Annual Salary
£25,000 to £45,000
Average UK salary in 2024 was £37,430
(source Office for National Statistics)
Swap to Design & planning or Property management or go back to all job sectors
Swap to Design & planning or Property management or go back to all job sectors
Bricklayers build houses, repair walls and chimneys and refurbish decorative stonework. They also work on heritage and restoration projects.
Average UK salary in 2024 was £37,430
(source Office for National Statistics)
You could work: between 8am and 6pm; away from home
There will be
1.9% fewer Bricklayer jobs in 2029.
As a bricklayer, you would:
You may need to wear protective clothing.
You could work on a construction site or at a client's home.
Your working environment may be physically demanding, outdoors in all weathers, at height and you'll travel often.
You can get into this job through:
You can take a college course like:
These courses teach you some of the skills you'll need to find a trainee bricklayer job with a construction company.
Some colleges and private training organisations may offer short or part-time bricklaying 'taster' courses. These may be of help to you if you're thinking of a change in career.
Entry requirements for these courses vary.
You can apply to do a:
These usually take around 2 years to complete. You'll do on-the-job training and spend time with a college or training provider.
You'll usually need:
You could start as a construction site labourer or hod carrier, with a bricklaying team or 'gang', and do training on the job to become a bricklayer.
You can find out more about becoming a bricklayer from Go Construct and House Building Careers.
With experience, you could become a:bricklaying team supervisor; construction estimator; site inspector
You might continue to develop your craft skills to specialise in heritage brickwork or stonemasonry.
You could also become a self-employed contractor or set up your own business.
A further option is to train apprentice bricklayers at a further education college.
Construction skills are important to retrofitting commercial and domestic buildings.
Retrofit careers
Retrofitting includes a wide variety of jobs and skills that help to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings. When a property has been retrofitted it can retain heat for longer. This increases the comfort of a home whilst also lowering energy usage which can result in lowered energy costs and carbon emissions.
There are a wide variety of retrofitting jobs requiring lots of different skills including working in the construction industry.
For example in the West of England area Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) indicate that over 250,000 homes in the West of England require retrofitting. That’s a huge amount of retrofitting work over the next few years to meet the region's net zero targets.
These pathway maps for the West of England show how you can become a bricklayer and most of the examples are relevant for all regions.
You'll need: