Occupation / job
Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other pays a median $42,670 against $50,020 across all occupations — $3.53 an hour of difference. At that distance the deciding variable is where you do it, not how long you have done it.
At 24,770 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.
Helper roles are the paid entrance to a trade. They suit people who will trade a low starting rate for time on a site next to someone who already knows how the work is done.
How long it takes to become one of the 24,770 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other earn under $37,030 and a quarter over $48,880: 1.3x, and $11,850 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
The 25th percentile is $37,030 — $17.80 an hour, and $12,990 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if you need the entry rate to be liveable immediately — the helper year is deliberately the cheap one.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 24,770 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $37,030 and $48,880 is the whole of the negotiation.
The middle half of this field earns between $37,030 and $48,880. That is $11,850 of range, with $42,670 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $48,880. Reaching it from the $42,670 midpoint is $6,210 a year; reaching it from the $37,030 that the bottom quarter of Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other earn is $11,850.
$5,640 down to $37,030, $6,210 up to $48,880: the midpoint of Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $20.51 at the midpoint for Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other, $17.80 at the 25th percentile and $23.50 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $42,670 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $42,670 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else