When does work actually come in for your trade?
We pulled twelve months of US Google search demand for the query each trade actually gets hired on — plumber near me, hvac repair, landscaping near me — and mapped the shape of the year for ten trades. The tool above lets you read your own curve.
Search demand is a leading indicator. It tells you when people start looking, which is usually a week or two ahead of the phone ringing. That lead time is the whole point: it is early enough to do something about.
The headline: November is the quiet month
Six of the ten trades we measured hit their slowest month in November. Electricians, painters, handymen, general contractors, cleaners and plumbers all bottom out in the same four weeks — right before the holidays, after the autumn push, and before the new-year planning starts.
That is a genuinely useful thing to know in advance. November is not a month to discover you have no work booked; it is a month to have sold in October.
Plumbers peak in February, not summer
The most counter-intuitive result in the dataset. Searches for plumber near me run about 823,000 a month for most of the year, then climb to 1.22 million in February — a 2.2× swing from the November floor. Cold-weather failures and burst pipes drive it.
Most people assume the trades are a summer business. For plumbing, the opposite is true: deep winter is the money.
HVAC and plumbing are near-perfect opposites
HVAC peaks in July, when air conditioning fails, and troughs in March to May. Plumbing peaks in February and troughs in November. If you run both trades under one roof — and plenty of shops do — those curves complement each other almost exactly. That is an argument for cross-training rather than hiring seasonally.
Landscaping is the most seasonal trade on the board
A 3.3× swing between March and December, the steepest of any trade measured. March and April carry the year. That concentration changes how you should price: if roughly sixteen weeks produce most of your revenue, the rate you charge in those weeks has to carry the quiet ones too.
Some trades barely have a season at all
Electricians, carpenters and handymen all sit around a 1.5× swing — the flattest curves in the dataset. That steadiness is worth real money and is rarely talked about: predictable demand is far easier to staff, finance and forecast than a business that makes its year in one quarter. Handyman work in particular is driven by small ongoing problems rather than big planned projects, which is why it holds up all year.
Roofing does not follow a season — it follows storms
Roofing shows two spikes, September and December, lining up with hurricane season and winter storms rather than with any planning cycle. That makes roofing the hardest trade here to forecast, and it argues for keeping capacity in reserve rather than booking solid — the work arrives in bursts you cannot predict.
How to use this
- Advertise ahead of the curve, not on it. If your peak is March, your marketing spend belongs in January and February. Competing for attention during your own peak is the most expensive way to buy work.
- Sell maintenance in your trough. The quiet months are the only time you have spare capacity. HVAC shops that sell tune-up plans in April are buying themselves a smoother July.
- Take time off in your actual trough, not in the month you have always taken it. For six of these ten trades that means November.
- Hire before the ramp, not during it. A new person is useless in week one of your busiest month.
What this is and is not
This measures search demand, not booked revenue. It captures homeowners going looking for a trade, which correlates with work but is not the same thing — commercial and repeat work never shows up in a search query. It is national US data, so a local market with a different climate will differ, sometimes a lot. Treat it as the shape of the year, not a forecast of your year.
Data covers August 2025 to July 2026 and is refreshed periodically. Related: our state-by-state rate data for what each trade earns, the profit margin calculator for pricing the work, and the full set of free tools.
FAQ
What is the busiest month for plumbers?
February. Searches for plumbers run around 823,000 a month for most of the year and rise to roughly 1.22 million in February, driven by cold-weather pipe failures. The slowest month is November, at about 550,000 — a 2.2× swing across the year.
What is the slowest month in the trades?
November, for most trades. Six of the ten we measured — electricians, painters, handymen, general contractors, cleaners and plumbers — hit their annual low in November. It sits after the autumn push and before new-year project planning.
When is HVAC busy season?
July is the peak, when air conditioning fails in the heat, with a secondary bump in January for heating. The trough is March through May. That spring gap is the natural window for selling maintenance plans, because it is the only stretch with spare capacity.
Which trade is the most seasonal?
Landscaping, by a clear margin — a 3.3× swing between the March peak and the December floor. Painting is next at 2.7×. At the other end, electricians, carpenters and handymen run about 1.5×, which makes them the steadiest trades measured.
When should I advertise my trade business?
Roughly one to two months before your peak, not during it. Demand data shows when people start searching, and there is a lag between someone looking and someone booking. Advertising into your own peak means paying the most for attention at the moment competition is highest.
Where does this data come from?
Twelve months of US Google search volume, August 2025 to July 2026, for the highest-intent hire query in each trade. It measures people actively looking to hire, rather than general interest in the topic.