Carpentry
No survey breaks carpentry out on its own, so there's no margin figure to publish and this page doesn't invent one. What it has is 5 mechanisms that cost carpentry contractors money, and the step that fixes each.
CFMA reports at NAICS level, and carpentry rolls into 238130 / 238350 along with several other trades. It isn't in the 48-trade master reference either. Every figure on this site traces to one of those two sources, so publishing a margin for carpentry would mean making it up. The nearest published context is the interiors and finishes group, which runs 18% to 22% gross margin and 5% to 8% net profit at $1M–$5M.
5 problems specific to carpentry
You won the job in March and the shop still hasn't cut a stick, because nobody has stamped the shop drawings. You priced the frame off January lumber and bought it in June, and the subcontract had no escalation language in it. Retention from framing you did two winters ago is still out there because that job hasn't closed. The subcontract prices carpentry as one mobilization and you make four: frame, blocking and backing, trim, and the corrections after the walkthrough.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a carpentry problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| The cabinet clock doesn't start until someone signs | A plumber's long lead item sits in a catalog with a part number and a published lead time you can read before you bid. Yours doesn't exist yet. It gets drawn by your shop, reviewed by an architect who has no deadline written into your contract, and only then does anything get cut, which means the biggest schedule risk on the job is a signature you can't chase with a purchase order. | Project management |
| You bought January lumber and you hold the June move | Most trades carry commodity risk on a supporting line, where a bad quarter on copper or fasteners stings and moves on. For a framer the commodity is the job. When your dominant material line is the one commodity most likely to swing between January and June, a hard bid with no escalation language is a position and not a price. | Estimating system |
| Money earned in month two comes back in month eighteen | Most trades touch a job once and leave, so their retention ages from one window on the schedule. Yours ages from two windows, and the older half is the half you spent the most payroll on, because framing is labor heavy and it happened before most of the other trades were even on site. You're financing your earliest and most labor-loaded work for the entire life of the building. | Software and bookkeeping alignment |
| You make four trips and the subcontract pays for one | Every trade behind you hangs its work on a piece of wood you nailed in place before drywall went up, which makes carpentry the only scope that builds the infrastructure for other people's work and then gets held responsible for their layout. The electrician doesn't install backing for the plumber. You install it for all of them, you come back to fix what they broke, and the subcontract calls all of that one number. | Job cost structure |
| Heat comes on in October and the miters open | Paint and tile either fail at install or they hold. Wood keeps a clock running after you leave the site, and that clock is set by the thermostat and the weather, not by how well your guys cut. Carpentry is the only interior finish where doing everything right on the day can still generate a defect list in January. | Standards and accountability |
Other interiors and finishes trades
What owners ask
What gross margin should a carpentry contractor run?
Carpentry isn't broken out in any published benchmark, so there's no honest figure to give you. CFMA reports at NAICS level and this trade rolls into 238130 / 238350, which mixes it with several others. The interiors and finishes trades that are published run 18% to 22% gross margin at $1M–$5M, and that band is the closest context available.
Why does this page have no benchmark table?
Because publishing a number nobody surveyed would be inventing it. Every figure on this site traces to CFMA or to the 48-trade master reference, and carpentry is in neither. The mechanisms below are what this trade loses money on, and those don't depend on a survey.
What costs a carpentry contractor the most money?
The cabinet clock doesn't start until someone signs. You won the job in March and the shop still hasn't cut a stick, because nobody has stamped the shop drawings. The fabrication clock starts at approval, and the architect owns that date. That's one of 5 on this page, and 1 of the 5 resolve to step 06, project management.
Which steps does carpentry keep landing on?
step 06 project management on 1 of them, step 04 estimating system on 1 of them, step 05 software and bookkeeping alignment on 1 of them, step 01 job cost structure on 1 of them, step 08 standards and accountability on 1 of them. That distribution is the install order for this trade, because the step carrying the most mechanisms is the one holding the most money.
What should a carpentry contractor use instead?
Work the mechanisms on this page first, since they're specific and actionable. For a rough sense of the economics, read the interiors and finishes group, which is the nearest published context. Your own job costing beats any industry average once step 01 is installed.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for carpentry contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system these figures sit inside. More about the author.