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What should you charge for an hour of HVAC labor?

Start with one technician’s costs and realistic billable hours. This HVAC labor-rate calculator spreads annual costs across the hours you can actually sell.

One technician's gross hourly wage.

Include paid time that cannot be billed.

Use the same annual period for costs and hours.

Your allowance for payroll-related costs and benefits.

Allocate vehicle, office and other overhead once; exclude costs already above.

Average across all paid weeks, including vacation and quiet periods.

Margin after the costs included here; must be below 100%.

How the calculation works

Annual employment cost = hourly wage × paid hours per week × paid weeks × (1 + employment-cost percentage ÷ 100).

Break-even hourly rate = (annual employment cost + allocated annual overhead) ÷ annual billable hours.

Selling rate = break-even rate ÷ (1 − target margin ÷ 100).

A worked example

At $30/hour, 40 paid hours and 52 weeks, wages total $62,400. A 25% employment-cost allowance brings that to $78,000. Add $26,000 overhead and divide by 1,300 billable hours: $80/hour breaks even. A 20% margin gives a $100/hour selling rate.

Use technician-hours consistently

Two technicians working six hours represent twelve technician-hours. Apply the calculated rate to those twelve hours. Include overhead here only if you do not recover the same overhead elsewhere in the quote.

These are illustrative planning assumptions, not local market rates or a guarantee of profit. Materials, permits, tax and other job costs need separate review. The margin shown covers only the costs entered here.

Calculate markup and margin on the full job →Put labor hours in your price-book template →