Roof Replacement Labor Cost in Boston

A roofer in Boston is paid a median of $31.90 an hour, per the 2025 BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey. Billed to you at a 2.5x burden multiplier, that is roughly $80 per worker-hour. A four-person crew working two full days on a straightforward asphalt tear-off and replacement produces a labor figure near $5,100 before materials, disposal or permits. Below is every step of that arithmetic, plus tables covering roof sizes from 1,000 to 3,500 square feet.

Key points

• Boston roofers earn a median $31.90/hr in the 2025 BLS survey, which is $5.25/hr and 19.7% above the national roofer median of $26.65/hr.
• Massachusetts statewide pays roofers a median $34.98/hr, which is $3.08/hr higher than the Boston metro figure, so the state is not simply “Boston plus everywhere else cheaper.”
• The wage is not the price. A 2x to 3x burden and overhead multiplier turns $31.90/hr into $63.80 to $95.70 per billed worker-hour, and that multiplier is an assumption, not a measured figure.
• Asphalt roofing materials are up 3.6% over twelve months by the Producer Price Index, while lumber is up 10.1%, which means deck repair inflates faster than shingles.
• This site does not collect quotes, inspect properties or survey contractors. Every number below is arithmetic performed on federal wage and price data in full view.

What do Boston roofers actually earn?

Here is the wage data straight from the 2025 BLS OEWS survey, unmodified. These are wages paid to workers, not prices billed to homeowners.

Area	25th percentile	Median	75th percentile	Mean	Roofers employed
United States	$22.24/hr	$26.65/hr	$31.44/hr	$27.95/hr	135,490
Massachusetts	$28.78/hr	$34.98/hr	$39.95/hr	$35.09/hr	1,950
Boston, MA	$28.87/hr	$31.90/hr	$37.61/hr	$33.82/hr	1,120

Two things stand out.

First, the Boston to national gap. Boston’s median of $31.90 exceeds the national $26.65 by $5.25/hr. As a percentage: $5.25 ÷ $26.65 = 19.7%. Boston roofers are paid roughly one fifth more than the national median. Note where Boston’s median sits nationally: $31.90 is just above the national 75th percentile of $31.44. A median Boston roofer earns more than three quarters of American roofers.

Second, the state comparison runs the wrong way from what most people expect. Massachusetts statewide median is $34.98, which is $3.08/hr above Boston. That is 9.7% higher outside the metro core than inside it. Boston holds 1,120 of the state’s 1,950 roofers, so the remaining 830 roofers elsewhere in Massachusetts must be pulling the state median up. Do not assume the metro is the expensive part of the state for this trade.

Crew supervision is a separate cost. First-line supervisors of construction trades in Boston earn a median of $48.02/hr. A foreman on site all day is a real labor cost, and it is $16.12/hr more than a crew roofer.

How do you get from a $31.90 wage to a price on a quote?

You multiply. The wage is what lands in the worker’s bank account. What a company bills covers considerably more.

The burden and overhead multiplier absorbs:

• Employer payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment)
• Workers’ compensation insurance, which is rated unusually high for roofing because of fall exposure
• General liability insurance
• Trucks, trailers, fuel, maintenance
• Ladders, harnesses, nail guns, compressors, tool replacement
• Non-billable office hours: estimating, scheduling, invoicing, permit filing
• Warranty reserve for callbacks
• Profit

A 2x to 3x multiplier on the base wage is the standard working assumption for small residential contractors. That range is an assumption, not a figure published by BLS. It is the single largest lever in everything that follows, so it is stated openly rather than hidden inside a result.

Applied to the Boston median wage:

Multiplier	Arithmetic	Billed rate per worker-hour
2.0x	$31.90 × 2.0	$63.80
2.5x	$31.90 × 2.5	$79.75
3.0x	$31.90 × 3.0	$95.70

And applied to the 25th and 75th percentile wages, since not every crew is a median crew:

Wage basis	Boston wage	At 2.0x	At 2.5x	At 3.0x
25th percentile	$28.87/hr	$57.74	$72.18	$86.61
Median	$31.90/hr	$63.80	$79.75	$95.70
75th percentile	$37.61/hr	$75.22	$94.03	$112.83
Supervisor	$48.02/hr	$96.04	$120.05	$144.06

The spread is wide. A newer crew at 2.0x bills $57.74 per worker-hour. An experienced crew at 3.0x bills $112.83. Same trade, same city, nearly double.

What does the labor line cost on a full roof replacement?

Here is the build-up, one line at a time, for a mid-size Boston asphalt roof.

Assumptions stated up front:

• Roof area: 1,800 square feet of roof surface (18 squares)
• Existing layers: one, tear-off included
• Pitch: walkable, roughly 4:12 to 6:12
• Crew: 4 roofers
• Duration: 2 working days at 8 hours
• Burden multiplier: 2.5x
• No deck replacement, no structural repair

The arithmetic:

Line	Calculation	Result
Worker-hours	4 roofers × 8 hrs × 2 days	64 worker-hours
Base wage cost	64 hrs × $31.90	$2,041.60
Billed labor at 2.5x	$2,041.60 × 2.5	$5,104.00
Supervisor, half-time	8 hrs × $48.02 × 2.5	$960.40
Total labor billed	$5,104.00 + $960.40	$6,064.40

That is the labor line only. Materials, disposal and permits are separate and this site does not have a federal dollar price for them. The Producer Price Index tells you direction, not dollars, and converting an index level into a price is not a legitimate operation.

At the other burden multipliers, holding crew and hours constant:

Multiplier	Crew labor (64 hrs)	Supervisor (8 hrs)	Total labor
2.0x	$4,083.20	$768.32	$4,851.52
2.5x	$5,104.00	$960.40	$6,064.40
3.0x	$6,124.80	$1,152.48	$7,277.28

The gap between the low and high assumption is $2,425.76 on the same job. If two Boston bids differ by that much on labor, neither is necessarily wrong. They may simply carry different overhead.

What does the labor cost for my specific roof size?

Find your row. All figures use the Boston median wage of $31.90/hr, a 4-person crew, and exclude supervisor time so you can compare like with like. Worker-hours scale with roof area at roughly 3.5 worker-hours per 100 square feet, which is the productivity assumption doing the work here and is stated so you can argue with it.

Roof area (sq ft)	Squares	Worker-hours	Crew-days (4 workers)	Base wage cost	Labor at 2.0x	Labor at 2.5x	Labor at 3.0x
1,000	10	35	1.1	$1,116.50	$2,233	$2,791	$3,350
1,200	12	42	1.3	$1,339.80	$2,680	$3,350	$4,019
1,400	14	49	1.5	$1,563.10	$3,126	$3,908	$4,689
1,600	16	56	1.8	$1,786.40	$3,573	$4,466	$5,359
1,800	18	63	2.0	$2,009.70	$4,019	$5,024	$6,029
2,000	20	70	2.2	$2,233.00	$4,466	$5,583	$6,699
2,200	22	77	2.4	$2,456.30	$4,913	$6,141	$7,369
2,400	24	84	2.6	$2,679.60	$5,359	$6,699	$8,039
2,600	26	91	2.8	$2,902.90	$5,806	$7,257	$8,709
2,800	28	98	3.1	$3,126.20	$6,252	$7,816	$9,379
3,000	30	105	3.3	$3,349.50	$6,699	$8,374	$10,049
3,200	32	112	3.5	$3,572.80	$7,146	$8,932	$10,718
3,500	35	122.5	3.8	$3,907.75	$7,816	$9,769	$11,723

Read the row that matches your roof, then read across to the multiplier you think your contractor carries. A single-truck operator with one employee sits nearer 2.0x. A company with an office, a fleet, a sales team and a written warranty sits nearer 3.0x.

How much does the answer change with pitch and wage tier?

Two axes move the number more than anything else: how hard the roof is to walk, and where in the wage distribution your crew sits. Steep roofs require staging, harness anchors and slower movement, which is a productivity penalty, not a wage premium.

Below: 2,000 square foot roof, 4-person crew, 2.5x burden throughout. The base is 70 worker-hours. Pitch factors applied are 1.00 for walkable, 1.25 for steep and 1.50 for very steep. Those pitch factors are assumptions, stated so you can substitute your own.

Pitch	Worker-hours	At 25th pct ($28.87)	At median ($31.90)	At 75th pct ($37.61)
Walkable (4:12–6:12)	70	$5,052	$5,583	$6,582
Steep (7:12–9:12)	87.5	$6,315	$6,978	$8,227
Very steep (10:12+)	105	$7,578	$8,374	$9,873

The full spread on one 2,000 square foot roof runs from $5,052 to $9,873. That is a 95% swing driven entirely by two variables neither of which is the roof’s size. When two quotes on the same house differ sharply, pitch handling and crew tier explain most of it.

Now the same job compared against national wages, to size the Boston premium in dollars:

Scenario	National wage	Boston wage	National labor (2.5x)	Boston labor (2.5x)	Boston premium
1,400 sq ft, walkable	$26.65	$31.90	$3,264	$3,908	+$644 (19.7%)
2,000 sq ft, walkable	$26.65	$31.90	$4,664	$5,583	+$919 (19.7%)
2,000 sq ft, steep	$26.65	$31.90	$5,830	$6,978	+$1,148 (19.7%)
3,000 sq ft, walkable	$26.65	$31.90	$6,996	$8,374	+$1,378 (19.7%)
3,000 sq ft, very steep	$26.65	$31.90	$10,494	$12,562	+$2,068 (19.7%)

The percentage is constant because it is the wage gap. The dollar figure is what you feel, and it scales with the job. On a large steep roof, the Boston wage premium alone is worth over $2,000.

What are materials doing this year?

The Producer Price Index gives direction and rate of change, not dollars. These are index points on a 1982 = 100 base and cannot be converted into a price per square.

Material series	July 2025	July 2026	12-month change
Prepared asphalt and tar roofing and siding products (WPU1361)	359.364	372.301	+3.6%
Lumber (WPU081)	264.248	291.019	+10.1%

The practical read: shingles are rising at a moderate clip, but lumber is rising nearly three times as fast. That matters because deck sheathing is lumber. If your tear-off exposes rotted decking and the crew replaces plywood, that portion of your job is inflating at 10.1% year over year while the shingles above it inflate at 3.6%.

A useful reverse calculation. If a contractor tells you material costs forced a price increase, ask what share of the bid is material. If materials are 40% of a bid and asphalt rose 3.6%, the justified increase on the whole bid is 0.40 × 3.6% = 1.4%. A 12% increase attributed to “material costs” does not reconcile with the published index unless the job is heavy on lumber.

Two things homeowners get wrong

Misconception one: “The crew is paid $31.90 an hour, so a four-person day should cost about $1,020.”

Four workers × 8 hours × $31.90 = $1,020.80. That is correct arithmetic on the wrong number. It is the payroll cost, and the contractor pays it whether or not the job is profitable. Layered on top are employer payroll taxes, workers’ compensation at roofing rates, liability coverage, the truck that carried the crew there, the dumpster, fuel, the estimator’s unpaid hours quoting jobs that never close, and profit. At 2.5x, that same crew day bills $2,552. The $1,020 figure is not a discount you failed to negotiate. It is a number that was never available.

Misconception two: “Massachusetts is expensive, so Boston must be the most expensive place in the state to hire a roofer.”

The data says otherwise. Boston median is $31.90. Massachusetts statewide median is $34.98. The state runs $3.08/hr, or 9.7%, above the metro. Boston employs 1,120 of the state’s 1,950 roofers, so the 830 working outside the metro must be earning enough to pull the statewide median above the Boston figure. On a 70 worker-hour job at 2.5x, that difference is 70 × $3.08 × 2.5 = $539 in labor. If you are comparing a Boston bid against one from a crew based elsewhere in Massachusetts, do not assume the out-of-town crew is cheaper on wages.

When is this estimate wrong?

This calculation is a wage multiplied by hours. It cannot see anything that is not a wage or an hour. The following are real costs that appear on real quotes and are entirely absent from every table above.

• Permits and inspections. Municipal fees vary by jurisdiction and are not federal data. Boston and surrounding municipalities each set their own.
• Disposal. Tear-off of a single layer on a 2,000 square foot roof produces multiple tons of debris. Dumpster rental and landfill tipping fees are a separate line and rise independently of wages.
• Deck replacement. Not visible until the old roof is off. This is the single most common change order in roofing, and per the PPI above, lumber is the fastest-inflating input on the job at 10.1% year over year.
• Code upgrades. Ice and water shield coverage, ventilation requirements and fastener schedules can be mandated at replacement even if the old roof did not have them. Massachusetts and local amendments govern this, not the wage data.
• Multiple existing layers. Two or three layers of old shingles roughly double or triple tear-off time. The tables assume one layer.
• Access. A three-decker on a narrow Boston street with no driveway, no dumpster placement and a required parking permit costs more in setup hours than a suburban house with a wide driveway. None of that appears in a wage figure.
• Chimneys, skylights, valleys, dormers. Every penetration is flashing detail work done slowly by hand. A simple gable roof and a cut-up roof of identical square footage are not the same job.
• Season. New England roofing is compressed into a working window. Shingles need temperature to seal properly. Winter work carries a schedule penalty and a risk premium.
• Emergency call-out. Storm damage and active leaks are priced on availability, not on median wage tables.
• This site has not seen your roof. No property was inspected, no contractor was surveyed, no quote was collected. These are computed figures from public federal data.

How do you read a real quote against these numbers?

A quote you can check has these items separated rather than merged into one number:

• Labor, stated with crew size and expected days
• Tear-off and disposal, stated separately from installation
• Materials by type: shingles, underlayment, ice and water shield, drip edge, ridge vent, flashing, fasteners
• Deck repair, with a stated per-sheet price so a change order does not become an open cheque
• Permit fees, listed at cost
• Warranty terms, with workmanship and manufacturer coverage stated separately

The single question that exposes a padded bid: how many workers, for how many days, and what is your billed hourly rate per worker?

A contractor who built an honest bid answers without hesitation, because that is the arithmetic they used. Multiply the three numbers and compare the product with the labor line on the quote. If a bid claims $9,000 of labor on a 1,600 square foot walkable roof, the tables above put that job at 56 worker-hours. $9,000 ÷ 56 = $160.71 per worker-hour, which is 5.0 times the Boston median wage. That is well outside the 2x to 3x working range and should be explained, not defended.

Run it the other way too. If a bid comes in at $3,000 of labor on a 2,400 square foot roof, that is 84 worker-hours at $35.71 per worker-hour, or 1.1 times the median wage. Nobody covers workers’ comp for a roofing crew at 1.1x. That bid is either using a smaller crew than described, using workers paid well below the 25th percentile of $28.87, or the number is not real and will be corrected once work begins.

For general background on what the trade involves and what the entry requirements are, the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook page for roofers is the federal source.

What to check before signing

1. Reconcile the labor line. Crew size × days × 8 hours × billed rate. If the contractor’s own numbers do not produce their own total, ask why before you ask anything else.
2. Get the deck repair price in writing per sheet. With lumber up 10.1% by the PPI, an open-ended deck allowance is the line most likely to grow.
3. Confirm the crew is the contractor’s own or a named subcontractor. The wage data above describes employed roofers. Who is actually on your roof determines whose insurance covers a fall.
4. Ask for the workers’ compensation and liability certificates directly from the insurer, not as a photocopy. This is the largest single component of the burden multiplier and the easiest one to not actually carry.
5. Check whether the quote assumes one layer of tear-off. Confirm what happens, and at what price, if a second layer is found.
6. Pin down disposal. Whether the dumpster is included, who pulls the street permit if one is needed, and what happens if debris exceeds the container.
7. Compare bids on worker-hours, not on totals. Two totals that differ by $2,000 may be the same job at different overhead, or different jobs entirely. The hours tell you which.

Every figure on this page is arithmetic performed on published federal wage and price data. The burden multipliers, productivity rate and pitch factors are stated assumptions you can change. No quotes were collected and no roof was inspected.

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