Guide
October is the busiest month of the year for a lot of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical shops as systems switch over for winter. Before you commit to either option, run the numbers — they don't always land where you'd guess.
The seasonal swing is real: HVAC call volume typically jumps hardest in October as heating systems get turned on and fail for the first time that year, and plumbers and electricians often see a secondary bump alongside it from cold-weather breakdowns and holiday prep work. If your crew is already booked solid, you've got two practical options to cover the extra volume — work your existing techs longer, or bring in seasonal help. A third option, turning down work, is the most expensive one of all if it happens repeatedly.
Say your lead tech makes $30/hr straight time, so time-and-a-half is $45/hr. The rush needs 15 extra hours a week for 8 weeks — 120 hours total.
120 hours × $45/hr = $5,400 in wages. Add roughly 8-10% for the payroll taxes and workers' comp premium that scale with payroll, and you're typically looking at $5,800-$5,950 to buy those 120 hours.
That works out to about $48-$50 per hour, fully loaded. The upside: every one of those hours comes from someone who already knows your systems, your customers, and your truck. No ramp-up, no supervision overhead, no risk of a callback from a mistake.
A staffing agency helper might get paid $20-$22/hr by the agency, and agencies typically mark that up 30-45% to set your bill rate — so you're commonly paying $28-$34/hr for a W-2 temp with their payroll taxes and workers' comp already baked in.
120 hours × $31/hr (midpoint) = $3,720. Cheaper on paper than overtime by roughly $2,000-$2,200.
Here's the catch: a new person is rarely as fast as your own tech in week one. If they're running at 75% productivity while they learn your process, you need closer to 160 billed hours to get 120 hours of "your tech" equivalent output. That pushes the real cost to roughly $4,960 — still less than overtime, but the gap shrinks fast, and it disappears entirely on jobs that need judgment calls a brand-new person shouldn't be making alone.
As a rough rule: overtime wins for skilled diagnostic and complex repair work, where a mistake costs more than the wage difference. Temp or seasonal help wins for prep, demo, hauling, basic install support, and anything a capable worker can do safely on day one with light supervision. Most shops end up using both — overtime for the technical hours, temp help to free up the technical hours by taking the grunt work off the schedule.
Before you commit either way, run the extra jobs through a job profitability calculator to confirm the rush work is actually profitable once you add the labor premium — a full truck of low-margin jobs covered by expensive overtime can be worse for you than staying booked out and raising prices instead. It's also worth checking your hourly rate already accounts for this kind of seasonal labor swing, not just your slow-season average.
It's tempting to hand a seasonal helper a 1099 to skip payroll taxes and paperwork. Resist it if you're setting their schedule, supervising the work, and providing tools or a vehicle — that's the definition of an employee in most states, regardless of the paperwork. Get caught misclassifying, and you can owe back payroll taxes, unpaid overtime, and penalties, sometimes going back to the start of the working relationship. This isn't a gray area worth guessing on — check with your accountant or an employment attorney before you decide how to bring someone on for the season.
A lot of owner-operators assume putting a foreman or lead tech on salary automatically takes them out of overtime eligibility. As of a May 2026 Department of Labor rule change, the federal salary threshold for the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions sits at $684 a week ($35,568 a year) — a foreman paid a flat salary under that number is still owed overtime for hours over 40, on top of needing to meet a duties test even above it. Some states set a higher bar than the federal minimum, so this is worth a quick check with your accountant or payroll provider before rush season, not after a wage complaint.
Sometimes what's actually bottlenecking the fall rush isn't truck capacity — it's the phone ringing while you're mid-job, quotes sitting unsent for three days, and follow-ups that never happen. More bodies in the field won't fix that. If that overflow admin work is the real constraint, it's the kind of repetitive task a done-for-you service can absorb during a surge without you hiring anyone. And if you just need a seasonal offer letter and a simple time-tracking sheet to bring temp help on cleanly, the Operations Kit ($19) has both.
It depends on the work. Overtime on a trained tech typically lands around $45-$55 loaded per hour once you add payroll tax and workers' comp on the extra pay, but every hour is at full skill. Temp agency labor typically bills $28-$36 an hour, but a new temp is usually only 70-85% as productive in the first few weeks, which pushes the real cost per finished job closer together. Overtime tends to win for skilled diagnostic work; temp help tends to win for prep, hauling, and other tasks any capable worker can do on day one.
Usually not if you control their schedule, tell them how to do the work, and supply the tools and truck — that's the profile of an employee, not an independent contractor, regardless of what you call the arrangement. Misclassifying a seasonal worker as 1099 can leave you owing back payroll taxes, unpaid overtime under the FLSA, and penalties if the state or IRS audits you. Check with your accountant or an employment attorney before deciding how to classify seasonal help.
Possibly. In May 2026 the Department of Labor rescinded the higher overtime salary threshold and restored the prior federal minimum of $684 a week ($35,568 a year) for the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions. If you pay a foreman a flat salary under that amount, or their duties don't clearly meet the exemption test even above it, they are likely still owed overtime for hours over 40. Confirm your state's rules too, since some set a higher threshold than the federal one.