Construction Inspector Salary 2026,
What Construction Inspectors Actually Earn

How much do construction inspectors make in 2026?

Construction inspectors are counted in the BLS construction and building inspectors series: OEWS May 2025 puts the SOC 47-4011 national median at $74,690 a year ($35.91 an hour), with the bottom 10% near $47,140 and the top 10% at $114,200. Within that series, construction inspection is best understood as distinct from municipal code inspection, even though the two are counted together. A code inspector works for a jurisdiction and verifies compliance with adopted codes at defined stages. A construction inspector more often works for an owner, engineer or agency and verifies that work is being built in accordance with the contract documents and specifications — materials testing and acceptance, concrete placement and curing, earthwork and compaction, reinforcement placement, welding and bolting on structural steel, and continuous documentation of what was actually done. Public works and transportation agency inspection is a large part of this segment, with its own certification expectations around materials sampling and testing. Position in the band follows discipline and certification: general observation sits in the lower half, while special inspection under structural provisions, welding and concrete certification, and senior resident engineer positions sit well above the median. Employment is projected to change by -0.8% through 2034 with roughly 14,800 openings a year. → Full construction inspector career guide, career path, credentials & placement →

Note: $74,690 blends every experience level and every setting in this occupation. For pay by level alone, see Pay by Level below.

Published (BLS): BLS OEWS May 2025, SOC 47-4011, United States national estimate. Public, methodologically rigorous, but sampled on a rolling 3-year basis and published ~10 months after collection — so it reflects wages that are already 1–2 years old by the time you read them.

Level and certification medians: distributed across the published BLS percentile range for this SOC code (P10 through P90) according to the credential tiers this occupation actually hires at. They are modeled reference points, not separately surveyed wages.

State and metro figures: modeled — the BLS national median multiplied by the GlobalCybers state wage index, and for metros by the published metro index for that state. They are estimates of local pay, not BLS state or metropolitan-area observations, and are labelled as modeled in the tables below.

No verified placement sample:GlobalCybers does not yet publish a placement median for this role, so no "verified" figure appears anywhere on this page.

Full site methodology & data sources →