Drywall Labor Cost by State

Drywall labor is priced per square foot of board, but it is paid by the hour, and hourly pay varies a lot from state to state. The table below has the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage figures for every state, copied as published, next to a per-square-foot estimate scaled from them. Pick your state for the full breakdown and a calculator pre-filled with its rate.

Drywall wages and labor cost by state

How the per square foot estimate is built

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employers every year for its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. It splits drywall work into two occupations: drywall and ceiling tile installers, who hang the board, and tapers, who tape, mud and sand the joints. Each state page compares its median wage with the national median and ranks the states by it, because a handful of very high or very low earners moves a median less than a mean.

The wage columns are BLS data, unchanged. The last column is ours. We start from a national planning range of $1.20 to $2.50 per square foot to hang and finish standard residential board, then multiply it by the wage index: the state's mean installer wage divided by the national mean of $30.58. West Virginia has no installer estimate, so its index uses tapers.

The method assumes overhead, insurance and profit scale with wages, which is roughly true but not exact. Treat the result as a budgeting range and replace it with local bids. Small jobs rarely follow a square-foot rate at all, because most contractors charge a minimum to show up: the closet drywall cost calculator works through that case.

District of Columbia is not listed: BLS publishes neither occupation for it. Employment counts and location quotients exclude the self-employed, who are a large share of drywall workers.