Design & Construction Industry Compensation Survey

What are construction and design companies paying their teams, and what benefits are they offering?

HELM's 2026 Design & Construction Industry Compensation Survey is designed to provide useful, real-world benchmarks for wages, salaries and benefits across the design and construction industry.

Before you begin

The survey includes common positions across the design and construction industry. For each position, we'll first ask whether that role exists in your company. If not, you'll automatically move on to the next position.

To complete the survey, it will be helpful to have access to your company's:

• Current wage and salary information

• 2025 annual revenue and projected 2026 revenue

• Employee/FTE information

• Benefits information

Positions we ask about include:

• Production Manager

• Project Manager

• Lead Carpenter / Foreman / Site Lead

• Carpenter

• Apprentice Carpenter or Laborer

• President / CEO / General Manager

• Salesperson;

• Estimator

• Bookkeeper

• Office Manager

• Architect

• Designer

If you have more than one employee in the same position, enter the lowest and highest compensation for that role. If you have one person in the position, enter the same compensation for both the low and high.

If your company has multiple locations, you may complete the survey separately for each location or use the state where you do the majority of your work.

Don't sweat the details. Do your best to give us an accurate picture of your company's current compensation and benefits.

Individual and company responses are confidential - we only share aggregated, de-identified data.

Timeline

The survey will be open until until December 11th. We will publish the results in January 2027.

Pizza!

Provide your email and you will receive an early copy of the results and an entry into our pizza party drawing - pizza for your team, on HELM.

Help us reach 100+

Know another builder, remodeler, design-build firm, specialty contractor, architect or designer who should be represented? Please share the survey.

Every additional company makes the benchmark stronger. Thank You!