Crew Downtime Calculator
Idle crews are the quietest line item in the trades. Put a number on it — then see what covering even half could recover.
Workers sitting idle during a gap
Wage + taxes + insurance + equipment, per day
Days the crew has no billable work
$46,080/ year
About $3,840 a month in fixed cost with no revenue against it.
Cover even halfof that downtime — by putting your crew on another business's gap at a fair rate — and you'd recover roughly $23,040a year. That's the allocation problem in dollars.
Estimate only — for planning, not accounting. Adjust the inputs to match your crew.
Downtime is where trade margin quietly dies
Most contractors track labor cost when crews are working and ignore it when they're not. But the construction labor problem is really an allocation problem — availability stranded in the wrong place and time. Covering your gaps with another crew's surplus (and renting out your own) is how you stop eating the idle days. See how it works.
Common questions
How do you calculate the cost of crew downtime?
Multiply your crew size by the burdened day rate per worker (wage plus taxes, insurance, and equipment) to get the daily cost of an idle crew. Multiply that by the idle crew-days you have in a typical month, then by 12 for an annual figure. It's fixed cost with no revenue against it.
What is a burdened day rate?
It's the true daily cost of keeping a worker, not just their wage — it adds payroll taxes, workers' comp and liability insurance, benefits, and a share of equipment and truck costs. The burdened rate is what downtime actually costs you, so it's the number to use here.
How can contractors recover downtime cost?
By treating open crew windows as sellable inventory: post your availability and cover another trade business's gap at a fair rate. That's the labor-allocation idea SKILLS is built on — redistributing availability instead of eating the idle days.
Stop eating idle crew-days
Put your downtime to work — and cover your gaps with someone else's surplus. Free for 3 months, then $99/year.