How much do brickmasons make in Minnesota in 2026?

The median brickmason salary in Minnesota is $95,220 a year, which works out to roughly $45.78 an hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That puts Minnesota brickmasons well above the national picture for skilled masonry work. If you're trying to figure out where you fall or where you're headed, the numbers break down cleanly across three benchmarks from BLS OEWS May 2025 data.

At the 25th percentile, brickmasons in Minnesota earn $84,880 annually, or about $40.81 an hour. These are typically workers earlier in their careers — maybe finishing an apprenticeship or a few years into journeyman status — or those working in areas of the state where commercial and industrial project volume is lower. It's a solid starting point, but there's clear room to climb.

The median sits at $95,220 a year ($45.78/hr). Half of all Minnesota brickmasons earn more than this, half earn less. If you're a journeyman with several years of steady commercial work under your belt, this is the neighborhood you're likely in.

The 75th percentile reaches $98,810 annually, or about $47.50 an hour. The gap between the median and the 75th percentile is relatively narrow — roughly $3,590 a year — which tells you something useful: in Minnesota, the upper tier isn't dramatically out of reach. Getting there is more about consistency, specialization, and geography than it is about chasing some distant ceiling.

Geography matters inside Minnesota. The Twin Cities metro — Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surrounding suburbs — drives the bulk of large-scale commercial masonry work. Multi-unit residential, hospital systems, university construction, and government projects all concentrate there. Brickmasons working those jobs regularly are more likely to land at the median or above. In outstate Minnesota, work can be steady but more seasonal and project-dependent, which can pull annual earnings toward the lower end of the range even if hourly rates don't differ dramatically.

Seasonality is a real factor in Minnesota. Masonry work slows significantly in winter months. A brickmason earning $47.50 an hour doesn't bank 2,080 hours if cold weather shuts sites down for six to ten weeks a year. Actual annual earnings depend heavily on how many hours you work, not just your hourly rate. Workers who pick up interior masonry work, restoration, or industrial refractory jobs through the slower months protect their annual income better than those who simply lay off.

Overtime adds up when the season is running. A brickmason at the median rate earning time-and-a-half on a 10-hour Saturday pulls $68.67 for those extra two hours. A full summer with regular Saturday overtime can add $4,000–$7,000 to annual income depending on how often it happens, though TradesPays doesn't build overtime into our base figures — those come straight from BLS OEWS.

Specialization is one of the cleaner ways to push toward the 75th percentile and beyond. Restoration and historic masonry work — tuckpointing, stone matching, repointing old brick — carries a premium because fewer masons do it well. Refractory work, lining furnaces and industrial equipment with heat-resistant brick, is specialized enough that demand routinely outpaces supply. Masons who can read structural drawings and work alongside ironworkers on complex load-bearing projects are also in a different conversation than general brick layers.

Some workers may be covered by a collective bargaining agreement — check with your local for current rates.

The BLS OEWS figures here capture wages paid by employers and reported through payroll surveys. They don't capture side work, cash jobs, or income from brickmasons who run their own small contracting operations. A self-employed mason who manages their own jobs, materials, and crew may earn considerably more or less than these figures suggest — it depends entirely on business volume, overhead, and how well they price their work.

Apprenticeship is the standard path into the trade in Minnesota. Most programs run four years, combining on-the-job hours with classroom instruction in layout, mortar mixing, structural requirements, and blueprint reading. Apprentice pay scales step up each year, typically starting around 50–60% of journeyman scale and reaching full journeyman rates at program completion. Once you're a journeyman, your earnings are governed by what you negotiate, what the market bears, and how in-demand your skills are — not by the apprenticeship structure.

If you want to move from the 25th to the 75th percentile, the path is straightforward even if it takes time: rack up hours on commercial and industrial projects, learn restoration or refractory work, stay sharp on safety certifications, and position yourself where the work is — which in Minnesota means staying connected to the Twin Cities construction pipeline.