Siding and Fence Pricing: Two Trades, One Rate Discipline

There is no siding wage, and one fence wage

Start honest. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes no occupation called siding installer. It does publish fence erectors, at a median of $47,980 a year and $23.07 an hour, and it publishes the two trades the rest of your crew is made of.

Carpenters cover the skilled half: layout, trim, corners, gates, and every cut that shows, at $29.12 an hour. Construction laborers cover tear-off, carry, digging, and cleanup at $22.66. The spread between the two is $13,460 a year.

Crew mix is the real rate

A tear-off and re-side is laborer heavy on day one and carpenter heavy on day four. Quote both at the same rate and you overcharge the demo, undercharge the trim, and look expensive where clients compare.

Demand is moving faster on the cheaper half too. BLS projects construction laborers and helpers to grow 7 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than average, against 4 percent for carpenters.

The billable hour is never the wage you pay

Payroll taxes, workers comp, liability, the truck, staging, saws, and dust gear ride on the hours you bill. So does drive time and the free walk-through.

Exterior work also buries unbillable hours inside billable ones. Ladders, staging, and chasing weather happen before a course goes up. BLS notes this work is often physically demanding and may require being outdoors in all weather conditions. Quote the siding, eat the setup, and the loaded hour is fiction. That gap is labor burden.

SimplyWise Cost Estimator turns a photo into an itemized, branded estimate in about 6 seconds. It breaks out material, labor, and fee lines.

Fiber cement puts you under the silica rule

OSHA lists handheld power saws for cutting fiber-cement board, with a blade of 8 inches or less, as a named task on Table 1 of the construction silica standard.

Table 1 sets the terms. For that task performed outdoors only, you use a saw with a commercially available dust collection system, run per the manufacturer instructions, and the dust collector must deliver the air flow the tool manufacturer recommends or greater, with a filter of 99 percent or greater efficiency. Implement that fully and properly and you are considered in compliance on respirator selection.

Step off Table 1 and the exposure numbers take over: no employee above 50 micrograms per cubic meter as an 8 hour average, with an action level of 25. Two things you owe either way. A written exposure control plan, and a competent person inspecting job sites. Anyone required to wear a respirator 30 or more days a year gets medical surveillance at no cost.

Fence pricing lives below grade

The pickets are easy to price, and competitors price them the same way, per linear foot. The holes are where the day goes, and nobody quotes them honestly.

Rock, roots, slope, and access decide how many posts you set before lunch. That is laborer time on the wage line above, and it is the biggest variance in a fence bid.

So give digging its own unit. Price post setting per hole rather than folding it into the linear foot, and state a rock allowance. Put gates on their own line too: a gate is carpenter work and should carry the carpenter rate.

Put the invisible work on its own line

Tear-off and disposal, weather barrier and flashing, trim and corners, access and staging, post setting, and the magnet sweep are where the hours go.

So state each one. That is how siding and fence pricing recovers your overhead instead of burying it.

Build your siding and fence pricing in this order

1. Split the crew before the hours

   Load a carpenter rate and a laborer rate separately. Then assign hours to whichever one actually does the work.

2. Price the dust plan on fiber cement

   The dust collecting saw, filters, written plan, and inspection time are real cost on every fiber cement elevation.

3. Give the ground its own unit

   Post holes price per hole with a stated rock allowance. Never let a linear foot number carry unknown digging.

4. Apply margin last

   Margin goes on after labor, material, access, and disposal are on the page. Applied earlier it hides a cost you forgot.

Keep reading

• Cost to Install Siding
• Fence Cost Calculator
• Hardscape Pricing Guide