Ask what a plumber earns and there are three right answers, none of which is the other two.
Hudson Contract, which records what construction firms pay self employed trades, has plumbing at £1,221 a week.
The ONS pay survey puts an employed plumber at £738 a week before tax.
Neither of those is what you charge.
A customer pays £270 for a day of plumbing on this site's own benchmark, which is a price rather than a wage.
This page prints all three.
Every page that answers this question picks one of those three and rarely says which one it picked.
The three things a trade wage can mean
All three are real, and they measure different people doing different things.
Reading one as another is how a plumber ends up comparing pay with a price.
So each column below names its own register.
Employee pay
Office for National Statistics
What an employer pays a worker on its own payroll, before tax.
Nobody self employed is in it.
Subcontractor pay
Hudson Contract
What a construction firm pays a self employed trade it has taken on.
It is payroll data rather than a survey, drawn from the payments Hudson Contract processes on behalf of construction firms across England and Wales.
Day rate
The Day Rate Report
What a customer pays for a day of that trade, before materials.
It carries tools, travel, insurance, quoting time and every day nobody books.
The employee pay figures are data from the ASHE Table 14 register, ASHE 2025 provisional, released 23 October 2025 under the Open Government Licence v3.0; the payroll figures come from Hudson Contract Construction Pay Trends, three year average, July 2023 to June 2026.
What each of the 17 trades earns
Employee pay published by the Office for National Statistics, subcontractor pay published by Hudson Contract, and the price of a day published here, on one row per trade.
Read the scope column first, because it says whose figure the payroll number is.
Nothing in this table is our arithmetic except the daily figure, which is Hudson's own week over five days.
Everything else is printed as its register prints it.
| Trade | ONS employee pay | Hudson a week | Whose figure that is | Day rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Painter and decorator | £33,400 a yearSOC 5323 | £1,021 | ALL trades averaged, not this one | £200 |
| Carpenter and joiner | £33,400 a yearSOC 5316 | £1,104 | Hudson's own joinery series | £240 |
| Groundworker | £718 a weekSOC 9121 | £1,021 | ALL trades averaged, not this one | £213 |
| Drainage Engineer | £589 to £831 a week | £1,021 | ALL trades averaged, not this one | £225 |
| Decorative Plasterer | £34,016 a yearSOC 5321 | £919 | plastering, the nearest trade Hudson publishes | £225 |
| Cladding Installer | £698 a weekSOC 5319 | £928 | steel and timber frame erection, the nearest trade Hudson publishes | £175 |
| Suspended Ceiling Installer | £625 a weekSOC 8159 | £919 | plastering, the nearest trade Hudson publishes | £175 |
| Plumber | £738 a weekSOC 5315 | £1,221 | Hudson's own plumbing series | £270 |
| Electrician | £777 a weekSOC 5241 | £1,211 | Hudson's own electrical series | £280 |
| Plasterer | £34,016 a yearSOC 5321 | £919 | Hudson's own plastering series | £230 |
| Tiler | no tiler figure | £1,021 | ALL trades averaged, not this one | £229 |
| Roofer | no roofer figureSOC 5313 | £841 | Hudson's own roofing series | £239 |
| General Builder | no builder figure | £1,042 | Hudson's own general construction series | £253 |
| Bricklayer | no bricklayer figureSOC 5312 | £961 | Hudson's own bricklaying series | £260 |
| General Labourer | no labourer figure | £1,021 | ALL trades averaged, not this one | £140 |
| Gas and Heating Engineer | £738 a weekSOC 5315 | £1,221 | plumbing, the nearest trade Hudson publishes | £259 |
| Handyman | £625 a weekSOC 8159 | £1,021 | ALL trades averaged, not this one | £188 |
Your next step
You have what the job pays an employee, so the next step is what to charge when you work for yourself.
The Rate Sorted calculator prices a day on your own costs and the take home you want, instead of on a national average.
Starter and experienced pay, trade by trade
The National Careers Service prints a starter and an experienced salary for 10 of the 17 trades, each read from that trade's own job profile on 3 October 2026.
Both are employee salaries before tax.
The other 7 have no profile with a salary.
None borrows a neighbour's figure.
| Trade | Starter | Experienced | Profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Painter and decorator | £21,000 | £32,000 | Painter and decorator |
| Carpenter and joiner | £24,000 | £40,000 | Carpenter |
| Plumber | £24,000 | £46,000 | Plumber |
| Electrician | £26,000 | £45,000 | Electrician |
| Plasterer | £21,000 | £38,000 | Plasterer |
| Tiler | £21,000 | £38,000 | Tiler |
| Roofer | £26,000 | £42,000 | Roofer |
| Bricklayer | £25,000 | £45,000 | Bricklayer |
| General Labourer | £23,000 | £35,000 | Construction labourer |
| Gas and Heating Engineer | £25,000 | £45,000 | Gas service technician |
Electricians by JIB grade
The JIB sets employed hourly rates, transport provided, from 5 January 2026, in its Industrial Determination 2026 to 2028 of June 2025.
| Grade | Rate |
|---|---|
| Technician | £22.70 an hour |
| Approved Electrician | £20.08 an hour |
| Electrician | £18.38 an hour |
| Apprentice, stage 4 | £14.03 an hour |
| Apprentice, stage 1 | £8.16 an hour |
Whose figure is in the cell
Hudson Contract publishes a pay series for 7 of the 17 trades on this page and no series at all for the others.
Where it has none, the honest answer is to print its whole industry average and label it, which is what the table does.
The alternative is a guess.
According to Hudson Contract, it does not track those trades.
This site published an all trades average as a trade's own pay twice before a scope field was added to stop it.
7 rows are the trade itself
Hudson names the series after the trade and publishes it on its own.
Plumbing, electrical and plastering are three of them, and those are the figures worth quoting.
6 rows are the whole industry
Hudson publishes nothing for decorator, groundworker, drainage engineer, tiler, general labourer and handyman.
Those cells carry £1,021 a week, which is every construction trade averaged together and is not any one of them.
4 row is a different trade entirely
Hudson runs no heating or gas series.
The gas and heating engineer row therefore shows plumbing, named as plumbing, and a reader should treat it as the neighbour it is.
The ONS survey has bigger holes than the payroll data
Its gaps are structural rather than accidental.
It publishes a median for 12 of the 17 trades and none for the other 5.
Here is why, trade by trade.
- ONS runs no tiler code at all, filing the trade inside the general construction groups SOC 5319 and SOC 5321.
- ONS counts roofers, roof tilers and slaters as one occupation under SOC 5313 and publishes no separate roofer median.
- ONS spreads general building work across several construction codes, so no single builder median exists to quote.
- ONS counts bricklayers together with masons under SOC 5312 and publishes no bricklayer median on its own.
- ONS files general labourers inside its elementary construction codes, which cover far more jobs than labouring.
How to read a trade pay figure, in three steps
- 01Ask who is being countedAccording to the Office for National Statistics, its survey covers employees on a payroll, so it counts nobody who works for themselves.
- 02Check whose trade the figure isHudson Contract publishes a named series for 7 of these trades, and for the rest the number in the cell is its whole industry average.
- 03Do not read a day rate as payA day rate is a price, and its running costs come off it before anybody is paid.
Read the scope, not just the number
Employee pay, subcontractor pay and a day rate are three different measurements of three different things, and this page never adds them together or treats one as a version of another.
Where the work is changes the wage too
The trade figures above are national, and pay for the same job is not the same across the country.
The register below is data from the ONS regional table, and it is the same one every town rate on this site is modelled from.
London leads it by a distance.
It covers all employees rather than trades alone, so read it as the ground a trade wage sits on rather than as a trade figure.
The order rarely surprises anyone.
| Region | Median weekly pay |
|---|---|
| London | £958.20 |
| South East | £775.80 |
| Scotland | £773.80 |
| East of England | £766.60 |
| North West | £734.20 |
| West Midlands | £730.40 |
| South West | £728.70 |
| Yorkshire | £708.20 |
| Wales | £704.30 |
| East Midlands | £703.80 |
| North East | £681.20 |
London to North East is £277 a week on the same register, which is the gap every town rate on this site is built to reflect.
Read from the ASHE Table 15 register, ASHE 2025 provisional.
The rates those figures drive are on the town pages.
What this page will not tell you
Two questions readers arrive with that no figure here answers.
Both stay unanswered on purpose.
None of this is take home pay
ONS publishes gross earnings and Hudson publishes what a firm paid out.
Tax has not been taken off either.
What a plumber keeps after tools, van, insurance, unbooked days and tax is a different number.
Nobody publishes that number.
This site holds no sourced UK figure for those costs, so it will not model one, and it carries no tax content at all.
A gap is not a profit
The distance between £244 of plumbing payroll and a £270 day rate is not what anybody pockets.
It is what a charge out price has to cover before anyone is paid at all.
Some of it is spent before the van starts.
How much of it survives that is the figure nobody publishes, and inventing it here would be the one thing this site never does.
Hudson's own dearest and cheapest published trades on this page are plumber at £1,221 a week and roofer at £841, a spread of £380 between two trades whose day rates are only £31 apart.
The rows carrying somebody else's figure are decorator, groundworker, drainage engineer, decorative plasterer, cladding installer, suspended ceiling installer, tiler, general labourer, gas and heating engineer and handyman, and each one says so in its own cell.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much do plumbers earn in the UK?
Three registers answer that and they do not agree, because they are counting three different things.
All three are correct.
Hudson Contract, which records what construction firms pay self employed trades, has plumbing at £1,221 a week, about £244 a day.
According to the ONS pay survey, employed plumbers and heating installers are on £738 a week gross.
This site's own benchmark for what a customer pays a plumber for a day is £270, and that has to cover tools, travel, insurance and the days nobody books.
Why is the Hudson figure higher than the ONS one?
They count different people.
ONS surveys employees on a payroll, and Hudson records payments made to self employed subcontractors, who carry their own costs out of it.
A subcontractor being paid more per week than an employee is not the same as a subcontractor keeping more.
Costs come out of that figure first.
Neither figure is take home pay and this page never presents either one as though it were.
That figure is not published anywhere.
Which trades has nobody published a proper figure for?
Hudson publishes a series for 7 of the 17 trades here and not for the rest.
Where it publishes none, the cell carries Hudson's whole industry average and says so in the cell, and it is never dressed up as that trade's own pay.
The ONS survey is missing more: it publishes a median for 12 of the 17, because tiler, roofer, general builder, bricklayer and general labourer all sit inside grouped occupation codes with no trade of their own.
Is a day rate just a wage divided up?
No, and treating it as one is the mistake this page exists to stop.
A wage is pay and a day rate is a price.
A wage is paid for the days somebody works, and a day rate has to pay for the days they do not, along with tools, travel, insurance and the quoting.
That is why the £270 charged for a day of plumbing work sits above the £244 a day Hudson records plumbers being paid.
Take the earnings table
Every row carries the scope of its own payroll figure, so a table reproduced from here cannot accidentally turn an industry average into a plumber's pay, and that is the one thing we ask a citer to keep.
The earnings card carries the headline payroll figure, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/trade-wages/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/what-tradespeople-earn.png" alt="What UK tradespeople earn, ONS pay and construction payroll beside day rates, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The earnings comparison on this page is free to reproduce, scope labels included, and a credit with a link back is all we ask, under CC BY 4.0.