"What should I pay my guys?" is the question every field service owner asks themselves at least three times a year. And every time, you Google it, find five different numbers, get more confused, and end up paying whatever feels right based on what you can afford.
Here's the problem: most pay scale advice you'll find online is built for corporate field service techs working for utility companies, not for owners running 3-15 person residential service businesses. The numbers don't translate. A national HVAC tech salary of $59,810 means almost nothing to a pressure washing owner trying to decide whether to pay $18 or $22 an hour.
This post is the actual breakdown. Real 2026 numbers, broken out by trade and experience level, with the context you actually need to make a pay decision. Then I'll talk about the bigger question — whether to pay hourly, per job, or some hybrid — because that decision matters more than the dollar amount.
What the data actually says (2026)
I pulled the most recent wage data from BLS, ZipRecruiter, PayScale, Glassdoor, and Indeed. Here's what's holding up across all of them as of early 2026.
National averages, by trade
- HVAC technician: $24-$29/hour average. Entry level around $24, mid-career $26-$29, senior $32-$37.
- Plumber: $26-$30/hour average. Entry level around $25, senior $35+.
- Electrician: $27-$34/hour average. Highest of the licensed trades.
- Pressure washing tech: $15-$22/hour average. Wide range. Most operators pay $16-$18 starting.
- Field service technician (general): $24-$26/hour average. Wide range from $18-$36.
- Landscape worker: $15-$18/hour average. Crew leads $20-$25.
- Junk removal helper: $14-$18/hour average. Drivers/leads $18-$24.
- Residential cleaner: $14-$18/hour average. Team leads $18-$22.
These are national averages. Your local market matters more than the national number. A pressure washing tech in Manhattan or San Francisco makes 30-50% more than the same tech in rural Florida or Texas.
The thing the data doesn't tell you
Every salary site lumps "entry-level" into one bucket. But entry-level field service workers split into two very different groups:
Group 1: Has done physical work before. Worked construction, restaurant kitchens, warehouse, landscaping. They show up. They handle heat. They don't quit when the job gets hard.
Group 2: Hasn't done physical work before. Coming from retail, fast food, gig work. Often quit within 30-60 days when reality hits.
The averages mix these two groups and report the median. But the right pay for Group 1 should be higher than the right pay for Group 2 — because they're worth more to you. They'll stick. They'll produce. They won't waste your training time.
Owners who pay everyone the same starting wage end up overpaying Group 2 (who quits anyway) and underpaying Group 1 (who leaves for the company down the street that pays $2 more).
If you're paying less than $16/hour for any field service work in 2026, you're not competing for talent. You're competing for whoever has no other options. That's not a recipe for a reliable crew.
The four pay structures (and which one fits your business)
The structure of pay matters as much as the amount. Same $40,000 a year delivered three different ways will produce wildly different behavior from your crew.
1. Hourly
Best for: Crews where the work is variable and you need bodies on jobs that take whatever time they take. New hires you're still evaluating. Companies in their first 1-2 years.
Pros: Simple. Predictable for the worker. Easy to scale up and down. Workers don't game the system by rushing.
Cons: No incentive to work efficiently. The slow guy and the fast guy make the same per hour. Top performers feel screwed because they generate 30% more output for the same paycheck.
How owners screw this up: Paying everyone the same hourly. Use tiered pay tied to performance. Your A players should make $4-$6/hour more than your C players, even at the same job title.
2. Per job (piece rate)
Best for: Standardized service businesses where the scope of work is predictable. Pressure washing on residential homes. Cleaning houses. Specific repair services.
Pros: Top performers love it because they earn more by working efficiently. Eliminates the "slow guys make the same money" problem. Self-selecting — workers who don't perform don't earn enough to stay.
Cons: Encourages cutting corners on quality. Workers may rush through jobs to grab the next one. Customers can suffer.
How owners screw this up: Paying piece rate without quality oversight. Solution: tie a portion of the per-job pay to "passes inspection" — if it gets called back, no completion bonus on that job.
3. Hourly + commission/bonus
Best for: Field service with upsell potential. HVAC. Plumbing. Anywhere a tech can sell add-ons or generate larger jobs.
Pros: Hourly base provides security. Commission rewards revenue generation. Worker has skin in the game without being entirely commission-dependent.
Cons: Tempts technicians to oversell — recommending repairs customers don't need. Damages customer relationships and your reputation.
How owners screw this up: Paying commission on revenue without measuring customer satisfaction. The fix: pay commission on revenue AND require positive customer feedback on the job. Bad reviews = no commission on that job.
4. Salary + bonus
Best for: Crew leads, foremen, key roles you want to retain long-term. Workers with 2+ years of strong performance.
Pros: Predictability and respect. Treats the worker like a professional, not a wage earner. Strong retention tool.
Cons: You're paying them on slow weeks. They might coast once they're salaried. You can't easily reduce hours when business slows.
How owners screw this up: Salarying someone who hasn't earned it. Save salary for proven A players. New hires never get salaried.
The pay structure that works for most field service businesses
If you're running a residential field service business with 3-15 employees, here's what I see working most often:
Tier 1: New hires (0-90 days)
Hourly only. Market rate for your trade and region. No bonuses. No commission. Why: you don't yet know if they're going to work out, and complex pay structures with someone who quits after 60 days create more accounting headaches than they're worth.
Tier 2: Established workers (90 days - 2 years)
Hourly + small performance bonus. The bonus is tied to specific outcomes: zero callbacks for the month, on-time arrival rate above 95%, customer reviews mentioning their name. Bonuses are typically $50-$300 per month, paid quarterly.
Why: you're rewarding the things you actually want, not just hours worked. The bonus is small enough that nobody games it, but visible enough that A players feel rewarded.
Tier 3: Crew leads (2+ years, proven performers)
Higher hourly + bigger bonus + small commission on certain types of work. Possibly small profit-sharing in good years.
Why: you want to keep this person. Their pay should reflect that you're treating them like a partner, not just an employee. The cost of replacing them is way higher than the cost of paying them well.
Raises: how to actually do them
Most owners give raises wrong. Here's the standard playbook that doesn't work:
- Worker has been there a year
- You feel guilty
- You give them a 3% raise
- They feel underwhelmed
- Cycle repeats
Here's what works better:
Tie raises to specific outcomes, not tenure.
Don't give automatic annual raises. Give raises when someone hits a measurable milestone: their callback rate stays under X%, they cross a revenue threshold, they take on lead responsibilities. Tell them what the bar is in advance. Hit the bar = raise. Don't hit the bar = no raise.
This sounds harsh. It isn't. It's transparent. Workers actually prefer this to "I'll think about it" because they know what they're working toward.
When you give a raise, give a meaningful one.
3% raises are insulting to top performers. They communicate "I noticed you exist, but barely." A meaningful raise is 8-12% for a strong performer hitting their numbers, with explanation: "You earned this because of X, Y, and Z."
Pay top performers preemptively.
Don't wait for them to ask. By the time they ask, they've already mentally checked out and started looking. Bump them BEFORE they ask. Tell them why. They'll stay longer than you expect.
I wrote a longer post about why your best employees leave and how to catch it before they quit — read it here if this part hits home.
What about benefits?
Quick reality check. For most small field service businesses (under 50 employees), full health insurance is too expensive to offer. That's fine. The market knows it. Most field service workers under $25/hour aren't expecting employer health insurance.
What they ARE expecting:
- Paid time off. At least 5 days after 90 days. 10 days after a year. This is table stakes now.
- Reliable schedule. They want to know what their week looks like by Sunday night. Owners who change schedules at 6 AM lose workers.
- Overtime paid correctly. If you're not paying time-and-a-half for 40+ hours, you're breaking federal law and you'll eventually get caught.
- Equipment and supplies provided. Don't make workers buy their own gloves or pay for company-branded shirts.
- Truck and gas covered if they're driving. Workers driving their own vehicles need either mileage reimbursement or a vehicle allowance.
Cheap benefits that punch way above their weight: paid birthdays off, $50 gift card on their work anniversary, lunch on Fridays during peak season. These cost almost nothing and create real loyalty.
The bottom line
What's fair pay in 2026 isn't a single number. It's the answer to three questions:
- What does my local market actually pay for this skill set? (Use ZipRecruiter or Indeed for your specific city.)
- Am I paying my best people enough that they don't have a financial reason to leave?
- Am I paying my worst people so much that I'm losing money keeping them?
The right answer for most owners isn't paying everyone more. It's paying differentiated. Your top 20% should make 25-40% more than your bottom 20% in the same role. If they don't, your top 20% are getting recruited away by someone who'll pay them what they're worth.
Pay isn't the only retention tool — but underpaying your best people is the fastest way to lose them. The good news is you can probably afford to bump your top performers without bumping anyone else, because the productivity gap between A and C players is usually big enough to fund the gap.
The owners who get pay right aren't the ones who pay the most. They're the ones who pay the most differentiated — and who measure performance well enough to know who deserves what.