Davis-Bacon rates in 2026: what moved, what stood still, and what looks wrong

Comparing the January 2025 and January 2026 publications of the same sheets, union rates whose agreement code stayed the same rose a median $3.06 an hour in total package, or 4.7%, across 8,446 distinct rate changes. About a third of the raise (32.1%) went to fringe rather than the basic rate. Across every kind of rate that changed between the two Januaries, about 31 lines went up for each one that went down (9,442 against 303).

Median union raise by trade

Median union raise by state

States with at least 30 changed union lines. Washington’s raises ran more than 3 times Idaho’s.

Not every rate comes from a union agreement. Across all current sheets, 49.7% of rate lines come from a Department of Labor wage survey, 38.5% from union agreements, and 10.8% from state-adopted rates. Survey rates stay put until the Department runs a new survey: between January 2025 and January 2026, 81 of 23,145 survey lines changed, against 56.2% of union lines.

Survey rate lines by the year of their survey

72% of survey lines rest on a survey from before 2016, and 1,367 sheets cite one from 2010 or earlier. The oldest still in use is SUID1979-001, dated March 1, 1979, on the residential sheet ID20260005 for Bannock, Bear Lake, Caribou, Franklin, Oneida and Power counties, Idaho (residential). It lists a laborer at $7.25 and a plumber at $9.86 an hour.

Every rate page on this site now shows the year each rate dates from beside it, so a stale survey is visible at a glance.

2,637 of 4,233 sheets (62%) list at least one basic rate under $13.65 an hour, and almost all of those lines (18,932 of 19,094) are survey rates. 1,312 lines on 289 sheets sit at exactly $7.25 with no fringe. Every Vermont residential county sheet lists an electrician at $7.25 and $0.00 (for example VT20260015, Windsor County, from a 1990 survey).

The sheets themselves carry a notice that contracts covered by Executive Order 13658 must pay at least $13.65 an hour through December 31, 2026. Where that order covers a contract, it lifts the floor above many listed rates. Every January 2025 sheet also carried a notice for Executive Order 14026 ($17.75 in 2025); no 2026 sheet does.

The gap between the two kinds of rate is wide. On building sheets, the median electrician’s total package is $61.09 where the rate comes from a union agreement and $27.04 where it comes from a survey. 55.0% of survey lines carry no fringe at all, against 0.1% of union lines. Within California alone, an electrician is $139.30 an hour in San Francisco (CA20260018) and $20.17 in Amador County (CA20260023).

Setting aside the May 18 reissue (below), 879 sheets (20.8%) received 1,103 modifications this year that changed rates, most of them in January. Most sheets that changed did so once; CA20260018 changed 7 times.

Rate-changing modifications by month, 2026

• Minnesota, July 30. 97 of 123 sheets moved to new state-adopted rates. Some rates more than tripled and others fell by more than half: in Lac Qui Parle County (MN20260063) an electrician went from $76.00 to $20.00 an hour, while in Becker County (MN20260029) one went from $19.00 to $66.74.
• Maryland, June 4. 48 of 66 sheets moved to new state-adopted rates, with 1,537 distinct changes, most of them up.
• Florida, August 13. On 40 highway sheets the electrician rate was reset, most to $43.84, from as little as $24.53. In Charlotte County (FL20260242) that is a 78.7% raise.
• California, September. On CA20260018, sheet metal rates rose by up to $22.17 an hour on September 3 and went back on September 17. A bid priced from the sheet in between is off by that much. The sheet’s page shows both changes line by line.
• A rate frozen since 2009. A Michigan HVAC sheet metal rate (MI20260026) dated July 1, 2009 jumped from $33.33 to $74.88 in total package on January 30, a 124.7% rise.

On May 18 the Department reissued 4,182 sheets in a new format: classification names in capitals, entries in a different order, footnotes folded into names. It also updated the Executive Order 13658 notice from $13.30 to $13.65 and turned 1,178 percentage fringes (“3% + 9.41”) into dollar amounts.

It changed 279 actual rates on 179 sheets, and on 62 sheets it put 102 lines back to their January 2 values, undoing raises published in January. Those lower rates are still in force today. On CA20260021 a plumber and steamfitter went from $54.50 + $42.54 back to $51.65 + $41.59; on five Illinois sheets (for example IL20260022) a plumber went from $48.50 + $28.85 back to $45.75 + $28.10.

If your contract was awarded between late January and May 18, its modification may carry the higher January rate. That rate is the one you owe.

These lines differ so far from every comparable line that they are most likely data errors. They are what the Department has published, so they are what a contract carrying that modification says.

• MT20260059 (Meagher County, Montana, building) lists a low-voltage electrician at $23.90 plus a $160.74 fringe. The January sheet printed the fringe as “11.36+625%”, most likely meant as 6.25%, and the May reissue converted it literally. The same line on MT20260062 was corrected on July 30; this one has not been.
• MD20260034 (Carroll County, Maryland) moved a drill-rig operator from $33.00 + $13.55 to $32.00 + $120.85 on June 4. No other Maryland sheet has a fringe above $17.10 for that work.
• NJ20260007 (residential) cut both ironworker fringes from $37.15 to $0.40 between the January 2025 and January 2026 publications while raising the basic rates by about $12: reinforcing from $41.59 to $53.24, structural from $42.39 to $54.24. The total package fell by about $25 an hour.

If one of these is on your contract, ask the contracting officer in writing how to pay it before you certify a payroll, and keep the answer with your records. Do not correct it on your own.

Every active 2026 determination was downloaded from SAM.gov on September 23, 2026, with its first publication (modification 0), every later modification, and the January 2025 publication of the same sheet. Each text was read with the same parser that builds this site’s rate pages. Figures marked as checked were compared by hand against the raw SAM.gov text.

• Lines were paired between two versions of a sheet by the rate’s source code and its classification name. A line that could not be paired with certainty was left out rather than guessed; about 13,500 current lines were left out this way, most of them renamed in the May reissue.
• Medians count distinct changes: one union raise printed on 20 sheets counts once.
• Lines with a fringe written as a formula (“+a”, a percentage) are left out of dollar figures.
• “Total package” is the basic rate plus the fringe. Per-day and per-shift rates (divers, some Washington tunnel work) are left out of hourly comparisons.
• A county figure refers to the whole determination; area zones inside a multi-county sheet are not mapped to counties.