How Much Does a Bricklayer Make? UK Pay and Day Rates

Two bricklayers on the same site can end the week £400 apart. But why? How much does a bricklayer make in reality? An employed brickie earns roughly £25,000 to £45,000 a year, going by the figures the National Careers Service publishes for the trade. The industry craft rate currently sits at £16.40 an hour on a 39-hour week. Self-employed bricklayers on price work beat that on a dry day and lose badly to it in a week of rain.

Skill is only part of it. Most of that gap comes down to the way a job pays out. A British building site has four different ways of doing it.

All four are below, with the industry pay scale, the price work sums and what comes off a self-employed wage.

How Much Does a Bricklayer Make in the UK?

Employed bricklayers earn between £25,000 and £45,000 a year, while self-employed brickies charge roughly £240 to £320 a day for exactly the same work. The average bricklayer salary sits nearer the middle of that once you strip out London. A bricklayer annual salary on its own tells you almost nothing about what any given week will pay you.

Four things decide the number. You get paid by the hour, by the day, by the thousand bricks, or by the square metre of wall. Bricklayer salary UK figures mix all four together. No two guides you read will ever agree with each other.

What Is the Hourly Rate for an Employed Bricklayer?

You get about £19 to £22 an hour on site as an employed bricklayer, which is more than the agreed industry minimum and less than what a self-employed brickie charges. Bricklayer wages per hour barely move between firms.

1. On the books: £19 to £22 an hour, with holiday pay and sick pay behind it.
2. Off the books: the same money, minus everything that protects you when the work stops.

That hourly rate sits above the official industry minimum. Read on for why.

Which Pay Rate Does the Building Industry Set?

The Construction Industry Joint Council sets a floor rather than a going rate, which is why the numbers below sit under what most sites pay in practice. Its Working Rule Agreement puts qualified bricklayers on the craft rate. Everything under that covers people on the way there.

Bricklayer weekly pay in that last column assumes 39 hours. Most sites run longer.

What Does a Bricklayer Earn Starting Out?

Starting pay is the weak spot in this trade. A bricklayer starting salary lands around £25,000. Your first year on site rarely pays anything near the craft rate.

You mix, you carry, you clean joints. Most new starters sit on the general operative rate of £13.18 an hour until a gaffer finally decides to trust them on the line with a trowel.

The legal floor for anyone 21 and over is £12.71. That is how close the bottom of this trade runs to shop work.

What Does a Bricklaying Apprentice Get Paid?

Apprentice money starts low and climbs fast. The bricklayer apprentice wage under the industry agreement moves in three steps.

Year one: £8.29 an hour.

Then £8.80 an hour in year two.

Year three pays £10.27 until you finish your NVQ Level 2.

Age overrides all of that. Once you are past year one, a 19- or 20-year-old moves to £10.85 an hour and anyone 21 or over moves to £12.71.

How Much Does a Bricklayer Make With Experience?

Speed pays more than years do. Bricklayer salary by experience follows how many bricks you can lay well, rather than how long you have held a trowel.

1. First two years: the labouring rate, mixing and carrying.
2. Once a gaffer trusts you on the line: the craft rate of £16.40 an hour.
3. Five years in, quick and tidy: price work, where the money stops being an hourly figure.
4. Gang leader on a housebuilder site: the top of the trade for anyone still on the tools.

An experienced bricklayer salary of £45,000 is normal at the top end, per National Careers Service figures, though almost nobody reaches it inside five years. In our experience, the ones earning well past that are running a gang rather than laying alone.

What Is a Bricklayer Day Rate in the UK?

Day rate work pays £240 to £320 across most of the country. Bricklayer rates per day climb to £300 or £450 around the capital and the home counties, where demand outruns supply for most of the year.

The bricklayer day rate UK builders quote suits awkward jobs. Extensions, repairs and anything with bad access all slow you down enough that measuring output would punish you.

Most brickies charge a half-day minimum. Travel and setting up eat the morning either way.

How Does Getting Paid by the Thousand Work?

You get paid for what you lay, not for the hours you stand there. Price work runs at roughly £400 to £800 per thousand bricks in labour, which works out somewhere between 50p and 80p a brick.

A skilled bricklayer lays 400 to 600 a day on straight facing work. Take 500 bricks at 60p. That is £300 for the day.

Decorative bonds and heritage repair drop you to 250 or 350 a day. The rate per thousand has to climb to make that work worth taking. And the risk cuts both ways. A wet fortnight on price work pays you nothing.

What Do Self-Employed Bricklayers Earn?

How much do bricklayers earn in the UK self-employed? The honest answer is that nobody can give you one number.

Self-employed bricklayer earnings depend on whether the phone rings. A busy brickie on new build price work can invoice £60,000 or more across a year. The same person with three quiet months invoices half that.

Bricklayer contractor rates of £28 to £45 an hour look enormous next to £19 on the books, which is where most people stop reading and get the sums wrong. Those are not wages. They are turnover.

What Comes off a Self-Employed Bricklayer's Money?

Some of it goes before you see it. The rest never arrives at all.

Off every invoice:

1. CIS takes 20% at source if you have registered with HMRC, or 30% if you have not.
2. Van, fuel, tools and a mixer.
3. Public liability insurance, which no main contractor will let you on site without.

Never paid at all:

1. Holiday. Sick days. Bank holidays.
2. Pension money from anyone but you.
3. The days it rains and the weeks between contracts.

That gap between an invoice and a bank balance catches out nearly everyone who goes self-employed in their first year on the tools.

Does Location Change Bricklayer Pay?

London and the South East pay the most. They always have.

Bricklayer pay UK wide runs off the same national floor wherever you work, which means every regional difference sits in what local demand adds on top.

Up north: £240 a day is a good rate.

In London: £300 to £450 for identical work.

Rent follows the rate. A brickie earning £450 a day in Croydon ends up no better off than one earning £240 in Sunderland, once the housing comes out.

How Much Do Overtime and Away Work Add?

The same agreement that sets the craft rate also pays you for getting there. Every salary guide forgets that part.

1. Fare and travel allowances, paid by distance from the yard to the site.
2. Lodging money when a job sits too far away to drive home from.
3. Overtime rates once you pass the standard 39-hour week.

Summer weeks run long. Winter weeks run short. An away job with lodging can be worth more than a local one paying a pound an hour more on top of the basic rate.

Which Brickwork Pays More Than the Standard Rate?

You earn more the moment the work stops being repetitive. Heritage and conservation brickwork, curved walls, Flemish bond and chimney work all pay above the standard rate per thousand.

The reason is simple. All of it slows you down. The price has to rise or nobody would take it on.

Repointing sits in the same bracket. Old lime mortar work is fiddly, unpopular and short of people who can do it properly, which pushes the rate up on its own.

How Does Bricklaying Compare With Other Site Trades?

I would put bricklaying near the top of the trades you can learn quickly. Every craft trade sits on the same industry craft rate, which means the gaps you see on site come from demand rather than from the agreement itself.

1. Carpenters and plasterers: roughly level with brickwork.
2. Groundworkers: similar, with more mud.
3. Electricians and plumbers: higher, with longer training behind them.

Brickwork rewards output more than any of them. Price work pays for speed in a way an hourly trade never can.

What Do You Need Before Anyone Pays You Site Rates?

Domestic work asks for a van. Site work asks for paperwork.

1. A CSCS card. No card, no gate.
2. NVQ Level 2 as the standard qualification for the trade.
3. Level 3 on top if you want the advanced card and the heritage work.
4. Your own hand tools, levels and PPE.

A qualified bricklayer salary and an unqualified one can look the same on a domestic extension. On a site with a hoarding round it the card decides whether you get through the gate at all, whatever your years of experience say about you.

Is Bricklaying Worth the Money Long Term?

The money comes early and then flattens. A bricklayer wage UK-wide beats most office work at 22 and loses to it by 45, which is the trade-off nobody mentions at the college open day.

Government careers figures put the working week at 40 to 44 hours, outdoors, in whatever the weather does. Knees and shoulders take that for twenty years.

The bricklaying career UK route usually ends off the tools. Supervising, estimating and site inspection all pay better than laying by the time your back has had enough.

How Do You Push the Money up Fastest?

You move up by changing how you get paid, not by waiting for a rise.

Get the card and the NVQ first. Nothing else opens as many gates.

Then move off day rate onto price work, once you can lay 500 a day without the gaffer checking behind you every hour.

Join a gang rather than working alone. Four brickies on a housebuilder plot earn more each than one on a garden wall.

What we have found is that the ones who stall are the ones still charging by the hour at forty.

Final Thoughts

How much does a bricklayer make? Somewhere between £25,000 and a number that depends entirely on how fast you lay bricks and who you happen to lay them for.

Employed work hands you £19 to £22 an hour and covers your holidays. Price work gives you more on a dry week and nothing on a wet one.

Check one thing first. Ask whether it pays by hour, day, thousand or square metre. That decides your money more than your skill does.

Our free bricklaying training course covers the parts of the trade you cannot pick up from a trowel alone. Mortar mixes, lime repair work and how to price a job before you quote it. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Can Bricklayers Make 100k?

1. A few do, though almost none of them get anywhere near it by laying bricks all day themselves. That money comes from running a gang, subbing work out or building a firm. A brickie on the tools alone rarely clears half of it.

2. How Much Do UK Bricklayers Get Paid per Brick?

1. Roughly 50p to 80p a brick on price work, depending on the site, the brick and how straight the run is. Straight facing work pays at the lower end because you lay more of it. Decorative bonds pay more per brick and far less per day.

3. How Much Does a Bricklayer Charge to Lay 1000 Bricks?

1. Around £400 to £800 in labour, which is roughly two days of laying for one bricklayer working on his own. Adding the bricks, sand and cement pushes the supplied and laid figure well past that. Access and brick type move it either way.

4. Is Bricklaying a Dead-End Job?

1. No. Bricklayers move into supervising, estimating or running a site. A lot own their own firms by forty. The trowel works better as a starting point than as a whole career.

5. Is 40 Too Old to Become a Bricklayer?

1. No age bar exists on apprenticeships, college courses or the CSCS card you need for site work. The caveat is physical. Starting at 40 means your knees do the same twenty years in a shorter run. Most people who start late move off the tools sooner.

6. What Is the Hardest Job in Construction?

1. No official ranking exists. Ask ten people on a site and you will get ten different answers to that one. Groundwork, steel fixing and roofing come up more often than bricklaying, which punishes the hands and the back rather than putting you in danger.