What You'll Learn
- What SAM.gov is and why it hosts wage determinations
- A step-by-step walkthrough of the SAM.gov wage search
- How to filter by state, county, and construction type
- How to read wage determination numbers and schedules
- The difference between base rate and fringe benefits
- Practical tips to avoid the most common lookup mistakes
What Is SAM.gov and Why Does It Host Wage Determinations?
SAM.gov (short for System for Award Management) is where the federal government puts everything related to federal contracting. It swallowed up a bunch of older sites — including the old WDOL.gov that a lot of us grew up using — and now it's the one place you go to register as a federal contractor, hunt for bid opportunities, and look up Davis-Bacon prevailing wage determinations.
If you bid on federal or federally-funded construction jobs, this is the only source that matters for the wages you owe your crew. Pulling the wrong rate — or an old one — is probably the single most common way contractors end up writing restitution checks after a DOL audit. So yeah, you need to know how to use this tool.
Step 1: Get to the Wage Determinations Tool
Open sam.gov/content/wage-determinations in your browser. You don't need a login. It's a public tool, no account required. You'll see two big buckets: Construction (Davis-Bacon Act) and Service (Service Contract Act). For anything construction payroll, you want Construction.
Step 2: Pick Your State and County
Davis-Bacon rates are set at the county level. That's a detail people miss all the time. An electrician in Harris County, TX doesn't earn the same rate as an electrician in Dallas County, TX — same state, different counties, different rates. So pick:
- State: Where the project is physically located
- County: The county where the jobsite sits
Watch Out
Prevailing wage follows where the work happens, not where your office is. If you're based in Atlanta and doing work in Miami-Dade, you use the Miami-Dade determination. Period.
Step 3: Pick the Construction Type
Davis-Bacon breaks construction into four buckets. Picking the wrong one is one of the most common mistakes I see contractors make:
- Building: Sheltered enclosures for people, equipment, supplies, or work (offices, schools, warehouses)
- Residential: Single-family homes and apartments up to 4 stories
- Highway: Roads, streets, bridges, and related infrastructure
- Heavy: Projects that don't fit the other three (dams, tunnels, water/sewer, airport runways)
Step 4: Look at the Matching Determinations
SAM.gov spits out a list of wage determinations that match your state, county, and construction type. Each one has a number that looks like TX20230001.
Here's what that means:
- TX — the two-letter state code
- 2023 — the year it was issued
- 0001 — sequential ID for that state and year
You'll also see a modification number — Mod 0, Mod 1, Mod 2, and so on. The latest mod is the one in effect. Grab the current version, every time. Old mods might show rates that are no longer valid, and you don't want to find that out during an audit.
Step 5: Read the Wage Schedule
Open the determination and you'll get a long PDF with a big table of classifications (that's the craft or trade) and rates. Each row shows:
- Classification: The craft name (Electrician, Carpenter, Laborer Group 1, etc.)
- Base Rate: The hourly cash wage you have to pay
- Fringe: The hourly fringe benefit amount
Key Concept
Your total prevailing wage is base + fringe. You can pay fringe as extra cash in the paycheck, or you can put it toward a real benefit plan (health insurance, retirement, vacation). Either way is fine. But the worker has to walk away with at least base + fringe for every hour they spent on that job.
Base Rate vs Fringe: Why the Split Matters
How you split base and fringe changes your tax bill and your WH-347 reporting. Fringe paid as cash wages gets hit with FICA and FUTA. Fringe contributed to a bona fide benefit plan usually doesn't. That's why a lot of contractors route fringe through a benefit plan — it's cheaper on the employer side. Our Prevailing Wage Guide walks through cash-vs-benefit fringe strategy in more depth.
Step 6: Find Your Specific Classifications
These PDFs can run 30+ pages. Don't scroll. Hit Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F) and search for the craft you need. A few things that trip people up:
- Group numbers: "Laborer Group 1" and "Laborer Group 4" can pay very different rates
- Trade subclassifications: "Electrician" vs "Line Electrician" vs "Electrician (Low Voltage)" are all different
- Operator equipment classes: Crane operator, backhoe operator, paver operator — often separate rates
Common SAM.gov Lookup Mistakes
- Wrong construction type: Calling a highway job "Heavy" or a commercial office "Residential"
- Pulling an outdated mod: Always grab the most recent one
- Using your HQ county instead of the project county: Work location wins, always
- Forgetting multi-county projects: A pipeline that crosses three counties needs three determinations
- Ignoring conformance: If your craft isn't listed, you have to file a DOL conformance request
Important
Pull the wage determination at bid time and save that PDF in your project folder. If rates get modified after you bid but before the contract is awarded, the mod in effect at award is usually the one that applies — so you want a paper trail of what you had at bid.
Tips That Will Save You Time on SAM.gov
- Bookmark the wage determinations page. Getting there through the main SAM.gov menus is a pain
- Download the PDF right away so you have a time-stamped copy
- Keep a running spreadsheet that ties each active project to its determination number and current mod
- On jobs that run long, check for mods monthly — they don't email you when rates change
- Actually, they can — use SAM.gov's email alert feature for counties you work in
A Faster Way: Instant Wage Lookup
SAM.gov is free, and free is good. But it's slow, clunky, and it wasn't built for people who need a rate in the next 30 seconds because they're on a job walk. That's why we built a prevailing wage lookup tool that indexes every federal Davis-Bacon determination by state, county, and craft. Type "Electrician, Harris County TX" and you get the current base and fringe in about two seconds. We also pull California DIR, New York NYSDOL, and Illinois IDOL rates so you can put the federal and state rates side by side.
Ready to skip to the filing? Our WH-347 checklist and WH-347 form generator will get you a compliant certified payroll in minutes.
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