Hiring guideRead at source, 29 September 2026

How to Recruit Bricklayers: Hire the Mason, Grow the Tender, and Say What the Winter Looks Like

To recruit bricklayers, run two tracks at once: recruit journey-level masons who are already working, and grow your own from mason tenders and apprentices. Reach both through crew referrals, union and contractor apprenticeship programs, and Facebook and Instagram job ads near your jobsites. Lead the ad with the hourly rate, the type of work (brick, block, stone, restoration) and what happens to hours in bad weather and winter, then screen only for experience level, work type and start date.

Who you are actually hiring

BLS counts bricklayers as brickmasons and blockmasons. The occupation had 62,400 jobs in 2025 and is projected to reach 63,100 by 2035 (1.1 percent growth), with about 4,100 openings a year (BLS Employment Projections 2025-35). The median annual wage was $62,120 in May 2025. BLS lists a high school diploma or equivalent as the typical entry education and apprenticeship as the typical training.

The helpers who tend them are a separate occupation: helpers for brickmasons, blockmasons, stonemasons and tile and marble setters had 14,100 jobs in 2025, a projected change of minus 11.7 percent to 2035, about 1,100 openings a year, and a median annual wage of $47,550 in May 2025. Slow growth and a shrinking helper pool mean most of your journey-level hires will come from other contractors, and the tenders you train yourself are worth keeping.

Where to find bricklayers

• Your own crew's network. Masons know who lays clean, fast brick. Ask your foremen by name who they would hire, and pay a referral bonus after a set number of weeks on the job.
• Apprenticeship programs. Unions and contractor associations sponsor masonry apprenticeships. If you want to build your own, our guide to apprenticeship and trade school recruiting lays out the grow track.
• Mason tenders and laborers. A tender who has mixed mud and stocked a wall for two seasons already understands the work. Promote from within and advertise that you do.
• Adjacent trades. Stonemasons, block layers, concrete finishers and tile setters often cross over. See our sibling guide on how to recruit concrete finishers.
• Social job ads. Employed masons scroll Facebook and Instagram after work. Meta's Employment special ad category requires at least a 15-mile radius and blocks age, gender and ZIP code targeting (see our Meta special ad category explainer), so center the radius on where your jobs are.

For the general construction pool, our guide on how to recruit construction workers who already have a job covers the switching pitch.

What to pay bricklayers

The BLS median annual wage for brickmasons and blockmasons was $62,120 in May 2025, and for masonry helpers $47,550. Advertise an hourly range rather than an annual figure, because masons compare hourly rates and then ask about hours. Our bricklayer job description has the wage section and a template for journey-level, block-only and restoration roles.

How to write the bricklayer job ad

Masonry is outdoor work, and weather decides hours. The strongest ads say so plainly: guaranteed hours, rain-day policy, and whether you have winter work (heated enclosures, interior block, restoration) or lay people off. That line answers the question every experienced mason asks before they apply.

In the body, name the work (commercial block, residential brick veneer, stone, restoration), the typical commute or travel, whether you provide tools, and the path from tender to mason if you offer one. Licensing requirements vary by state and locality, so check your own before listing a license as a requirement.

Screening questions for a mobile application

• What is your experience level? (Tender or helper, apprentice, journey-level mason.)
• Which work have you done? (Brick, block, stone, restoration. Multiple choice.)
• Do you have reliable transportation to jobsites in our area?
• When can you start?

Keep years of experience out of the knockouts. A four-year tender may be a better hire than a mason with a long resume, and a short form keeps employed masons from giving up halfway. Check the work on a wall, not on paper.

Speed and follow-up

Spring and summer are when every contractor is hiring masons at once. Call or text applicants the same day and invite them to a jobsite for a short working interview that week. Boostpoint Connect, an add-on to Boostpoint Attract, sends an instant text when someone applies and runs follow-up sequences from a shared inbox, so a mason who applies from the truck at 5 p.m. hears back before dinner.

What a bricklayer applicant costs on social

In Boostpoint's 2026 benchmark, the Skilled trades family ran a median of $14.14 per applicant, a middle half of $7.58 to $21.49, a blended $10.74 and a 15 percent apply rate (Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark). That is a family figure, not a bricklayer-specific number, and cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Across the whole benchmark, the apply experience explained 70 percent of the variation in cost between campaigns, so the form is where to spend your effort.

Keeping bricklayers through the season and the winter

Masons leave for two reasons you can control: lost hours and a stalled path. Tell new hires in the interview how you handle rain days and the winter slowdown, then keep that promise. Give tenders a named date to lay their first course on a real wall, and move pay when they do. A crew that knows it will work in February and move up in April is a crew that refers its friends.

Recruiting masons (brick, block and stone)

"Mason" is a wider word than "bricklayer", and mason recruiting goes better when the ad says which mason you mean. BLS splits the trade into separate occupations, and they are very different pools.

Brick and block masons are the core of this page. Stonemasons are the smallest pool in the trade: about 500 openings a year nationally, in an occupation BLS expects to shrink, so an experienced stone setter is almost always working for someone else and has to be recruited, not found. Cement masons pour and finish concrete; the title shares a word with bricklaying but not the work, and they have their own guide on how to recruit concrete finishers.

What changes when you recruit stone rather than brick:

• Name the stone work in the first line. Veneer, dry-stack walls, cut stone, restoration of historic masonry and monument setting are different skills, and a stonemason decides from the first line whether the job is theirs.
• Recruit across, not only up. Brickmasons who have laid stone veneer, and hardscape crews who build walls and patios, are the adjacent pools. A working interview on a sample wall tells you more than the resume.
• Widen the radius. With a pool this small, a local ad reaches few qualified people. Meta's employment ad rules already set a 15-mile minimum radius; stone work usually justifies a wider one, and saying whether you cover travel or lodging for distant jobs widens it further.
• Train the next one. A shrinking occupation with apprenticeship as its training route means the stonemason you need in three years is a tender or bricklayer you start teaching now.

The application stays the same short form as for bricklayers, with "stone" as one of the work-type answers, so the same campaign can sort brick, block and stone applicants for you. The Skilled trades family figures in the cost section above apply to all three; none of our benchmark families isolates masons.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2025-35 and May 2025 median annual wage (brickmasons and blockmasons; helpers, brickmasons, blockmasons, stonemasons, and tile and marble setters); Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark. Read at source 29 September 2026.