Hiring and Keeping Roofing Crews

The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median annual wage for roofers at $50,970 in its May 2024 wage data, with the lowest tenth under $37,060 and the highest tenth above $80,780, across roughly 166,700 jobs, and projects employment growing about 6% from 2024 to 2034. Those figures update annually — check the current release at bls.gov before quoting them.

More useful than the number is what it does not capture. It reflects wage and salary employment, so it says nothing about what a subcontracted crew earns per square and nothing about unreported cash work. It is a national figure in an industry with enormous regional variation. And it is an annual figure in seasonal work, blending people who worked twelve months with people who worked eight.

General job boards produce the least qualified applicant flow of any channel in this trade, which is why so many owners conclude nobody wants to work. The channels that produce crew are relational.

• ●Your existing crew. Roofers know roofers. A referral bonus paid in two parts — some at hire, the rest after ninety days — is the most effective recruiting tool most small roofing companies have.
• ●Supply houses and adjacent trades. Branch staff know who is short of work and who just left which company. So do siding and framing crews.
• ●Language. A very large share of the US roofing workforce is Spanish-speaking. Job posts, safety training and toolbox talks in Spanish are not an accommodation, they are access to the labor pool — and safety instruction a worker does not fully understand is not safety instruction.
• ●People from adjacent physical work. Landscape crews, movers, demolition. Attitude, reliability and comfort with heights are what you screen for; trade skills can be taught. Where a local trade school or apprenticeship program exists, being the contractor who shows up is disproportionately valuable.

And write the job post honestly. Pay range, typical week, seasonality, and whether there is a path to foreman — that filters out the people who leave in three weeks, which is what you want from a job ad.

Whether a crew is engaged as employees or as independent contractors gets treated as a cost decision. It is not one. It is a legal determination made by outside authorities against multi-factor tests, and different authorities can decide it differently about the same person.

The IRS applies a common-law analysis grouped into three categories of evidence: behavioral control (does the business direct what is done and how), financial control (who supplies tools, how the worker is paid, whether they can realise a profit or loss, whether they have other clients), and type of relationship (written agreements, benefits, permanence, whether the work is a key part of the business). The IRS states explicitly that no set number of factors and no single factor decides it — the whole relationship is weighed. Where genuinely uncertain, either party can request a determination on Form SS-8, which the agency notes can take at least six months.

That is only one of the tests that applies. The federal wage-and-hour standard is a different analysis and has been rewritten more than once in recent years. States apply their own tests for unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation, several materially stricter — including versions of the ABC test, under which a worker is presumed an employee unless every prong is satisfied — and some apply construction-specific classification statutes that are stricter again.

Whatever structure you choose, the practices that separate companies people stay at are unglamorous: paying the same day every week without exception, being clear before the day starts about what happens if it rains, and paying for travel to distant jobs. Crews talk.

Roofing is among the more dangerous occupations in the country and falls are the dominant hazard. OSHA’s construction fall protection requirements (29 CFR 1926, Subpart M) generally require fall protection in residential construction at six feet above a lower level, and fall protection has sat at or near the top of OSHA’s most-cited standards for years. Confirm current requirements with OSHA or your state agency — state plans can be stricter.

• ●Make the harness the default, not the exception. Anchors, lifelines and lanyards on the truck, checked, under a rule that applies to the owner too. Crews copy what the boss does, not what the boss says.
• ●Short, frequent toolbox talks in the language the crew speaks, with a sign-in sheet. Ten minutes at the truck beats an annual classroom session nobody remembers. And treat heat as a hazard: a dark roof in July runs far hotter than ambient, and water, shade breaks and an early start are productivity measures as much as safety ones.
• ●Teach the details that generate callbacks. A crew walked through kickout flashing and nailing zones once saves you a callback a season. Manufacturer certification programs add structured training and usually enhanced system warranties.

Turnover in roofing is expensive in a way that never shows up on a P&L: a crew that loses one experienced member slows down, makes more mistakes, and the foreman supervises instead of producing. Experienced roofers report leaving for the same handful of reasons — unpredictable hours, being sent home unpaid, disorganised sites where the material is not there, being blamed for problems created by bad estimating or scheduling, and no path beyond swinging a hammer at forty-five. The remedies are operational rather than financial.

• ●Schedule far enough ahead that people know their week, and communicate changes the night before.
• ●Have the material and the dumpster on site before the crew is. A morning lost to a delivery is a morning the crew is not earning — on piece rate, money out of their pocket for your mistake.
• ●Build a visible ladder — helper to installer to lead to foreman — with the pay step and skills required at each stage written down.
• ●Provide the equipment. Making crews supply their own guns, compressors and harnesses is a false economy that muddies the classification analysis as well.