Roofing Careers

Roofer Salary in 2026: What the BLS Data Actually Shows

Published August 2026  ·  10 min read

The median roofer in the United States earns $55,440 a year — $26.65 per hour worked. That is the lowest median of the four major building trades, below plumbers at $63,800, electricians at $63,190, and HVAC technicians at $61,010. But the median is the least interesting number here: the top 10% clear $81,720, and the gap between the best- and worst-paying states is $34,220 — a wider relative spread than any other trade in this data.

Every figure here comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025, released in 2026, for SOC code 47-2181 — roofers. We pulled it from the BLS API directly rather than repeating secondary sources, which are unusually wrong on this occupation. Want to run your own numbers? Use the roofer salary calculator for state and experience level, or compare all four trades side by side.

The National Numbers

Across 135,490 roofers employed nationally:

• Median annual wage: $55,440 ($26.65/hr)
• Mean annual wage: $58,140 ($27.95/hr)
• 10th percentile: $37,460 ($18.01/hr) — helpers and first-season labourers
• 25th percentile: $46,260 — installers still building speed
• 75th percentile: $65,390 — senior installers, crew leads
• 90th percentile: $81,720 ($39.29/hr) — commercial and industrial roofers, foremen, union markets

The mean sits above the median, which tells you the distribution is pulled upward by a well-paid minority rather than being evenly spread. In practice that minority is commercial roofing, prevailing-wage work, and supervision. Note also that these are wage figures for employed roofers — they exclude owner-operators, whose income is business profit rather than a wage and does not appear in this survey at all.

Why Roofing Pays Less Than the Other Trades

The $8,360 gap between roofers and plumbers at the median is not about difficulty or risk — roofing has one of the highest injury rates in construction. It comes down to three structural facts:

• Licensing restricts supply everywhere except roofing. Plumbing and electrical work require individual state licenses gated behind multi-year apprenticeships. Most states require a contractor license to run a roofing business but no journeyman license to install — so the labour pool is far easier to enter. See how contractor licensing works by state.
• Weather caps annual hours. An hourly rate only becomes an annual salary if you work the hours. Rain days, heat, and winter shutdowns in northern markets remove weeks that a service plumber never loses.
• Residential shingle work is priced by the square. It is the largest segment, the most competitive, and the most transparent to homeowners — which compresses what any contractor can pay and still win bids.

The useful consequence: the trades converge at the top. At the 90th percentile roofing reaches $81,720 against $108,420 for plumbers — a much narrower gap than at the median. Roofing pays badly for generic labour and competitively for specialisation.

Roofer Salary by State

24 of 51 states and the District of Columbia pay above the national median. The top of the table:

Illinois leads at $77,900, with New Jersey ($76,600) and Minnesota ($74,490) behind it. At the bottom, Oklahoma pays $43,680 — a $34,220 spread.

The striking pattern is that volume and pay run in opposite directions. Florida employs the most roofers in the country at 23,550, but its median is $47,590 — well below the national figure. California is second on headcount at 21,190 and does pay above median at $63,600. The high-paying states are cold-climate, heavily unionised markets with a larger commercial share and a compressed season. If you are picking a market on pay rather than volume, that is the signal to follow.

Where the Ceiling Is Highest

Median pay tells you what a typical roofer earns; the ratio between a state's 90th percentile and its median tells you how much room there is to climb. The widest ceilings:

• Oklahoma: median $43,680, 90th percentile $81,720 — 1.87× the median
• Louisiana: median $48,760, 90th percentile $84,590 — 1.73× the median
• Kansas: median $47,190, 90th percentile $81,540 — 1.73× the median
• Washington: median $60,640, 90th percentile $104,000 — 1.72× the median

A high ratio usually means a two-tier market: a large low-paid residential segment alongside a smaller commercial or industrial one paying far more. For an installer, those states reward moving into the commercial side more than almost anywhere else. For a contractor hiring in them, the median is a misleading benchmark — your competition for experienced crews is the upper tier, not the middle.

Pay by Specialty and Role

BLS does not break SOC 47-2181 down by specialty, so the figures below are SubcontractorHub estimates from contractor pay data, expressed as a premium over the state median. They are estimates, not BLS statistics.

• Residential shingle installer: at or slightly below the state median
• Commercial low-slope (TPO, EPDM, modified bitumen): roughly 20–35% above
• Metal roofing installer: roughly 15–25% above — a smaller trained pool, and metal systems keep taking residential share
• Crew lead / foreman: roughly 25–40% above
• Estimator / project manager: often above the 90th percentile; this is where the trade's real earnings ceiling sits
• Service and repair specialist: 10–20% above, and far less seasonal than replacement work

What Roofing Contractors Should Actually Pay

If you are setting crew pay rather than earning it, three things in this data matter:

• Benchmark to your state's 75th percentile, not the national median. Nationally that is $65,390 against a $55,440 median — about an 18% premium to sit in the upper quartile. In a Illinois-style market the national median is not even a serious offer.
• Cost the wage, not the rate. Payroll taxes, workers' comp — brutal in roofing — insurance, and vehicles typically add 25–40% on top. The labor burden calculator gives you the loaded number to bid from, and the roofing labor cost calculator converts it to a per-square figure.
• Billable days beat hourly rate for retention. An installer losing three weeks a year to scheduling chaos and rework is taking a real pay cut regardless of the posted rate. That is an operations problem, and it is cheaper to fix than a raise.

Roofing also has the shortest ramp of the four trades — a helper can reach productive installer pay in one to two seasons rather than the four to five years an apprenticeship takes elsewhere. That is a genuine recruiting advantage when you are competing with electrical and plumbing for the same young workers, and it is worth saying out loud in a job ad.

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