Bricklayer Career Guide,
Salary, Licence & Jobs 2026

Bricklayers build and repair walls, partitions, chimneys, and other structures from brick, concrete block and similar units. A working day includes setting up and stocking scaffold, mixing or receiving mortar, running corner leads to a story pole, laying units to a line at production pace, cutting closures on a wet saw, installing flashing, weeps, ties and joint reinforcement, and tooling the joints as they cure. Restoration work adds cutting out failed mortar and repointing with a matched mix.

Most start as mason tenders, mixing mortar and stocking the wall, then enter a Department of Labor Registered Apprenticeship — commonly through an International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers local with its contractor partners, or an open-shop program built on the NCCER masonry curriculum. Terms run three to four years of paid on-the-job hours with classroom instruction in layout, blueprint reading, code and estimating, and there is no licensing exam at the end.

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The OEWS May 2025 median for Brickmasons and Blockmasons (SOC 47-2021) is $62,120 a year, or $29.87 an hour, from $44,820 at the 10th percentile up to $100,010 at the 90th. Region and sector drive most of that spread: unionized commercial and institutional masonry in metropolitan areas sits at the top, residential veneer work in low-cost markets at the bottom. Masonry contractors who take their own work can exceed the reported range entirely.

Three to four years is typical, shorter than the five-year terms in sheet metal and the pipe trades. The programs combine paid on-the-job hours with several hundred classroom hours covering layout, blueprint reading, mortar types, code requirements and safety. Apprentices earn a stepped percentage of the journeyman scale that rises through the term. Because BLS reports only about 5,600 openings a year in this code, apprenticeship slots can be genuinely competitive in some locals.

Shrinking rather than dying. BLS projects 3.2% change for 2024-2034 with roughly 5,600 annual openings, and panelized cladding systems have displaced brick on many commercial projects. But institutional buildings still specify masonry for durability, structural block remains standard for stair towers and shafts, and the enormous stock of existing masonry buildings guarantees restoration and repointing work indefinitely — a segment that cannot be prefabricated and where skilled masons are already scarce.

BLS separates them, and so does the work. Bricklayers and blockmasons lay manufactured units of consistent dimension to a line at production pace, where speed and joint consistency define quality. Stonemasons work with natural stone of irregular size and shape, which means far more cutting, shaping and fitting per unit and a slower, more sculptural process. Many masons do both, but the apprenticeship emphases, the tooling and the pay structures differ.