Hourly rates
- Thread starter electricmanscott
- Start date
- Status
Tiger Electrical
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern Illinois
I'm the only employee of the company, but if I did hire some these are the numbers I'm looking at:
Prevailing wage for January 2008 in this County for an electrician with benefits is $59.69/hour. The production rate for residential electrical service is 50%. That brings the rate at cost to $119.38.
Dave
edited to add residential
Prevailing wage for January 2008 in this County for an electrician with benefits is $59.69/hour. The production rate for residential electrical service is 50%. That brings the rate at cost to $119.38.
Dave
edited to add residential
Last edited:
BryanMD
Senior Member
satcom said:
I think he's veering back to the sidework thread
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
emahler said:
Let's say I think my time is worth $50 an hour as a contractor because I'm good at what I do (forget the running a business part) and I've got 20 years of experiance. I hire a guy with 20 years of experiance because I need top help. Isn't his time worth $50 an hour too? Even though we're realisticaly only going to pay him, say $30 an hour.
If I need that to live comfortably then I would imagine he would too.
So if he can go out on a Saturday and make in one afternoon what I pay him all week, why wouldn't he.
Bryan: I kind of knew that's where it would head back too.
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
cowboyjwc said:
He's doing pretty good for himself, $1200 for the afternoon or $300 an hour.
How often do you think that happens? But it does sound like another one of those jobs that the real contractors wouldn't be interested in.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
growler said:
Well sure, and if he's driving down the costs by doing a service change for $900 then he should go ahead and charge $1500-$2000 for it and he's out of pocket, say, $500 in material.
Now of course he doesn't have one of these every Saturday, but how many does he need to do? A couple a month and he's making pretty good money.
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
cowboyjwc said:
Ok now you have him doing 24 services changes a year or making an extra $28,800.00 in side income. He is probably not going to stop after the first year so after 5 years he has done 120 service changes and has an extra income of $144,000.00
What do you think the odds are that over a five year period that at least one of the customers is not going to be completely satisfied. Just remember that these services changes were not exactly legal and he probably hasn't been paying taxes on this extra income.
He's not insured so how long do you think it would take to go through that 144K in damages or legal fees?
To do enough work to really make it work he needs to be legal and insured not to mention straight with the tax man.
If he ever has to go to court over anything it's not going to look good and the deeper they dig the worse it's going to look.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
growler said:
Now see, that's an entirerly different argument. We were talking about income, not right or wrong. You're right one job goes bad and everything he made and everything he'll make is gone.
Here the HO would have to pull the permit. It would have to be signed off by us, because the POCO will not reconnect without a release from our department. So the HO would have falsified a legal document and it should have passed inspection so I'm sure that it would start getting kind of cloudy about who is in trouble, but I will admit that I don't know the answer to that.
cowboyjwc said:
The Jersey Guys have been agressive at finding the side workers, and going so far as to call the police, and filing a complaint, when they find them doing work without license or premit, the DA's in every county of the state, have been schooled in the electrical board laws, and compliance with them.
I have seen them in action first hand, the police do respond, and they mean business, handcuffs ready, about time.
If the licensed EC's don't police the illegal work no one will. I give them credit for taking action. Their wifes must be pleased, when they have to be bailed out and pay stiff fines.
Last edited:
BryanMD
Senior Member
growler said:
No, you do.
The point was about the value of a competent man for his time in the field vs the time spent by the company owner in the field (doing comparable work).
For *most* EC's... the owner (read: the business) is either way over paying for his time or way under paying for the employee's time.
I made a point about this issue in the other thread as well.
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
cowboyjwc said:
That's how it would happen here to. The good old homeowner pulls the permit and there is an inspection.
First an inspection doesn't alway catch every little mistake, but for the moment let's assume that everthing is perfect. You don't have to be guilty of anything to be investigated.
Second, sure the homeowner falsified the document and would be in trouble and what's the first thing people do that are in trouble, they rat someone out.
I don't know what is considered an electrical contractor in California but I have read our state code. All you need to do is perform electrical work for money. There are no provisions for working under a homowner permit ( homeowner must perform the work ) You don't need to advertise, hand out buisness cards or even call yourself an electrician. The fact that you have entered into a conspiracy to commit a felony probably won't help all that much either ( falsified goverment documents is a felony offense).
By the way a conspiracy to commit a felony is normally a felony in it's self.
In case of death I'll bet it wouldn't go to good for the inspector if he had any knowlege of any of this. Just one little fire folks with one little childs burned body on the evening news and the whole house of cards crumbles.
I'm the first to admit that the odds are long on any of this happening but every so often the fickle finger of fate point at someone. You don't want to be there when it happens.
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
BryanMD said:
When the owner or self employed licensed journeyman or master is in the field they are billed at the same rate as whatever would be considered a competent man. I'm assuming they have similar skill levels.
The amount paid to the owner/company is not going to be the same that is paid to the employee because the employee is not paying any of the bills ( the company bills).
The only real way to calculate the value of this competent man is to see how much someone ( a company) is willing to pay him, if he's good he will get offers. The other option is for him to go into business and see how much he can make on his own.
The side work thing will only tell you that he can sell an illegal service to cusomers for a reduced rate. No one pays the same for a hot computer as the one they can buy off the shelf. There is no real point to it.
If anyone wants to break the law there is plenty of money to be made selling counterfit tee shirts and bootleg DVD's. There are all kinds of items that sell better under the counter.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
growler said:
In my post I said forget about paying the bills. I understand that part. If your time is worth $50 an hour then you may need to charge $100 an hour so that you can run your business.
This was never about right or wrong, it was about worth.
BryanMD said:
Thank you Bryan. That's exactly the point I was trying to make.
growler
Senior Member
- Location
- Atlanta,GA
cowboyjwc said:
If it's about worth then a man is worth whatever he is getting paid because he agreed to sell his services for that amount when he took the job.
Unless he is under contract any employee is free to try and renegotiate his pay at any time. His boss make not like this and may fire him but then he is free to sell said services to the highest bidder ( best job offer).
Just because and employee agreed to work work for $20 and hour doesn't mean that his boss is not free to sell those same services for whatever amount that he can get. If he sells 2 hours of that service for a $1000 then it's none of the employee's concern because he already sold that time to the employeer for a set price. That doesn't mean that said employee is now worth $500 an hour. If the boss doesn't make a nickel on him during that two hour period you don't really think the employee is going to say sorry you didn't make any money today boss so I won't expect to be paid.
An empolyee can't even say that the guy across the street is making $30 an hour so I should be getting $30 an hour because if he could get that $30 an hour he would have to be an idiot to stay where he is and work for less money.
If I sell you a gold coin for $500 and you turn around and sell it for $5000 have I been cheated in some way? The real value of the coin was knowing where to get the best price for it. Or maybe the coin is not "worth" very much at all and you just had the good fortune to find a sucker.
Neither materials nor labor have a set value, the are worth whatever someone is willing to pay.
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
Once more. The response I was addressing was "how do we determine our worth?"
I've negotiated four union contracts for the General Unit Employees of the city. We know what we think our worth is and we know what they think our worth is and we hope to meet somewhere in the middle. I get a truck, that truck may cost me a dollar an hour. I get insurance and again maybe another dollar or more. More benefits, less dollars in the pocket. Nothing in life is free. In-N-Out burger pays $8-$10 per hour McDonalds pays minimum wage, notice any difference in the quality of employee?
Someone once asked me, don't you want to get paid what you're worth? and I said h*** no, I'd starve to death on that. :grin:
I've negotiated four union contracts for the General Unit Employees of the city. We know what we think our worth is and we know what they think our worth is and we hope to meet somewhere in the middle. I get a truck, that truck may cost me a dollar an hour. I get insurance and again maybe another dollar or more. More benefits, less dollars in the pocket. Nothing in life is free. In-N-Out burger pays $8-$10 per hour McDonalds pays minimum wage, notice any difference in the quality of employee?
Someone once asked me, don't you want to get paid what you're worth? and I said h*** no, I'd starve to death on that. :grin:
cowboyjwc said:
for a company in the trades, your payroll (including burden) should be 40% or less of gross income...
once you start getting above that level, your gross margin becomes too small to cover your materials and overhead.
that being said, if you pay someone $50/hr total package...they better generate $1000/day to cover everything...if they only generate $4000/week, you're beat...and they are only worth $40/hr total package...
funny part is, in my experience, when a guy works for someone else, he thinks he's worth $50+ an hour....then he goes out on his own (as a full fledged contractor) and bills out his time at $60/hr...effectively paying himself minimum wage at the end of the year
- Location
- Simi Valley, CA
Well what I really figure is, the chances of me winning this argument is about the same as you doing a side job.:grin:
peter d
Senior Member
- Location
- New England
cowboyjwc said:
There sure is a difference in the quality of the food, I know that much!
- Status