How much do rebar workers make in North Carolina in 2026?

Rebar workers in North Carolina earn a median annual wage of $51,690, which works out to roughly $24.85 an hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That number comes from BLS OEWS data collected in May 2025 and represents the midpoint — half of rebar workers in the state earn more, half earn less.

At the 25th percentile, pay sits at $50,220 a year, or about $24.14 an hour. Workers at this end of the range are typically newer to the trade, working for smaller contractors, or concentrated in lower-cost regions of the state. The gap between the 25th percentile and the median is relatively tight here — only about $1,470 annually — which tells you the lower half of earners in this trade cluster fairly close together in North Carolina.

The bigger jump comes at the top. Rebar workers at the 75th percentile pull in $59,840 a year, roughly $28.77 an hour. That's a $8,150 annual difference over the median, and it reflects workers who have built up real experience, are handling larger commercial or infrastructure projects, and are likely working for bigger general contractors or specialty reinforcing firms on jobs like highway bridges, stadium pours, or high-rise foundations.

To understand what drives the difference between a $24/hr rebar worker and a $28/hr one in North Carolina, the main factors are years of experience, project scale, and geography. The Charlotte metro and the Research Triangle see heavier commercial and infrastructure construction than rural parts of the state, and contractors in those markets often pay more to hold onto skilled ironworkers who can read structural drawings, tie complex column cages, and keep pace on a fast-track schedule. A worker who can also operate a rebar bender or cutter, or who has foreman experience, tends to land at the higher end of the range.

There is no union scale available for rebar workers in North Carolina. The state has relatively low union density in construction trades, so most rebar workers here are employed under open-shop conditions. That means wages are set by the contractor and can vary more from job to job than they would in a union hall state where a collective bargaining agreement locks in minimums.

Rebar work is physically demanding and carries real safety exposure — working around rebar sticking up from slabs, rigging heavy cages, and often working at elevation on formwork. The pay range in North Carolina, while functional for many workers, sits below what the same trade earns in states with stronger union presence or higher construction volumes. Workers looking to move up the range here should focus on stacking experience on larger projects, pursuing OSHA 30 certification, and picking up skills like post-tension work, which is increasingly common on parking structures and mid-rise residential in the Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham markets.

Hours in rebar work are not always steady. Commercial construction in North Carolina is active, but concrete pours are weather-dependent, and some contractors lay off crews between phases of a project. Annualizing the hourly wage assumes 2,080 hours of paid work, but workers who experience seasonal gaps or project downtime will see lower effective annual earnings than the BLS figures suggest. That's worth factoring in when comparing this trade to others.