Calculator
Labourer day rate: what you pay, and what you have to charge
The record
- Benchmark wage
- £13.18 an hour
- Charged out at
- £21.35 an hour, £170.80 a day
- Agreement
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement, 20 July 2026
What the 35% is made of
What the wage does not show, and none of it is optional.
- Employer's National Insurance15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum3%
- CITB levy0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurancethe remainder
At 0% you are pricing a CIS subcontractor's labour - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
Working for yourself is a different sum and the tool knows it: 25% rather than 35%. Lower than an employer's 35% because there is no employer's National Insurance on your own labour - that 15% is the whole of the difference.
Where the wage comes from
Labourers are graded under the CIJC Working Rule Agreement at the general operative rate of £13.18 an hour, effective 20 July 2026. The same promulgation the cost-per-m2 cards price from - en-GB-rates.json holds it too, and the two must move together each July.
That is an agreement rate - the negotiated floor for a graded operative, not what the market pays. The market pays more, and how much more is the thing nobody publishes. It is what the figures contributed through this page are measuring.
What is a labourer paid an hour?
A general operative on the construction agreement is on £13.18 an hour from July 2026. Charged out with employment on-costs and a normal margin that is roughly £21.35 an hour, or about £171 for an eight-hour day - the cheapest person on any site in this hub, and the one whose absence costs the most.
Worth knowing: the wage sits close enough to the statutory minimum that the minimum can overtake it for some workers. Whichever is higher is the one that has to be paid, and that is a legal obligation rather than a negotiating position.
Why on-costs hurt more on a labourer than on a tradesman
Not proportionally - the percentages are the same - but the margin for error is much thinner. On a wage of £13.18 there is very little room between what the person costs and what the job can bear, so the difference between charging 35% on-costs and forgetting them entirely is the difference between a small profit and a loss on that person.
Employer’s National Insurance, holiday pay, pension and the industry levy are not deductions from the wage, they are additions to it. A labourer “on £13.18” costs the firm nearer £17.79 an hour before anyone has thought about overheads, and a firm that prices from the wage rather than the cost is losing roughly £4.60 an hour on every labourer, every hour.
Why does leaving the labourer out cost more than it saves?
The labourer is the first line struck out of a tight quote and it is almost always the wrong one to strike. A bricklaying gang is two trowels to one labourer because that is how many one labourer can supply; take the labourer away and the bricklayers mix their own muck, carry their own brick and lay considerably less.
You have removed the cheapest person on site and slowed down the two most expensive ones. The saving on paper is £171 a day; the cost in output is typically more, and it is invisible because it shows up as the job running long rather than as a line on a quote.
Questions people ask
What is the going rate for a labourer in construction?
The construction agreement sets the general operative rate at £13.18 an hour from July 2026. Charged out by a firm with employment on-costs of about 35% and a margin of about 20% that becomes roughly £21.35 an hour, or about £171 for an eight-hour day.
What does a labourer actually cost an employer?
About £17.79 an hour before any overhead or profit, against a wage of £13.18. The difference is employer's National Insurance, holiday pay, the auto-enrolment pension minimum, the industry levy and an allowance for sick pay and employer's liability insurance - all additions to the wage, not deductions from it.
Can I save money by not using a labourer?
Rarely. The standard gang ratio exists because one labourer supplies two tradesmen with materials and no more. Removing the cheapest person on site slows down the two dearest ones, and the lost output usually exceeds the saved wage - it just shows up as the job overrunning rather than as a line on the quote.
Pricing a job like these?
HubTrack is where small construction firms keep their compliance documents, their jobs and their evidence trail in one place - method statements and risk assessments prepared for you to check and sign off, and a record of who signed what and when. The same engine that reads the contract documents behind this page reads yours inside HubTrack.