Carpentry
No survey separates carpentry on its own, so this page shows Framing's figures as the nearest comparable trade, labelled as derived, and lists 5 mechanisms that cost carpentry contractors money and the step that fixes each.
No survey separates carpentry, and it isn't one of the 48 trades in the SPM reference. The figures on this page are Framing's, the nearest comparable trade that's in it, and every table and export labels them as derived. They describe a trade that works like this one, not carpentry itself. Use them to find the neighbourhood, then let your own job costing be the answer.
Carpentry by revenue band
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M | $25M–$50MModeled | $50M–$100MModeled | $100M–$500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M–$5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% | 8% | 8% | 12% |
| Gross margin | 18% | 19% | 20% | 22% | 23% | 25% | 27% | 22% |
| Net profit | 5% | 7% | 9% | 12% | 14% | 17% | 19% | 10% |
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 12% | 11% | 10% |
| Gross margin | 22% | 21.5% | 22.5% |
| Net profit | 10% | 10.5% | 12.5% |
Modeled extension of the survey curve, not reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. That applies to the 4 bands above $10M to $25M, and no CFOS target is published for them.
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA, Jones Maresca and SPM's own trade data, because those are the figures those sources report by trade and size. Net profit is calculated from them as gross margin minus overhead, so the three rows tie. That makes it an operating profit figure: what is left before interest, other income and expense, and the tax planning choices owners make, such as bonuses, depreciation methods and retirement contributions.
Surveys report net income before taxes after those items, so a reported net can run below the figure here. At the typical contractor the difference is small: CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. It grows with size. Against the separate measured net profit dataset, the calculated net runs 0.8 points higher at $1M to $5M, 2.2 points at $5M to $10M and 3.5 points at $10M to $25M, because the gross margin and overhead rows change faster with size than reported net profit does.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, and the calculated net there runs well above survey medians, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Run On CFOS. Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference: Carpentry. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/carpentry. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead come from figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish, and Run On CFOS derives net profit as gross margin minus overhead. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2025.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M extend the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is explained on the methodology page.
5 problems specific to carpentry
You won the job in March and the shop still hasn't cut a stick, because the shop drawings have not been stamped. 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 is 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 take 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 damaged, 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?
No survey reports carpentry on its own, so there's no figure of its own to give you. The nearest comparable trade in the reference is Framing, which runs 18% gross margin at $1M–$5M. That's the number this page shows, labelled as derived. Treat it as the neighbourhood, because carpentry can run above or below it.
Where do the figures on this page come from?
From Framing. In the surveys carpentry rolls into 238130 / 238350, which mixes it with several other trades, so the reference pairs it with the nearest trade it does measure. Gross margin and overhead are that trade's, and net profit is calculated as gross margin minus overhead, so the three tie out. Every table and every export says "Derived from the nearest comparable trade."
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 the shop drawings have not been stamped. 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 pointing to?
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 with 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, and CONTROL 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 behind these figures. More about the author.