Average Wage for Bricklayer: How Much Do They Earn?

£32,480 sounds simple. But bricklayer pay in the UK is not that simple. The Average Wage for Bricklayer is around £32,480 a year before tax, or about £16 per hour on a 39-hour week. However, this figure mainly covers employed bricklayers. Self-employed brickies sit outside this average and may charge around £240 to £320 a day. Rates can also rise in London. So, your real pay depends on how you work, where you live and how much experience you have.

So, let’s dive into this guide and break down the real bricklayer pay figures across the UK. 

What Is the Average Wage for Bricklayer?

Around £32,480 a year before tax. That number comes from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which the Office for National Statistics runs every April. No other official measure of pay in this trade exists.

The average bricklayer salary UK wide counts one group only, which is anybody employed full time and sitting in the same job for at least twelve months.

ONS surveys in April and publishes in the autumn. The newest figure you can find always describes last spring.

Which Average Are You Being Shown?

Three different sums answer to the word average. Pages swap between them without saying which one they mean.

1. The median. Line every bricklayer up by pay and take the one in the middle. Around £32,480.
2. The mean. Add every wage together and divide. One brickie on £150,000 drags this up for everybody.
3. The typed-in figure. Glassdoor puts bricklayer salary UK earnings at £36,143, taken from 167 people who filled in their own number.

Median is the honest one. A mean built from numbers people type in themselves shows you whoever shouted loudest.

One site lists this trade at £29,952. Another says £183,956. That belongs to the top one in ten who filled in a form. Nobody checked whether they told the truth.

Who Does the Official Figure Leave Out?

Everybody who works for themselves. That survey draws its numbers from PAYE payroll records. Its own notes say self-employed people fall outside the count entirely, which removes a large slice of this trade before anybody starts adding up.

A large share of this trade works under the Construction Industry Scheme, invoicing rather than clocking in.

So bricklayer wage UK figures from ONS describe the employed half of this trade accurately. About the other half they say nothing whatever. Both halves are real bricklayers. ONS counts one of them.

Keep that in mind every time a page calls its number official. The word covers a narrower group than it sounds like it does.

How Many Hours Sit Behind That Number?

More than an office year. ONS counts anyone on over 30 paid hours as full time, which sweeps up 37 hour weeks and 48 hour weeks into one figure.

Site work: 39 hours under the industry agreement, often 45 or more once overtime lands.

Office work: 37 hours, with the same £32,480 buying you back six weeks of evenings.

Two people on identical annual pay can be earning wildly different hourly money. The annual figure hides that completely.

What Is That per Hour and per Week?

Divide £32,480 by 52.143 weeks and you get £623. Bricklayer weekly pay of £623 across a 39 hour week works out at £15.97 an hour, though ONS never publishes the hours behind its own number.

The bricklayer hourly rate UK-wide reads higher on job adverts. Sites pay above the agreed minimum. An advert quotes what that one job pays, never what the whole trade averages out at across a year.

Bricklayer wages per hour on new-build work run nearer £19 to £22.

Both numbers are true. One is what the trade averages, the other is what a job advert offers.

Does the Average Wage for a Bricklayer Change by Region?

Heavily. ONS puts the regional spread for this trade between about £24,404 and £39,171. That is a gap of nearly £15,000 for the same work on the same materials.

Geography beats grade. Two brickies with the same card and the same speed can sit £15,000 apart on nothing but a postcode. Bricklayer pay UK-wide follows housebuilding demand rather than any national scale, with rent in the busy regions climbing to meet it. Croydon money does not stretch like Sunderland money.

What Does an Employed Brickie Take Home?

That figure loses about a quarter before it reaches you.

1. Start with £32,480, the trade median.
2. Income tax bites on everything above the personal allowance.
3. National Insurance takes its slice on the same threshold.
4. A workplace pension contribution comes off if the firm runs one.

That leaves somewhere near £2,100 a month in hand, which is why a qualified bricklayer salary on the books rarely feels like the figure in the job advert.

Where Does an Apprentice Start?

Well below all of it. A bricklayer apprentice wage starts at £8.29 an hour under the construction agreement. Age rules override that for anyone out of their teens.

Nineteen or twenty past the first year lifts you to £10.85. Twenty-one and over lifts you to £12.71.

A bricklayer starting salary once you are through training lands nearer £25,000, which still sits a long way under the trade average.

Nobody gets the average in year one. Four or five years pass first.

Which Years Move the Money Most?

Years three to ten do the heavy lifting. Bricklayer salary by experience climbs fast once you can lay clean and quick, then flattens harder than most people going into the trade expect.

1. Apprenticeship, years one to three: under every figure on this page.
2. Newly qualified, years three to five: the craft rate of £16.40 an hour.
3. Confident and quick, years five to ten: price work, where the bricks you lay in a day decide the money.
4. Beyond ten years: gang leader, supervisor or your own firm, or the same rate for another decade.

An experienced bricklayer salary above the median almost always means one of those last three routes. Another decade on the same wall does almost nothing.

What Do Self-Employed Brickies Bill per Day?

Between £240 and £320 outside London. Inside it, £300 to £450 a day. Bricklayer contractor rates are prices charged to a customer. Tools, van, fuel, insurance and dead days all come out of them.

Those rates look enormous next to £623 a week. Twenty billed days at £280 come to £5,600 in a single month. That is exactly where a brickie talks himself into the wrong number.

No self employed bricklayer earnings reach that across twelve months. Weather, gaps between contracts and unpaid holidays take a third of the working calendar before tax touches a penny.

A bricklayer day rate UK-wide is a price you charge somebody. The wage is whatever survives once the year has taken its cut.

Is the Average Going Up?

Yes, though the trade figure is harder to follow than the national one. ONS reported pay across all full-time workers in Britain climbing 4.3% in the year to April 2025, from £37,439 to £39,039.

That covers every job in the country. Not this trade.

The industry agreement is the part you can track. Unions and employers renegotiate the craft rate each year. It currently sits at £16.40 an hour for a qualified bricklayer.

In our experience the rise that shows up on a payslip and the rise you feel are two different things entirely.

Do Bricklayers Out-Earn Other Trades?

Not on the official numbers. Those numbers cannot settle it cleanly anyway.

ONS puts plumbers in the same box as heating engineers. One code covers both trades. No plumber-only median exists in government data. Any site quoting one has guessed at it.

One comparison does hold. UK median pay for full-time employees sits at £39,039 a year, against roughly £32,480 for bricklayers.

That puts the trade about £6,500 below the national middle, which means bricklaying jobs UK-wide pay less than the average job in Britain.

Which Number Should You Use?

Depends on what you are deciding. One trade throws up four honest answers to the same question. The right one hangs on what you plan to do next.

Weighing up a bricklaying career UK-wide against another trade? Use £32,480, the only figure worked out the same way for every occupation in the country.

Taking a job on the books? Ignore averages altogether. Ask two things instead, the hourly rate and the number of hours in the week.

Going self-employed? Forget all of it. Count the days you can put an invoice against. That is the only sum that ends up in your bank.

Final Thoughts

The average wage for bricklayer is £32,480 a year. That number covers employed brickies on the books, nobody else. Self-employed money sits outside it altogether.

The trade pays about £6,500 under the UK median for full-time work. A day rate that looks better than either of those costs more than it appears to.

Ask any figure two questions before you trust it. Who did it count. Did anybody check the answer before that page went up, or did they take the first number they found.

Our free bricklaying training course costs nothing from start to finish. Mixes, lime work and how to price a job before you hand over a quote

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How Much Should I Pay a Bricklayer per Day?

1. Between £240 and £320 across most of the country, rising to somewhere between £300 and £450 once you are working inside London. Ask for the price per thousand bricks as well. That is how brickies quote work among themselves rather than by the day.

2. Can Bricklayers Make 100k a Year?

1. Some manage it, though not with a trowel in their hand. Six figures in this trade means running gangs, subbing work out or owning the firm.

3. Is Bricklaying a Dead-End Job?

1. The tools have a ceiling. Hitting it is what pushes most brickies to look further. Supervising, estimating and running your own outfit all sit above it.

4. How Much Do Bricklayers Earn in the UK per Hour?

1. The trade median comes to roughly £16 an hour on a standard site week. Site jobs advertise nearer £19 to £22. An advert quotes the going rate rather than the middle of a whole trade.

5. Do Bricklayers Make More Than Plumbers?

1. Nobody can answer that from official data. The government puts plumbers and heating engineers in the same box. Their pay ends up in one pile before anyone sees a number.

6. How Hard Is Bricklaying?

1. Hard on the body and steady on the brain. Cold, kneeling and lifting fill the day. Getting fast enough to earn properly on price work takes years rather than months of practice.