How to Make Six Figures as an HVAC Tech

Yes — but six figures is not the default outcome of HVAC work.

BLS counted 409,670 wage-and-salary heating, air-conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers (SOC 49-9021) in May 2025, and their median wage was $61,010 a year, or $29.33 an hour.

The middle half earned between $48,360 and $77,060, and the 90th percentile was $95,210 — which means fewer than 10% of HVACR mechanics earned $100,000 or more in the base pay BLS measures.

Two things the measurement leaves out matter to this question.

OEWS includes commissions and production bonuses in its wage figures, but excludes overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses like sign-on money — so a tech whose income comes from overtime hours can out-earn the published numbers.

And OEWS counts wage-and-salary workers only: the self-employed are not in it at all.

So the honest answer is a base-pay ladder with five lanes on top of it.

Each path below has a measured figure where BLS prices one, and each carries a trade-off the figure does not show:

Where you work re-prices every lane.

The highest-paying metros by annual median in May 2025 were Fairbanks-College, Alaska ($93,820); Anchorage, Alaska ($85,620); Napa, California ($84,570); San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California ($82,050); and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Washington ($80,100).

The volume is elsewhere: the most jobs sit in Florida (39,160), California (35,130) and Texas (34,730), and the largest metro job counts are New York-Newark-Jersey City (21,820) and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (10,910).

Two guides deepen this picture from opposite ends: HVAC pay by level shows what every rung of the ladder earns, and our ranking of the highest-paying HVAC jobs ranks every job and specialty the data can price.

For the full percentile and state tables, see the HVAC technician salary page.

Start with what the tables cannot say: the BLS wage data this page uses does not split residential from commercial work, or service from new construction, so no measured "commercial premium" exists in it to quote.

What it can price is the employer.

The industries where HVAC mechanics earned the highest annual medians in May 2025 were computer systems design and related services ($115,910), scheduled air transportation ($114,080) and natural gas distribution ($105,630) — all small niches, not typical jobs, next to the 305,330 HVAC mechanics at building equipment contractors.

Specialty titles have no wage line of their own in these tables, either: refrigeration and chiller technicians are counted inside SOC 49-9021 with every other HVACR mechanic, so the niche-industry figures describe HVAC mechanics by employer, not by specialty title.

What the data does show is a demand signal: BLS expects commercial construction — explicitly including data centers — along with residential construction, more sophisticated climate-control systems and retrofit and replacement work to drive HVAC employment growth, and projects the occupation to grow 10.9% from 2025 to 2035 against a 3.5% all-occupation average.

The trade-off: the $100,000-plus industry medians are small slices of employment, so this path is positioning — chasing the specialized employers — rather than a guaranteed bump for the title.

The entry gate is federal: under 40 CFR 82.161, anyone who could reasonably be expected to open the refrigerant circuit while maintaining, servicing, repairing or disposing of appliances containing regulated refrigerants must pass an exam from an EPA-approved technician certification program.

State licences add a second layer: as of September 29, 2026, 13 jurisdictions had a statewide individual HVAC worker licence at the apprentice, technician or journeyman rung; beyond that the state map varies — licensing can sit at the contractor level only, in statewide licences covering pieces of the work, or locally with cities and counties.

Commission comes in two shapes for HVAC workers: commission service techs and dedicated sales roles — comfort advisors.

How commission plans are structured, what the paycheck does week to week, and the sales-pressure question that follows them are their own topic, covered in our guide to commission pay; this section prices the ceiling.

The sales occupation BLS actually finds at plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors is sales representatives of services (SOC 41-3091): 24,510 jobs, a $79,530 annual median and a $139,990 90th percentile in May 2025.

OEWS counts commissions and production bonuses in those figures — the commission is inside the measurement, not stacked on top of it.

There is no federal wage category for "HVAC comfort advisor" or "HVAC sales" as such, and the BLS tables this page uses carry no commission-percentage split; the category is broad, and commission-heavy pay varies widely by shop and market.

The trade-off is variance.

The same occupational family spans a $42,710 10th percentile and a $139,990 90th, so the band is wide, and income follows the season and the ticket rather than a flat rate.

Read the medians as a band, not a promise.

Overtime has no dollar figure of its own, because OEWS wages exclude overtime pay: the published percentiles measure base rates, and the real annual earnings of techs who work heavy overtime hours can exceed them.

BLS says most HVAC technicians work full time, and that schedules may include evenings or weekends, on-call rotations for emergencies, and overtime or irregular hours during peak heating and cooling seasons.

The pay law matters here.

Flat-rate pay does not remove FLSA overtime: for job-rate pay, the regular rate is total job pay divided by hours actually worked, plus an extra half-time for each hour over 40.

Commissions count as pay for hours worked and must be included in that regular rate.

And the exemption that can reach commissioned service pay — section 7(i) — is narrow: it covers employees of a retail or service establishment only when their regular rate exceeds 1.5 times the minimum wage and more than half their pay over a representative period of at least a month comes from commissions.

How on-call rotations are paid — stipends, call-out minimums, after-hours rates — is covered in our on-call pay guide.

The trade-off: overtime raises income without changing your rate or your employer, and it is paid for in evenings, weekends and peak-season peaks.

It multiplies the base rate — exactly what the published percentiles measure, and why these tables stop short of a heavy-overtime total.

The management categories BLS prices at plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors — the industry code BLS reports for the two trades' firms together — both clear six figures at the median.

Construction managers there — the closest category to an HVAC project manager, a title with no SOC of its own — earned a $109,150 median across 21,680 jobs, with a 90th percentile of $171,880.

General and operations managers — the top managers of contractor shops — earned a $105,740 median across 40,250 jobs, with a 90th percentile of $214,590.

One rung onto this path is field supervision.

First-line supervisors of construction trades — the foremen running installation crews — earned a $93,320 median across 60,520 jobs at these contractors.

First-line supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers — the broader category that stands in for "HVAC service manager", a title with no federal wage of its own — earned an $81,800 median across 31,350 jobs, with a 90th percentile of $128,500.

That is against a $60,030 median for HVAC mechanics at the same contractors.

The trade-off is the job itself: you trade wrench time for schedules, customers, callbacks and crew problems.

And the figures are medians for broad categories — they describe the middle of the field, not what any one shop pays its manager.

Ownership exits the measurement entirely.

OEWS counts wage-and-salary workers only and excludes the self-employed, so owner pay is not in its figures; in 2025, 6% of HVAC mechanic and installer jobs were self-employed, while 68% were with plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors.

We found no verified figure for what HVAC business owners earn, and we will not invent one: the free IRS and Census tables we checked stop at sector level, and the trade-association figures we saw referenced are paywalled or unverifiable.

What ownership changes structurally is simple to state — a wage becomes business profit, which is revenue minus the real costs of running the shop: vehicles, insurance, tools, licence fees, software and payroll.

The trade-off is that the upside and the risk arrive together: six figures as an owner is a profit outcome, not a pay rate — it depends on margins you control and losses you also absorb.

What it costs to open, the cash-flow reality of the first years, and when the jump makes sense are covered in our guide to starting your own HVAC business, and what the data does and does not show about owner pay in our HVAC business owner income guide.

None of the data on this page — wages, percentiles, projections — says how long the climb takes, so the honest answer is the measured distance, not a clock.

Entry: BLS says HVAC technicians typically need a postsecondary nondegree award — programs of 6 months to 2 years — followed by lengthy on-the-job training, and some techs train through multi-year apprenticeships instead.

Start: no BLS "starting pay" statistic exists; the closest proxies are the May 2025 10th percentile ($40,050) and 25th percentile ($48,360), which cover all workers in the occupation, not only new hires.

The ladder: a $61,010 median, $77,060 at the 75th percentile, $95,210 at the 90th.

Six figures sits above the 90th percentile of base pay, so an employee clearing that line in measured pay points to the higher lanes — the industry niches or management — and the earnings OEWS does not count, such as overtime, can stack on top of a strong base rate.

Ownership sits outside the wage tables altogether.

Demand supports the climb: BLS projects 10.9% employment growth for the occupation from 2025 to 2035 — against a 3.5% average across all occupations — with an average of 40,600 openings a year.

The figures favor picking a lane early: the niches and the supervisory rungs price above the shop median, and HVAC pay by level shows what every rung between helper and manager earns.

When you are ready to move, HVAC technician jobs on the board show which roles are open near you.

This page is career information, not legal or pay advice. The wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025; the overtime rules come from the FLSA, as enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor; the refrigerant rule comes from the EPA; licence rules come from your state licensing board — or the city or county where licensing is local. Confirm current requirements with the authority that issues them before you plan a move.