Plumber salary in 2026: what plumbers earn and how owners should pay

The median plumber, pipefitter or steamfitter in the U.S. earned $63,800 in May 2025, or $30.67 an hour. The top 10 percent earned more than $108,420, and in Oregon, Illinois and the District of Columbia the average plumber clears $90,000. Plumbing has one of the highest ceilings of any trade you can enter without a degree, and the spread inside it is wide.

This guide uses only official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, pulled in October 2026: the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) estimates for May 2025, the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) and the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey. One caveat up front: BLS puts plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters in one occupation, code 47-2152, so the numbers blend residential service plumbers with industrial pipefitters and sprinkler fitters.

Plumber pay by percentile

The full May 2025 distribution, hourly and annual¹:

The right-hand column is our reading of where people tend to sit; BLS doesn't publish pay by license level. A few rules for reading the numbers:

• The median is the honest single number. The mean is $8,370 higher. In HVAC the same gap is only $3,770, which tells you plumbing's top end is much longer.
• Commissions and piece rates are included. Overtime premiums are not. Neither are benefits or nonproduction bonuses. A plumber who takes a lot of night calls can earn well above the table.
• Employees only. OEWS counts 465,840 employed plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters. The OOH counts 510,600 jobs because it includes the self-employed².

Plumbers vs. HVAC techs vs. electricians

Same survey, same month¹³:

Plumbers have the highest median of the three, by a small margin, and share the top end with electricians. Both are licensed trades with long apprenticeships in most states, which keeps supply tight at the journeyman level and above. For a mixed shop that employs both plumbers and HVAC techs, the 75th percentile gap ($85,110 against $77,060) is the number to watch: senior licensed plumbers are expensive to replace.

Where plumbers earn the most

Ranked by median, the order changes: the District of Columbia ($101,020), Illinois ($99,950), Oregon ($97,050), Minnesota ($94,410), Alaska ($93,920), Massachusetts ($93,880), Wisconsin ($81,210), Washington ($81,030), Michigan ($80,190) and Montana ($79,960)¹. Four of those top six have a median above $93,000, which is unusual: in most trades, state medians cluster much closer together. Strong union density and strict licensing in those states are the usual explanations, though BLS doesn't break pay out by either.

The lowest medians were in South Carolina ($53,940), Florida ($52,910), Idaho ($52,380), South Dakota ($51,620) and Arkansas ($48,660).

Metro areas. The highest metro means were San Jose ($114,280), Bellingham, Washington ($102,860), Portland ($100,710), Chicago ($96,430) and Seattle ($96,250), followed by Kennewick-Richland, Boston, San Francisco, Fairbanks and Minneapolis-St. Paul¹. Look up your own area in the OEWS profile tool.

Industry. Among the industries that employ the most plumbers, the OOH lists these medians: government (excluding education and hospitals) $71,660, manufacturing $65,770, heavy and civil engineering construction $63,270, and plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors $63,010². The government number is worth noticing if you're losing plumbers to a city or school district: the pay is higher and the benefits usually are too.

From apprentice to master: how pay climbs

Plumbing pay is built around a license ladder more than any other service trade. BLS describes it this way²:

1. Years 1 to 4 or 5

   Apprentice

   About 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training a year plus technical instruction in codes, safety and blueprint reading. Apprentices earn less than trained plumbers, and pay rises as they learn. Some start as helpers or in a pre-apprenticeship.

2. After the apprenticeship

   Journeyman license

   Most states and some localities require a license to work independently. Requirements vary, but often mean 2 to 5 years of experience and an exam.

3. Several more years

   Master plumber

   Plumbers with more experience who pass another exam earn master status. Some states require a master license to get a plumbing contractor's license.

4. Optional, any time

   Specialty endorsements

   Some states require a special license for gas lines. Certifications in areas like plumbing design widen the work a plumber can take on.

For a sense of the pay steps, two BLS occupations bracket the ladder. Helpers for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters (47-3015, a separate occupation from apprentices) had a median of $20.36 an hour in May 2025⁴. The median plumber earned $30.67, about 1.5 times as much. Union apprentices are typically paid a set percentage of the journeyman rate that steps up each year; check your local's wage sheet for the exact steps, because BLS doesn't publish them.

What a plumber costs the employer

For private-industry construction and extraction workers, the group plumbers belong to, BLS put total compensation at $46.65 per hour worked in June 2026: $32.17 in wages and $14.47 in benefits⁵. That's a multiplier of about 1.45.

That's before the truck, the inventory on it, office staff, insurance, marketing and profit. And it's per paid hour. If a service plumber bills 1,300 of 2,080 paid hours, wages and benefits alone run about $71 per billable hour. Your workers' comp rate and whether you offer health coverage will move this a lot, so use your own payroll. Our plumbing pricing guide builds the full rate from here.

What else moves plumber pay

Gas, backflow and medical gas. BLS notes that some states require a special license for gas lines². Plumbers who can legally do gas piping, backflow testing or medical gas work have more jobs open to them and more bargaining power.

Service vs. new construction vs. industrial. Residential service plumbers often have a lower base with commission or spiffs on top. New construction is usually hourly. Industrial fitters are frequently union and at the top of the distribution.

Emergencies and on-call. BLS says plumbers often work nights and weekends and are on call for emergencies². Overtime premiums and on-call pay aren't in the OEWS wage, so the W-2 can be higher.

Region. The gap between Arkansas and D.C. medians is larger than the whole median wage in some trades. Building activity, licensing rules and union density drive most of it.

Four ways to pay a service plumber

These are hypothetical examples on one imaginary week: a residential service plumber works 45 hours (40 regular, 5 overtime). Under federal law, commissions, piece-rate earnings and nondiscretionary bonuses go into the regular rate⁶, and the overtime premium is half that regular rate for each hour over 40 when the base already covered every hour⁷⁸.

The piece-rate row, worked out:

Straight hourly is predictable for the plumber and simple for payroll, and standard for construction crews. It doesn't reward first-time fixes.

Commission rewards finding and selling the bigger job. Pay it on gross profit, not revenue, so discounts come partly out of the seller's pay, and decide in writing whether it's earned at sale, completion or payment.

Spiffs should reward results you want. A spiff for every camera inspection rewards running the camera. A spiff for a sold repair rewards finding real problems.

Piece rate rewards speed on routine work and can reward rushing, so pair it with a callback rule. Some states add rules. California, for one, requires employers to pay piece-rate employees separately for rest and recovery periods and other nonproductive time⁹. A related option is performance pay: the higher of an hourly floor or a share of completed revenue.

Building a plumber pay plan

1. 1

   Benchmark your metro

   Look up 47-2152 for your metro in the OEWS profile tool, then compare against the contractor-industry median of $63,010. Remember the BLS figure blends in industrial fitters.

2. 2

   Pay for each license

   Set a written raise for passing the journeyman exam, another for a master license and one for gas or backflow endorsements. If your shop needs a master to pull permits, pay for that responsibility.

3. 3

   Price for the pay you want to offer

   Wage times about 1.45, divided by billable hours, plus overhead and profit. A shop that can't afford competitive pay usually has a pricing problem, not a wage problem.

4. 4

   Write the edge cases down

   When commission is earned, what happens on cancellations, how callbacks are handled, and how long any clawback reaches back.

5. 5

   Rotate on-call fairly

   Pay for being on call, not just for the calls, and spread nights and weekends evenly.

6. 6

   Review twice a year

   Compare each plumber's pay, hours, average ticket and callback rate. Fix problems before peak season, not during it.

Pay a plumber can check is pay a plumber trusts. In TradesWork, plumbers see My pay in the field app: today, this week and the period, with each commission, spiff or flat-rate task line spelled out. Commission rules can pay on revenue or on gross profit, clawbacks only reach back as far as you set (90 days by default), and approved pay goes into the payroll export.

Bottom line

The median plumber earned about $63,800 in May 2025, and the top 10 percent earned more than $108,000. Licenses, specialty endorsements, union work and region explain most of the range, and the state-to-state gap is wider than in most trades. For owners: benchmark against your metro, pay a clear step for each license, know your loaded cost per billable hour, calculate overtime on commissions and piece rates, and let plumbers see what they've earned. With about 42,000 openings a year projected through 2035, the shops that do will hire more easily.