasonable follow-up is to ask what.

Second question, nearly as useful: “If it takes fewer hours than estimated, do I pay less?” A time-and-materials quote should say yes. A fixed-price quote should say no, and should say so up front rather than discovering the answer at invoice time.

What to check before you sign

• The quote separates hours from rate, and you have multiplied them.
• The material allowance is a number you can look up yourself, not a line called “materials.”
• Trip charge, disposal and permit fees are itemised or explicitly stated as not applicable.
• You know whether the price is fixed or time-and-materials, in writing.
• The contractor carries liability insurance and workers’ compensation, and you have seen the certificate rather than been told about it. Both are inside the burden multiplier you are paying for. If the rate is at the low end of the range above, ask harder, because that is the first cost a low bidder drops.
• The scope names what happens if the job opens up. Who decides, who pays, and at what rate.
• For anything touching gas, structure or a service panel, confirm the work is being done by the licensed trade and not absorbed into a handyman rate.

Every dollar figure on this page was computed from the BLS wage series using the multipliers stated in the text. No quotes were collected, no contractors were surveyed, and no property was inspected. The wages are measured; the multiplier is an assumption you are free to change, and the tables show you exactly what changes when you do.

Read next

• What Plumbers Earn, and What You Actually Get Billed
• Drywall Repair Cost: Where the Money Actually Goes
• What a Landscaping Crew Costs per Hour in Miami
• Lumber Prices and What They Do to a Deck Quote

Also worth reading: DIY vs Pro Painting: What Your Own Time Is Worth

Also worth reading: What Concrete Finishers Earn in Nashville, and What You Pay

Also worth reading: Why Handyman Rates Run Lower in Raleigh Than Nearby Metros