Hiring Christmas Light Installers: Pay Per Hour or Per Foot

When should you hire the first installer?#

When the calendar has more booked jobs than you and one helper can install inside the window. Forty jobs over eight weeks is one crew of two; eighty is the same crew full time; past that you need a second truck, and the maths in our profit tables changes shape.

Strandr's scaling guide puts the first hire at $150,000 a year of revenue, a dedicated crew at $250,000 and year-round staff at $500,000. Those are its own numbers with no source, and revenue is the wrong unit anyway: $150,000 is about 26 permanent jobs at the $5,687 ticket in our at-the-door quoting guide and about 70 seasonal jobs at $2,134. Count booked jobs against install days.

Strandr's hiring post has a calendar worth borrowing. For an October 15 start it posts the job September 1, interviews and ride-alongs September 15 to 26, paperwork and workers' compensation October 1 to 10, training October 13 and 14. For a November 1 start, post by September 20.

Employee or contractor?#

Both countries test it the same way, and the paperwork is not the test. In Canada the CRA's guide RC4110 weighs control over how the work is done, who supplies and maintains the tools, whether the worker can subcontract without your say-so, whether they carry financial risk, and whether they can make a profit or a loss. In the US the IRS groups the same evidence as behavioural control, financial control and the type of relationship, says there is no magic number of factors, and makes the employer liable for the employment taxes if it gets the call wrong without a reasonable basis.

A helper on your truck with your ladder fails most of those tests. A genuine subcontractor brings their own truck and clips, has other customers, and hands you a certificate of insurance before they climb. If that is what you have, price the job to them. If it is not, run payroll.

Hourly, per foot or percentage: which one?#

Hourly is the one Geiman calls the most common, and it pays for care, which on a ladder is the thing you are buying. Its weakness is that a slow helper costs the same as a fast one, so pair it with a target: our table budgets 4 install hours for two people on a 250-foot house.

Per foot pays for speed and is explainable from the work order: more on the 250-foot house than on the 120-foot bungalow. Two conditions. The footage has to come from a drawing the crew trusts; on GlowBid the work order carries the footage by run. And it punishes the careful minute spent re-clipping a sagging run, so it suits C9 on a straight eave better than a steep peak.

Percentage at 12 plus 3 behaves like per foot with the premiums included, so the crew earns more on the two-storey with four peaks, which matches the work. Its problem is that the crew has to know the price to check their pay, so pay it from the office against the invoice, not from a number on the truck.

Our own setting, ours and not a default: hourly on both seasonal and permanent at the $22 above, with any season bonus tied to the sign-off photos rather than the footage. Geiman lists end-of-season, referral and profit-sharing bonuses; the photo bonus is the one that changes what the crew does on site.

What are the wage floors in Canada?#

Minimum wage is provincial, and October 1 matters in Ontario because the new rate lands two weeks into seasonal install. All figures CAD from the province's own page.

Sources: Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta. Other provinces set their own; check the province's page, not a payroll blog.

Overtime in Ontario starts after 44 hours in a work week at 1.5 times the regular rate; a November week with six installs and a Saturday gets there before you notice. Track it per person, not per truck.

Two more Ontario items belong in the hiring file. The WSIB's registration policy gives you 10 calendar days from the first worker's start to send in your business information, and construction has compulsory coverage rules that can reach independent operators. And Ontario's working at heights training is required for workers on construction projects under O. Reg. 213/91 who use fall protection such as a travel restraint or fall arrest system; it must be a program approved by the Chief Prevention Officer and it is valid for three years. Whether a residential lighting install counts as a construction project is a question for the Ministry, not for me; the course is a day, and I would put a new hire through it before the first ladder regardless.

What are the wage floors in the US?#

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and has been since July 24, 2009, and the DOL's page says employers must comply with state law where it gives greater protection. From the DOL state table as of July 1, 2026:

None of those floors is close to what a posted installer job pays; Strandr's $18 to $30 comes from ZipRecruiter and Indeed postings checked on August 27, 2026, and it tells you to check your own metro the week you post. Workers' compensation for private employers is run by each state's board, mandatory in most states once you have employees per Strandr, which also notes the Form I-9 is due within three business days.

What does the first week look like?#

Two days before the first paid install, then a week on the lead's ladder. Strandr's two-day plan is a fair skeleton: day one is ladder and roof safety (base one foot out for every four feet up, rails at least three feet above the gutter), GFCI on every temporary circuit, strand limits, clip spacing and how corners and peaks are done; day two is a mockup review and a live install with the lead, then the arrival text and the lit photo at close-out.

What I would add is the photo-gated checklist: front of house before work, a close-up of any existing damage, the controller and transformer mounted, the wiring detail, two finished angles and a clean site. A helper who has to take those six photos on every job learns the standard from the checklist. The install and takedown checklist is the paper version; the crew app runs it on the phone.

And show them the mockup. The number one first-week fault is installing what looks right to the helper rather than what the homeowner signed; a work order that carries the drawing shows that the ridge line was not sold and where the jump goes.

Are permanent crews different?#

Yes, and I pay them differently. Seasonal C9 is a speed job: clips, cord, plug, next house. Permanent track is a fit job: the channel is cut per house, the mitres at the peaks show from the street for twenty years, the fasteners are sealed, the controller is set up on the homeowner's phone in their name. None of that gets faster by paying per foot; it gets worse. So permanent crews are hourly, and the lead's rate covers the controller handover and the warranty conversation. Strandr's scaling post lists $25 to $35 for lead installers and $30 to $40 for crew leaders, its own numbers; the permanent per-foot method shows the ticket that has to carry them. A permanent crew works spring to fall, so the same two people do the November rush and you stop hiring from scratch every September.

What should the crew see, and what should they not?#

The work order, the drawing, the runs by type and their footage, the checklist, the photos and the sign-off. Not the price, and not the customer's phone number or email.

That is how GlowBid's crew side works on the Ultimate plan: the crew app shows the job with no prices and no customer contact details, so a shared truck iPad can sit on the dash. A helper who sees a $5,687 permanent ticket beside their $165 wage does the division on the ladder; a helper who has the customer list has your customer list next September; and the on-the-way text should come from the office number, not six phones. If your tool cannot hide those two things, print work orders without them.

A worked example: one helper for a 40-job season#

Forty seasonal jobs on the two-storey above, one helper, the three methods side by side. Wages only, then our 12 percent payroll-cost assumption on top.

Hourly is the cheapest by more than half, on a house where the helper finishes in the budgeted time; the other two pay the same $320 or $375 whether the install took four hours or seven, which is the point of them and the cost of them. Revenue on the 40 jobs is $85,368, so the three rows are 8.7, 16.8 and 19.7 percent of it. Pick the method, then price the job with the labour line it produces; the per-foot pricing guide has the rest of the ticket, and the free roofline tool gives you the footage a per-foot deal needs.

Mistakes we have made or watched others make#

• Calling a helper on your ladder a contractor. The paperwork does not decide it; the ladder does.
• Agreeing "$1.50 a foot" with no word on whether it is per person or per crew.
• Paying percentage from a work order that shows the price. The crew now knows every ticket.
• Hiring in October for an October 15 start. Strandr's calendar says September 1, and it is right.
• Forgetting October 1. Ontario's rate moves that day, and a payroll set up in September is wrong by the second week of installs.
• Paying a permanent crew like a seasonal one. Speed is not the product on track.
• No working at heights certificate and no WSIB account because "it is only ladders." The fall does not check the job description.

The crew is the most expensive line after product and the one that decides whether the finished angles match the mockup. GlowBid puts the drawing, the footage by run and the photo checklist on the crew's phone and keeps the price off it; the founding price includes the crew side on Ultimate.