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Trade Playbook
Framing is piece-rate, weather-exposed, and fast — the trade where being quick literally pays more. The questions: how piece rate actually works, residential production versus commercial, how to keep your body intact through it, and how to go from swinging on someone's crew to running your own with a builder who keeps you fed.
Where it starts
$18–22/hr
Labourer / helper
Where it tops out
Takes the spread
Crew owner / framing sub
Union route
UBC carpenters locals (ICI side)
Ontario figures for framing, from the first day on site to the top of the trade. Approximate, and worth checking against current collective agreement rates and job postings in your region.
| Stage | Pay | What is going on at this stage |
|---|---|---|
| Labourer / helper | $18–22/hr | Stocking, cutting, learning the sequence. |
| Framer (piece rate) | Fast crews earn well | Paid per square foot of floor area — speed is the paycheque. |
| Lead framer | More + crew responsibility | Reads plans, runs the crew, keeps the builder happy. |
| Crew owner / framing sub | Takes the spread | You bid the house and pay the crew piece rate — and you live on builder relationships. |
Two framers with the same ticket can be twenty dollars an hour apart because they picked different work.
Tract and custom homes at piece rate — pure speed, builder clients, outdoor and fast. The classic framing business.
Best for: Fast, strong workers who want the most direct path to their own crew.
Hourly, often union, bigger projects and steadier schedules — and easier on the wallet in a slow housing market.
Best for: People who want predictability over piece-rate swings.
Every figure above is what framers get paid. It is not what you charge once you run a framing business. Your rate has to carry the hours you are not on the tools, the truck, the tools themselves, WSIB, insurance, the quote you wrote and lost, and the holdback sitting in someone else's account for 60 days. Contractors who set their rate off their old hourly wage are the ones who work every weekend and still cannot say whether the year was profitable.
The step from paid by the hour to paid by the jobThe path up is lead framer → your own crew, usually by taking a builder relationship with you when you spin out. From there it's GC, site supervisor, or estimator. Framing is hard, fast, outdoor work, so the body clock matters — most framers move toward leading, owning a crew, or general contracting before the grind wins. A framing crew with a steady builder is a real, repeatable business.
Wage data, union rate sheets, and the places framers talk about money openly.
The rates above are the market. The live feed is the market this week: which builders and contractors just pulled a permit or won a contract in Ontario, what they are about to need, and who to call.
Carpenter Jobs in Ontario: Who Is Hiring Right NowAEC Stack handles incorporation, WSIB, insurance certificates, quoting, invoicing, and chasing the money, so a framing business runs like one with an office behind it.
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