How Much to Charge per Man Hour for Landscaping: Build the Rate From Wage to Profit

How much to charge per man hour for landscaping comes down to five numbers from your own books: the wage, the labor burden on top of it, the share of paid hours you can bill, overhead per billable hour, and the profit you need. In the illustrative example below, a hypothetical crew paid close to national median wages needs about $70 per billable man-hour, more than three times its average wage. That figure shows the method; it isn’t our rate or a rate we recommend.

That gap is why a rate copied from a competitor or a forum is risky. Your wages, insurance, season length and overhead are your own, so the rate has to be too.

Step 1: Start with real wages

Use your actual payroll. If you’re setting up a new crew or checking whether your pay is competitive, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 gives a reference point.

Area	Landscaping and groundskeeping workers (median)	First-line landscaping supervisors (median)
United States	$18.82	$28.09
Pennsylvania	$18.99	$26.66
Washington	$22.57	$34.58
Mississippi	$15.21	$22.66

Hardscape work overlaps the construction trades, which pay more nationally: BLS puts the median for construction laborers at $22.66 and for cement masons and concrete finishers at $27.41.

Blend the wage across the crew. The illustrative crew is hypothetical: a foreman at $28 and two crew members at $19, picked to sit close to the national medians above, not taken from any company’s payroll. ($28 + $19 + $19) ÷ 3 = $22.00 per paid man-hour.

If the crew runs over 40 hours in peak season, blend in overtime too. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires at least time and a half for hours over 40 in a workweek for covered employees, so a $19 worker on a 50-hour week averages (40 × $19 + 10 × $28.50) ÷ 50 = $20.90 an hour.

Step 2: Add the labor burden

Labor burden is everything you pay because of a payroll hour beyond the wage itself. Some of it is set by law; the rest depends on your state, your insurance carrier and the benefits you offer.

Burden item	Where the number comes from	Example rate
Social Security and Medicare	IRS: employer pays 6.2% plus 1.45%	7.65%
Federal unemployment (FUTA)	IRS: 0.6% after credit, first $7,000 per employee	Included below
State unemployment	Your state sets the rate and wage base	2.0% with FUTA (example)
Workers’ compensation	Your class code rate per $100 of payroll × e-mod	8.0% (example)
Paid holidays and time off	Your policy	4.0% (example)
Health or retirement contributions	Your plan, if any	Not in this example
Total burden		21.65%

IRS Topic 751 sets the employer share at 6.2% for Social Security, on wages up to $184,500 in 2026, and 1.45% for Medicare. FUTA under Topic 759 is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee’s wages, cut to 0.6% with the full state credit, so it tops out around $42 per employee a year unless your state has a credit reduction.

Workers’ comp depends on your class code, payroll and claims history. Pinnacol, a Colorado workers’ comp insurer, lays out the math: class rate × (payroll ÷ 100) × experience mod. A neutral mod is 1.00, so the example $8.00 per $100 equals 8% of wages. Get your actual class rate from your carrier or agent.

In the example: $22.00 × 1.2165 = $26.76 per paid man-hour.

For a sense of scale, BLS’s Employer Costs for Employee Compensation puts benefits at 30.0% of private-industry compensation in June 2026, about 43% on top of wages. A crew with few benefits lands well below that; a company paying health insurance and a retirement match moves toward it.

Step 3: Divide by the hours you can bill

Paid hours and billable hours are not the same. Shop time, loading, fueling, unbilled drive time, rain delays and callbacks all get paid and invoiced to nobody.

Divide the burdened cost by the share of paid hours that lands on an invoice. In the example, each person is paid 40 hours and bills 30, or 75%: $26.76 ÷ 0.75 = $35.68 per billable man-hour.

This step is easy to skip, and it moves the rate a lot. Raising the example crew from 75% to 85% billable drops its cost from $35.68 to $31.48 per billable hour, a $4.20 swing before overhead or profit.

Step 4: Add overhead per billable hour

Overhead is the cost of running the company that doesn’t belong to one job: the owner’s time spent estimating and selling, office pay, general liability and vehicle insurance, truck payments and fuel you don’t charge as equipment, the shop, software, phones, marketing and accounting.

Divide a year of overhead by a year of billable field man-hours. The example company, also hypothetical, has $180,000 of overhead and two three-person crews, six field employees billing about 1,250 hours each over the season, or 7,500 hours: $180,000 ÷ 7,500 = $24.00 per billable hour.

That brings the example to $35.68 + $24.00 = $59.68, the break-even rate. Charge less and every hour sold loses money.

Design and proposal time belongs here too when you don’t bill for it. Our article on whether to charge for landscape design covers recovering those hours, and landscape designer cost for contractors compares in-house drafting with outsourcing. Our white-label plans at $295 per area turn drafting into a fixed cost you can put on the job.

Step 5: Add profit

Profit is what’s left after every cost, including overhead, and it pays for trucks, slow months and growth. Set it as a margin on the price and divide, don’t multiply: $59.68 ÷ (1 − 0.15) = $70.21 per billable man-hour.

Multiplying by 1.15 would give $68.63 and only a 13% margin, because a markup on cost is not the same as a margin on price.

How much to charge per man hour: the full example

Step	Calculation	Running rate
Blended wage	($28 + $19 + $19) ÷ 3	$22.00
Labor burden, 21.65%	$22.00 × 1.2165	$26.76
Billable share, 75%	$26.76 ÷ 0.75	$35.68
Overhead	+ $24.00	$59.68
Profit, 15% margin	$59.68 ÷ 0.85	$70.21

Man-hours, crew-hours and equipment

The man-hour rate is per person on site. A three-person crew at the example rate is 3 × $70.21 = $210.63 per crew-hour, so a bid that counts crew-hours at a man-hour rate undercharges by two-thirds.

Keep machines, materials and dump fees out of the labor rate. Price them as their own lines, the way our paver patio estimating guide builds a takeoff, and use this rate only for the labor hours.

Mistakes that sink a man-hour rate

• Using the wage as the cost. The example’s $22 wage costs $35.68 per billable hour before overhead.
• Assuming every paid hour is billable. Use your measured billable share, not 100%.
• Leaving the owner’s pay out of overhead. If you don’t pay yourself through the rate, the rate is too low.
• Mixing up margin and markup. Divide by (1 − margin).
• One rate for every season. Recheck the math when wages, insurance or the crew count change.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good hourly rate for a landscaping crew?

There isn’t one number, because wages, insurance and overhead differ by company and state. Build it from your books. In the illustrative example, a hypothetical crew near national median wages needs about $70 per billable man-hour, or about $210 per crew-hour for three people; that shows the method, not a recommended rate.

What is labor burden in landscaping?

It’s the employer cost on top of wages: 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare, federal and state unemployment, workers’ comp, paid time off and any benefits. The example totals 21.65%; workers’ comp and benefits are the lines that differ most by state and company.

How do you calculate overhead per hour?

Divide a year of overhead by a year of billable field man-hours. In the example, $180,000 ÷ 7,500 billable hours = $24.00 per hour.

Should drive time be billable?

It’s paid time either way. If you don’t bill drive time to the client, it lowers your billable share, and the rate has to rise to cover it.

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and state); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026; IRS, Topic No. 751, Social Security and Medicare Withholding Rates; IRS, Topic No. 759, Form 940 Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax; U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Overtime Pay; Pinnacol Assurance, How Payroll Changes Impact Your Workers' Comp Insurance Cost

Written and reviewed by Thayne Muthler, owner of Muthler Landscaping & Construction (PA HIC #PA212584). How we check facts: editorial policy.