Job Placement · Skilled Trades & Mfg · Foreman / Team Lead
First-line supervisors of construction trades numbered 812,210 in May 2025 at a national median of $79,920, but metro medians run from $71,480 in Tucson to $129,700 in San Jose, a gap a single national benchmark cannot price. BEG recruits foremen and team leads against the local market and the apprentice ratio, safety and crew-authority duties the seat actually carries, on Tier III milestone billing, $12,864 to $15,437.
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TL;DR
First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers, the crew foreman or team lead seat, numbered 812,210 nationally in May 2025 at a $79,920 median, with metro medians running from $71,480 in Tucson to $129,700 in San Jose. Typical entry is a high school diploma plus 5 years or more of related experience, and the seat carries a specific legal duty most job descriptions skip: staffing the crew to the apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio a registered apprenticeship program requires. BEG recruits against the local metro number and the actual crew-authority duties on Tier III milestone billing, $12,864 to $15,437.
A National Median Misprices This Seat
Because the metro spread for this occupation is nearly $60,000 wide, and a requisition benchmarked to the national median instead of the local one is either overpaying or filtering out every qualified local candidate.
What The Search Establishes
Four conditions, and the pay band is the one most searches get wrong first, before the authority questions even come up.
| Condition | Where it comes from | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|
| Pay set to the local metro, not the national figure | Metro medians span $71,480 to $129,700, a gap the $79,920 national median hides entirely. | A requisition written to the national number overpays in Tucson and cannot compete in San Jose or Chicago. |
| A written apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio the foreman staffs to | Required under 29 CFR 29.5(b)(7) for supervision, training, safety and continuity, subject to any collective bargaining agreement. | No documented ratio exists, so crew composition is improvised and safety and training suffer first. |
| Real crew authority, not a working-journeyman title | The seat owns daily assignments, safety talks and production count on one site, reporting to a superintendent or production manager. | The firm wants a working foreman who still pulls wire or runs a lathe at journeyman wage while expecting supervisor-level output. |
| Recognition that this experience is a real credential | In California, CSLB counts foreman time toward the 4 years of journey-level experience needed for a contractor license exam. | A candidate’s foreman years get treated as generic tenure instead of the credential-bearing experience they are. |
Manufacturing’s equivalent shift supervisor seat, a different BLS occupation with its own pay and duty profile, is covered on the production supervisor page. For the tier this role hires from, see skilled tradesperson, or the skilled trades placement service page.
OSHA 30 And The NCCER Foreman Credential
OSHA states the Outreach Training Program is voluntary, but the 30-hour course is specifically built for workers who already carry some safety responsibility, a fair description of a foreman running daily talks on a crew. NCCER's Construction Foreman Certification Program, built with more than 50 subject matter experts, sits above the journey-level craft certifications a foreman's own crew may hold, and is worth screening for on top of, not instead of, tenure.
Milestone Billing Before Metro Adjustment
At the $79,920 national median, a 20 percent contingency fee runs $15,984 and a 25 percent fee runs $19,980. BEG's Tier III range of $12,864 to $15,437 is 80 to 97 percent of the 20 percent figure, cheaper at the low end and close to par at the top, and that comparison only gets more favorable to BEG in a lower-median metro like Dallas, Houston or Tucson.
Covering The Crew
Three ways this seat gets filled, and they answer different questions about who is accountable for the apprentice ratio and the safety talks.
| Model | Who employs the foreman | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Construction staffing agency | The staffing agency | Hourly or day rate including markup, for the run of the job | One project, a hard end date, and no follow-on work to move a supervisor to afterward. |
| Promote from within the crew | You, already | No placement fee, but the strongest journeyman is pulled off the tools | You already have a journeyman ready for crew authority and can absorb the productivity loss of moving them. |
| BEG permanent placement | You | Tier III milestone fee of $12,864 to $15,437, fixed before sourcing | You need outside supervisory experience, priced to your specific metro, without pulling a producer off the tools. |
Construction staffing firms can put an experienced supervisor on site faster than a permanent search, a real advantage against a hard start date. BEG is not a staffing agency and does not describe itself as one. We place a permanent foreman your company employs, at a fee fixed before sourcing, with a 45 day replacement guarantee and 50% off a repeat search for the same seat. For the seat this role reports up to, see plant operations manager.
FAQ
On BEG’s active searches, 23 to 35 days on average from discovery call to placed hire, with an 86 percent fill rate. Most of that time goes into confirming crew authority and metro pay, not waiting on applications.
The crew’s daily assignments, apprentice ratio, safety talks and production count on one site, reporting to a superintendent or production manager, without the hire-and-budget authority of a plant or operations manager one tier up.
BLS counted 812,210 first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers in May 2025, a mean of $86,450, a median of $79,920, and a range from $53,280 at the 10th percentile to $128,260 at the 90th.
BLS projects 5 percent growth, adding 46,100 jobs to a 2025 base of 913,300 by 2035. Typical entry is a high school diploma plus 5 years or more of experience in a related occupation, with no additional formal on-the-job training required.
Substantially. Metro medians for this occupation run from $129,700 in San Jose and $111,260 in Chicago down to $76,230 in Dallas, $76,020 in Houston and $71,480 in Tucson, a national benchmark alone will misprice this seat by tens of thousands of dollars depending on market.
In California, yes. CSLB counts foreman time toward the 4 years of journey-level experience needed to sit for a contractor license exam, and defines a foreman as someone with journeyman knowledge who directly supervises physical construction.
A registered apprenticeship program must state a numeric ratio of apprentices to journeyworkers for proper supervision, training, safety and continuity of employment, subject to any collective bargaining agreement, and the foreman is who staffs a crew to that ratio every day.
Not federally. OSHA states the Outreach Training Program is voluntary, but the 30-hour course is specifically intended for workers with some safety responsibility, which is a fair description of a foreman who runs daily safety talks on a crew.
Yes. NCCER’s Construction Foreman Certification Program was built with more than 50 subject matter experts, a management-level credential distinct from the journey-level craft certifications a foreman’s own crew might hold.
On average, yes. Construction and extraction occupations, which include this seat, paid union members a median of $1,561 a week against $1,004 nonunion in 2025, with 16.4 percent of the group unionized. A foreman moving between a union and an open shop contractor is moving between pay structures, not just employers.
A Tier III search at $12,864 to $15,437. At the $79,920 median, that range is 80 to 97 percent of a 20 percent contingency fee, cheaper at the low end and close to par at the top, before metro adjustment is even applied.
No. A staffing agency employs the foreman and bills you a rate for the length of the assignment. BEG places a permanent foreman your company employs directly, on a fixed milestone fee with a 45 day replacement guarantee and 50% off a repeat search for the same seat.
Building the supervisory bench? See production supervisor, skilled tradesperson and plant operations manager, or all skilled trades placement.
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