01 — MethodologyHow to read these numbersStart with a disclosure most salary pages skip: BLS has no occupation code for “construction superintendent.” The closest federal series is 47-1011, first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers — the May 2025 OEWS estimates (published May 2026) cover 812,210 jobs at a $79,920 median ($38.42/hr), with percentiles from $53,280 at the 10th to $128,260 at the 90th. That series blends working foremen, trade-crew leads, and extraction supervisors with true building superintendents, so it skews well below what commercial super postings actually offer — the posting sources below run $15,000–$29,000 higher at the midpoint. We use 47-1011 as the floor and the distribution shape, not as the market rate.The ladder itself comes from posting data: ZipRecruiter national aggregates retrieved September 4, 2026 for assistant construction superintendent, construction superintendent, senior construction superintendent, and traveling construction superintendent, with Salary.com (general construction superintendent) and Glassdoor (construction superintendent, $109,049 average as of mid-2026) as cross-checks. Premium factors are sourced to the GSA FY2026 per diem schedule, OEWS industry cuts pulled through the BLS public data API, DCgeeks’ 2026 aggregation of data center field pay, and construction recruiter market guides where noted.Everything was retrieved in September 2026 at its publisher’s vintage. Posting aggregates are scraped from advertised ranges and self-reports; where two of them disagree — and on the general-superintendent title they disagree by $11,000 — we show both and explain the artifact rather than averaging it away.What these figures are — and are notThese are public-market benchmarks, not iRecruit placement data and not an offer range. The federal figure is a proxy series that blends trade foremen with building superintendents and measures base wages only; the posting figures capture advertised base salary and exclude the per diem, vehicle, fuel, and completion-bonus value that makes up a fifth or more of a real superintendent package. Treat every number here as the start of a compensation conversation, not the end of one.02 — At a glanceThe benchmarks at a glanceThe whole guide in one screen. Each row jumps to the full section.01Federal proxy (BLS 47-1011)$79,920 median in May 2025 across 812,210 first-line supervisor jobs; 25th-75th band $63,400-$101,460$80K med02Construction superintendent, posted averageZipRecruiter September 2026: $95,168, majority $71,000-$115,500; Glassdoor average $109,049$95K avg03General superintendentSalary.com 2026 average $106,097, typical range $94,990-$119,399, 90th percentile $131,511$106K avg04Senior superintendentZipRecruiter September 2026 average $117,325, majority $84,500-$148,000, top earners $173,500$117K avg05Traveling superintendentZipRecruiter September 2026 average $102,373 base, plus per diem benchmarked at the $178/day GSA rate+$178/dayAnchor numbers for 2026: the federal proxy median is $79,920, posted supers average $95,168–$109,049 depending on the aggregator, senior supers average $117,325, and the executive-superintendent tail reaches $180,499. The spread between the proxy and the posted market — up to $29,000 at the midpoint — is the single most important thing to understand before quoting any of these numbers.
03 — BenchmarksThe superintendent ladder in 2026Five rungs, priced from posting data as of September 4, 2026, with the federal proxy shown for the floor. Posted averages describe what employers advertise to hire — incumbent field leaders at strong commercial GCs routinely sit a band higher. If you are staffing the ladder, role briefs for each rung are at superintendent, assistant superintendent, and general superintendent.$79,920Federal proxy: first-line supervisorsBLS OEWS May 2025 median for 47-1011 at $38.42/hr. It blends trade foremen and crew leads with building supers — the utilities cut of the same series runs $107,700 and oil and gas $126,530, showing how much the blend suppresses the headline number.$78,466Assistant superintendentZipRecruiter’s September 2026 national average, majority $64,000-$91,000, top earners $110,000. The field-side entry rung: punch lists, trade coordination, and a piece of the schedule under a lead super, typically 2-5 years in.$95,168Construction superintendentZipRecruiter’s September 2026 average ($45.75/hr), majority $71,000-$115,500, 90th percentile $138,000. Commercial-specific postings run higher — ZipRecruiter’s commercial construction superintendent average is $102,492 — and Glassdoor’s all-super average is $109,049.$117,325Senior superintendentZipRecruiter’s September 2026 average ($56.41/hr), majority $84,500-$148,000, top earners $173,500. The rung for large single projects or two concurrent jobs, usually with an assistant super and field engineers underneath. See what we screen for at this rung.$106,097General superintendentSalary.com’s 2026 average, typical range $94,990-$119,399, 90th percentile $131,511. Note the artifact: ZipRecruiter’s “construction general superintendent” category returns $95,168 — identical to its generic super figure — because its string-matching folds the titles together; Salary.com’s job-family model is the better read here.$102,373Traveling superintendent, baseZipRecruiter’s September 2026 average, majority $84,500-$118,000, top earners $133,000 — a 7.6% base premium over the generic super average before per diem and travel benefits, which is where most of the traveling value actually sits.Sources: BLS OEWS May 2025 for SOC 47-1011 via the BLS public data API; ZipRecruiter salary aggregates retrieved September 4, 2026; Salary.com general construction superintendent (2026); Glassdoor construction superintendent average (mid-2026).Why the federal number runs low and the aggregators scatterBoth distortions are structural. OEWS 47-1011 is payroll-based and accurate for what it measures — but what it measures is every first-line construction supervisor, and working foremen outnumber building superintendents in that pool, pulling the median to $79,920 while commercial super postings cluster in the $95K–$115K band. The aggregators have the opposite problem: they match on title strings, so ZipRecruiter prices “general superintendent” identically to “superintendent” ($95,168) while Salary.com’s structured job family puts the same rung at $106,097, and its executive-superintendent tail reaches $180,499 on ZipRecruiter. Quote the source with the number, or the number is meaningless. 04 — Cost driversThe premium stack on top of baseSuperintendent packages carry more non-wage value than any office role in construction. Six factors below, each with a named source — ignore them and every comparison in this guide will mislead you by 15-25%.$178/dayPer diem on traveling assignmentsThe GSA FY2026 standard CONUS rate — $110 lodging plus $68 M&IE, effective October 2025 through September 2026 — is the reference floor for traveling-super packages. Across a 48-week deployment year it is roughly $42,000 of untaxed value on top of the $102,373 posted base.+30-45%Data center and mission-critical sectorDCgeeks’ 2026 aggregation of Salary.com, ZipRecruiter, and Glassdoor puts data center superintendents 30-45% above the all-super benchmark, with a $148,000 median base and general-super rungs at $205K-$250K. The premium prices commissioning sequence and the cost of downtime.+$27KSelf-perform and heavy-industrial employersOEWS May 2025 industry cuts of 47-1011: oil and gas extraction $126,530 and utilities $107,700, against $81,480 in nonresidential building and $75,980 in residential — a $27,000+ spread for supervising your own forces in industrial environments rather than managing subs.+7.6%Travel itself, on base aloneZipRecruiter’s traveling-super average of $102,373 runs 7.6% over its generic super average of $95,168 before any per diem. Stacked with the GSA rate, a traveling year is worth roughly $50,000 over a local seat — which is why traveling supers are the hardest rung to keep.$700-1,500Vehicle and fuel, monthlyConstruction recruiter market guides (Birmingham Group, Amundson Group, 2026) report truck allowances of roughly $700-$1,500/month or a company truck with fuel as near-universal in superintendent packages — $8,400-$18,000 a year that no posting average captures.10-20%Completion and annual bonusThe same 2026 recruiter market guides report completion and annual bonuses of 10-20% of base as standard for commercial supers, weighted toward schedule-critical work. AGC’s 2025 Workforce Survey found seven of eight firms raising base pay as much as or more than the prior year on top of it.Do the honest arithmetic once: a $95,168 posted super base plus a mid-band truck allowance and a 15% completion bonus is a $120K+ package; make it traveling with GSA per diem and it clears $160K in annual value. Schedule pressure prices in the same way — night-work fit-outs and occupied-facility jobs surface as bigger bonuses and faster rotations rather than as a separate line item. Compare packages, never bases. 05 — VariationRegional and sector spreadState figures below are OEWS May 2025 medians for the 47-1011 proxy — consistent, payroll-based, and all skewing low for commercial supers by the same mechanism, which makes them clean for comparing regions to each other. The proxy’s top state runs $35,050 over its cheapest big market.Pacific Northwest and West$98K-$110KWashington leads all states at a $109,570 median, with California at $97,680 — wage-ordinance density, prevailing-wage public work, and tech-sector construction all pull the band up.Upper Midwest$98K-$106KIllinois posts $105,750 and Minnesota $97,610 — high union density among self-perform GCs keeps supervisor scale elevated well beyond Chicago and the Twin Cities.Northeast$96K-$106KNew Jersey at $105,510, Massachusetts $97,850, and New York $95,700 — note New York’s proxy median understates NYC commercial supers badly; ZipRecruiter’s posted New York super average is $104,117.Alaska and Hawaii$102KHawaii ($102,630) and Alaska ($102,140) price logistics and isolation: materials, crews, and supervision all travel, and the supervisor premium follows the freight.Sun Belt volume markets$75K-$79KTexas ($74,520), Florida ($75,790), and Arizona ($78,550) sit far below the coasts on the proxy — but these are also the data center corridors where mission-critical supers post at $148K+ base, the widest proxy-to-market gap in the country.National band, 47-1011 proxy$53K-$128KOEWS May 2025: 10th percentile $53,280, 25th $63,400, median $79,920, 75th $101,460, 90th $128,260. Commercial building supers live almost entirely in the top half of this distribution.The Sun Belt row is the map’s real lesson: the states with the lowest proxy medians are carrying the largest mission-critical pipelines, so a Phoenix or Dallas data center super prices off the national $148K sector benchmark, not the state’s $75K–$79K proxy median. Where sector and geography conflict, sector wins — and increasingly it simply relocates the superintendent. 06 — TrendA flat proxy over a hot posted marketThe proxy series moved 1.3% in a year — a $78,900 median in May 2024 (NAHB Eye on Housing analysis of OEWS) to $79,920 in May 2025 — while construction average hourly earnings rose 4.2% year over year to $40.97 by April 2026 (BLS payroll data). The gap is composition, not contradiction: the foreman-heavy proxy dilutes what commercial-super pay actually did, which the posted market shows better — commercial super and senior-super averages now sit $7,000-$22,000 over the generic figure.Demand gauges explain the pressure. ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator read 8.5 months in its latest release, with backlog at the largest contractors at a two-year high — and backlog converts to superintendent demand one job at a time, because the super is the one seat a project cannot share. The AGC 2025 Workforce Survey (nearly 1,400 firms, July–August 2025) found 80% of firms with salaried openings, 92% of those hiring reporting difficulty, and 45% reporting projects delayed by staffing shortages.The long arithmetic runs the same direction: BLS projects 74,400 annual openings for 47-1011 through 2034 with growth of 5-6% (O*NET, 2024-34 projections) against a 2024 base of 921,600 jobs. Supers are made, not hired — the assistant-super rung is the only reliable feeder, and every year of under-hiring at $78K assistants becomes a bidding war for $117K seniors five years later. 07 — WorkforceReading the numbers before you write an offerThree rules. First, never quote the $79,920 federal number to a commercial superintendent — it is a proxy for a broader supervisory pool, and the posted market for the actual title starts $15K higher and runs to $173,500 at the senior 90th percentile. Second, compare packages, not bases: truck, fuel, per diem, and completion bonus are $25K–$60K of annual value that posting averages exclude entirely. Third, price the ladder as a system — the assistant-to-general progression is where retention is won, and the office-side equivalent is mapped in our construction manager salary guide.For employers, the hard rung is the middle: assistant supers are findable at $64K–$91K and general supers are few but visible, while the $95K–$148K lead-super band is where 92% difficulty-to-fill actually bites. iRecruit is building candidate density across the superintendent ladder ahead of that demand; the screening question that separates the bands is which scopes the candidate personally sequenced, at what schedule pressure, and what their last three jobs closed out at.For the hiring side of this market, see the Data Center Construction practice. 08 — FAQFrequently asked questions How much do construction superintendents make in 2026?+Posted averages run $95,168 (ZipRecruiter, September 2026) to $109,049 (Glassdoor, mid-2026), with the majority of postings between $71,000 and $115,500. The federal figure is lower — $79,920 median — but it comes from a proxy series (47-1011) that blends trade foremen with true building superintendents.What does an assistant superintendent make?+ZipRecruiter’s September 2026 national average is $78,466, with most postings between $64,000 and $91,000 and top earners at $110,000. It is the feeder rung for the whole field ladder, typically reached after 2-5 years as a field engineer or trade lead.How much does a general superintendent make?+Salary.com’s 2026 average is $106,097, typical range $94,990-$119,399, with the 90th percentile at $131,511. In data center and mission-critical work, DCgeeks’ 2026 aggregation puts general-super base pay at $205,000-$250,000 — the widest sector premium on the ladder.What do traveling superintendents get paid?+ZipRecruiter’s September 2026 base average is $102,373 — a 7.6% premium over the generic super figure — before per diem benchmarked at the GSA FY2026 rate of $178/day ($110 lodging, $68 M&IE). A full deployment year adds roughly $42,000 of per diem value on top of base.Do superintendents make more than project managers?+At the posted midpoint they are nearly even: $95,168 for supers versus $97,768 for construction project managers (ZipRecruiter, September 2026), and supers often out-earn PMs on total package once truck, per diem, and completion bonuses land. The office track pulls ahead at the top — the BLS construction manager median is $114,990 against the super proxy’s $79,920. The one seat a project can’t shareHiring a superintendent, assistant super, or general superintendent? iRecruit is assembling candidate density across the superintendent ladder, assistant through general super, ahead of demand. Tell us the scope and we’ll shortlist.Scope a search →Candidates — register with us →
