Union Labor Costs Hit $71/Hour Average in 2025 CLRC Report

The Construction Labor Research Council has published its annual Union Labor Costs in Construction report, covering compensation trends by region and craft for 2025. The headline number is $71.00 per hour in average total compensation for union craft workers. The report is a primary source document for estimators pricing union labor, especially on projects in markets where collective bargaining agreements set the floor on what subs are paying their crews.

Seventy-one dollars is the average. The number that matters is the one for your specific craft in your specific market, and those can run $15 to $25 above the national mean in high-cost metros. The mistake most estimators make is building labor burden off stale data, usually whatever the last project used, without checking whether the collective bargaining agreements in their market had a scheduled wage increase since that bid was priced. A 4% annual escalation on a $2 million labor line is $80,000. That is not a rounding error. Pull the CLRC numbers before you finalize any union sub bid comparisons this cycle.

Read the full story at AGC News.