The Datum Report

Occupation 8151 · Process, plant and machine operatives

Scaffolders, stagers and riggers

Half of full-time scaffolders, stagers and riggers in the UK earn more than £41,548 a year, and half earn less.

Scaffolders, stagers and riggers erect and dismantle scaffolding and working platforms, set up lifting equipment and ships’ rigging, maintain and repair steeples, industrial chimneys and other tall structures and install, maintain and repair ropes, wires and cables.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Training is initially received on-the-job. Skilled workers must obtain Construction Skills recognised scaffolders record scheme cards through the completion of approved courses and further work experience. NVQs/SVQs in Scaffolding are available at levels 2 and 3.

What the work involves

• examines drawings and specifications to determine job requirements
• examines scaffold tubing and couplings for defects and selects, fits and bolts scaffold tubes until scaffolding reaches required height
• lays and secures wooden planking to form working platforms and fixes guard rails, ladders, cradles and awnings as required
• erects jib, derrick and similar hoisting equipment and installs ropes, pulleys and other lifting tackle
• forms rope slings, ladders, netting and other rigging and measures, cuts and repairs wire or fibre rope

Also called

Bell hanger (church bells) · Rigger (film, television production) · Stage rigger (shipbuilding) · Tackleman (steelworks)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for scaffolders, stagers and riggers, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 3 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Construction operatives n.e.c. · Rail construction and maintenance operatives · Road construction operatives