A contractor bidding outside its home market has a labor rate it trusts for its own city and no payroll history in the new one. The estimator still has to put an hourly rate on every crew in the bid. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a starting point for that number, the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, known as OEWS.
OEWS reports employment and wages for about 830 occupations, for the nation, each state and each metro area. The latest set is the May 2025 estimates, which BLS released on May 15, 2026. This post shows how to scale a home-market rate to another metro with them, and where the method stops working.
What OEWS measures
BLS defines OEWS wages as straight-time gross pay, without premium pay. Base rates, piece rates, incentive pay and production bonuses count. Overtime pay, shift differentials, holiday and weekend premiums, and meal and lodging payments are left out.
That definition lines up with the base rate in an estimate. Payroll taxes, insurance and benefits go on top through the labor burden rate. Extended workweeks and travel get their own lines, covered in the posts on the overtime premium and per diem.
Each occupation and area gets a mean and five percentile wages. A percentile is a cutoff in the pay distribution: the 25th percentile is the rate that a quarter of workers earn less than, and the median is the 50th. This post uses the median because high earners raise the mean. Nationally, the May 2025 hourly mean for carpenters is $31.55 and the median is $29.12.
The wage gap between metros
The table below gives the May 2025 hourly medians for carpenters and electricians in five large metro areas. The “vs US” columns divide each metro median by the national median for that trade.
| Area | Carpenters median ($) | Carpenters vs US | Electricians median ($) | Electricians vs US |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 29.12 | 1.00 | 30.38 | 1.00 |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands TX | 23.88 | 0.82 | 28.45 | 0.94 |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell GA | 24.37 | 0.84 | 28.20 | 0.93 |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler AZ | 29.00 | 1.00 | 29.43 | 0.97 |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue WA | 36.74 | 1.26 | 48.93 | 1.61 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin IL-IN | 38.68 | 1.33 | 49.21 | 1.62 |
The ratios differ by trade within the same city. Houston carpenters sit at 0.82 of the national median and Houston electricians at 0.94. Chicago is at 1.33 for carpenters and 1.62 for electricians. A single city-wide labor factor applied to every trade would misprice at least one of them, so pull the ratio for each occupation in the bid.
A worked example
The figures below are an example. A Houston contractor pays its carpenters $26.00 an hour base and is bidding a Chicago interiors job that the schedule carries at 4,000 carpenter hours.
The quickest method scales the home rate by the ratio of the two metro medians:
- Divide the destination median by the home median. For carpenters that is $38.68 / $23.88, or about 1.62.
- Multiply your home rate by that ratio. $26.00 times 38.68 / 23.88 is $42.11 an hour.
- Multiply by the hours. 4,000 hours at $42.11 is $168,440 in base wages, $64,440 more than the same hours at the Houston rate.
The ratio assumes your crew sits at the same relative point in both pay distributions. The table below compares the two distributions for carpenters.
| Area | 25th percentile ($) | Median ($) | 75th percentile ($) | 25th to 75th spread ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands TX | 22.40 | 23.88 | 28.94 | 6.54 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin IL-IN | 28.26 | 38.68 | 54.79 | 26.53 |
The middle half of Houston carpenters earn within a $6.54 band. In Chicago the same band is $26.53 wide, from $28.26 to $54.79. A rate that sits a little above the median in Houston lands much further from the median in Chicago.
A second method keeps your crew’s position in the distribution. The $26.00 Houston rate sits $2.12 above the Houston median of $23.88, which is 42% of the $5.06 gap to the Houston 75th percentile. The same share of Chicago’s $16.11 gap between median and 75th percentile, added to the $38.68 median, gives $45.43. This step assumes wages rise in a straight line between the two percentiles. BLS publishes only the cutoffs, so the result is an estimate.
| Method | Carpenter rate ($ per hour) | Wages for 4000 hours ($) | Change from Houston ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houston rate as paid at home | 26.00 | $104,000 | $0 |
| Chicago by ratio of medians | 42.11 | $168,440 | $64,440 |
| Chicago by percentile position | 45.43 | $181,720 | $77,720 |
The two methods differ by $3.32 an hour, or $13,280 across the job. When the destination spread is that wide, take both numbers to the people who will staff the job. A local subcontractor’s quote or the local union scale sheet shows where in the Chicago distribution your crew is likely to be hired.
Limits of the data
BLS builds each May estimate from six survey panels collected over three years. The May 2025 figures pool panels from November 2022 through May 2025, and BLS adjusts the older wages to the May 2025 reference date with a model. A rate taken from these tables is a May 2025 rate. A bid for work in 2027 needs your own escalation on top.
BLS also says the survey is designed for comparing areas and industries at one point in time and does not encourage using it as a time series. A Houston to Chicago comparison within the May 2025 release fits that design. For the change in a metro’s wages from one year to the next, your own payroll records or local subcontractor quotes are the better guide.
OEWS is not a prevailing wage source. The FAQ says the program cannot make classification determinations for non-statistical purposes such as prevailing wages. Work under Davis-Bacon uses the wage determination in the contract, covered in the fringe benefit credit post.
The metro series used here are cross-industry estimates, which BLS labels as covering private employers and federal, state and local government. A carpenter on a hospital’s maintenance staff counts alongside a carpenter at a framing contractor. Nationally, BLS counted 369,310 construction and extraction workers in local government, excluding schools and hospitals, in May 2025. For the trend in how many construction jobs each metro is adding, AGC’s metro analysis is summarized in the September metro employment post.
How to start on your jobs
Take your current base rate for each trade you self-perform and look up where it falls in the OEWS distribution for your home metro. Record it as a position, such as “between the median and the 75th percentile,” and store it next to the rate in your estimating database.
On the next out-of-town bid, pull the same occupations for the destination metro through the BLS data tables or the BLS Public Data API, where each figure has its own series ID. Price each trade both ways, ratio and percentile position, and put the gap in front of whoever approves the labor rates before the bid goes out.