You can negotiate more than the hourly rate on an HVAC or plumbing job offer: the rate, the truck, the tools, on-call pay and training all belong in the conversation, and the strongest lever is data.
BLS publishes median wages for both trades, nationally and by state and metro, so your ask starts from numbers instead of a hunch.
Here is what's negotiable, what the market pays, how to compare total packages, and when to walk away.
What's negotiable in a tech job offer
The hourly rate is the headline number on an HVAC or plumbing offer, but it is not the whole deal.
An offer is a bundle — the rate plus the truck, the tools, the on-call terms, the training money and the time off — and every piece of that bundle is something you can put on the table before you sign.
Once you are on payroll, a package change becomes a raise-shaped conversation; at offer stage, it is one negotiation.
- The hourly rate — the number every other piece prices against
- The truck or van — take-home rules, personal use, who pays for fuel
- Tools and gear — a shop-supplied kit, a tool allowance, or your own box; the phone and uniforms too
- On-call pay — the rotation, the call-out terms, and how after-hours time is paid
- Training money — certification and licence fees, renewals, manufacturer courses
- Paid time off — how many days, when accrual starts, what carries over
- The pay structure itself — hourly, flat rate, commission, spiffs — because the structure decides what the rate is worth
Several of those pieces have their own guides.
How hourly, flat-rate and commission plans work, and how spiffs attach to them, is the pay structures guide's subject; what typical on-call arrangements look like is the on-call pay guide's; and the full menu of benefits to negotiate — health coverage, the retirement match, the truck, tools, PTO and training, with a method for valuing each piece — is the benefits guide's.
If the rate is fixed, move to the bundle
Know your market rate before you name a number
Start from the government's numbers, not a hunch or a forum thread.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025 — released May 15, 2026 — puts the median for Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (SOC 49-9021, the category that covers HVAC techs) at $29.33 an hour or $61,010 a year; the mean was $31.14 an hour or $64,780.
For Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152 — one combined BLS series for the three titles), the median was $30.67 an hour or $63,800 a year, with the mean at $34.70 an hour or $72,170.
Median means half earned more and half earned less — when someone quotes you an average, ask which statistic it is.
The spread around those medians is where offers actually land:
| Hourly wage | HVAC techs (SOC 49-9021) | Plumbers, pipefitters & steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $19.25 | $21.22 |
| 25th percentile | $23.25 | $24.13 |
| Median | $29.33 | $30.67 |
| 75th percentile | $37.05 | $40.92 |
| 90th percentile | $45.78 | $52.13 |
Read the bands the way they are built: in May 2025, a quarter of wage-and-salary HVAC techs earned below $23.25 an hour and a quarter above $37.05 — for the plumber category, below $24.13 and above $40.92.
An offer near the bottom of the band needs the rest of the package to explain itself; an offer at or above the 75th percentile is a strong rate by the national numbers.
Know what the dataset measures before you lean on it.
OEWS counts wage-and-salary workers and excludes the self-employed.
Its wage figures exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses such as sign-on bonuses, and include commissions, production bonuses and tips; annual figures assume a 2,080-hour year.
The techs you know who run heavy overtime can out-earn the published table — the numbers describe pay as BLS measures it, not anyone's guaranteed take-home.
Then get local.
The three states with the most HVAC jobs in May 2025 — Florida (39,160), California (35,130), Texas (34,730) — are not the states where the annual median ran highest; that list, by median wage, was the District of Columbia, Alaska, Illinois, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Metro data pulls the same way: the three highest-paying metro areas for HVAC techs were Fairbanks-College, AK ($93,820 median), Anchorage, AK ($85,620) and Napa, CA ($84,570), while the three metro areas with the most HVAC jobs were New York-Newark-Jersey City (21,820), Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (10,910) and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (10,720).
For the plumber category, the two strongest metro medians were San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA ($107,560) and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ($103,380).
Your market is the metro you will work in, which is why the local tables matter more than any national median: the HVAC salary data and plumber salary data pages carry the state-by-state figures for both trades.
Comparables matter too.
The industry employing the most HVAC techs was Building Equipment Contractors — 305,330 of the occupation's 409,670 wage-and-salary jobs in May 2025 — and the same industry employed 340,140 of the plumber category's 465,840.
(BLS's Building Equipment Contractors group is NAICS 2382, which also includes electrical contractors.)
That contractor world is the market your offer prices against.
The occupations' top-of-chart industries are a different story: the two highest-paying industries for HVAC techs by annual median were Computer Systems Design and Related Services ($115,910) and Scheduled Air Transportation ($114,080), but those are small niches, not typical jobs — do not anchor an ask to them.
Demand is context for the conversation, not leverage by itself.
BLS projects employment of HVAC techs to grow 10.9% from 2025 to 2035 — against 3.5% for all occupations — with about 40,600 openings a year on average; the plumber category projects 6.8% growth with about 42,000 openings a year.
Those are occupation-wide projections, not a budget line at any one shop, so use them to explain why you are worth the market rate — not to claim any employer owes it.
BLS numbers set your benchmark, not your rate
Comparing total packages, not just hourly rates
Two offers at the same hourly rate can put very different money in your life.
The rate is one line; the package is the rest — and the only honest comparison is the total.
Put a number on each piece of every offer before you rank them:
- Health premium split — your monthly share for the coverage you would actually enroll in, single or family
- Retirement match — the formula times what you can defer, discounted by the vesting schedule if you might not stay
- Paid time off — vacation, holidays and sick days are days you are paid without losing income
- The truck — the commuting and personal-use costs you avoid under the take-home rules offered
- Tools, phone, uniforms — what you would buy yourself under each shop's arrangement
- Training — certification, licence renewal and continuing-education costs the shop covers
- How extra hours pay — hourly and flat-rate or commission plans pay a busy week differently, so compare offers on a realistic week, not a perfect one
Watch what each figure leaves out.
The BLS tables above exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses, so they can sit below what an overtime-heavy tech actually earns in a year — which also means an offer's headline rate and a BLS median are not perfectly like-for-like unless you price the extra hours too.
Keep each comparison inside its own series: the wage is the BLS figure, the package pieces are the shop's documents, and you add employer-funded pieces to the wage only after you have a number for each.
What to say when the offer lands
Offer-stage negotiation is a different conversation from getting a raise where you already work — no case file, no anniversary, one exchange with a shop that wants you to say yes.
If you are the one asking where you stand, the levers, timing and script live in our guide to getting a raise.
At offer stage, the exchange runs in six moves:
Get the whole offer in writing
Rate, pay structure, truck rules, tool arrangement, on-call terms, training money, PTO — every piece you are expected to value. You cannot negotiate a package you have only heard.Thank them, then ask for a day
Take the time to price the bundle against your local tables. A considered counter reads better than an instant one.Anchor on the data, not on need
"Based on the BLS tables for our metro and my EPA 608 and licence level, I was looking for [number]." One sentence: the market, your capability, the number.Counter once, clean
One rate number plus your package priorities in order. Multiple rounds of small asks read as haggling; one considered package reads as professional.Trade instead of conceding
If the rate is fixed, move down your list: tool allowance, take-home rules, training budget, defined on-call pay, an extra PTO day. Keep the total moving even when one line is stuck.Close in writing
Whatever you agree — rate, structure, truck, tools, on-call, training, PTO — gets restated in the offer letter before you sign. If it is not written, it is not negotiated.
Keep the tone on the same side of the table as the data: no grievances, no other offers you do not hold, no deadlines you will not keep.
The numbers make the case; the script only delivers it.
When to walk away
Decide your walk-away line before the first conversation, while you are calm: the rate below which the package cannot rescue the offer, and the terms you will not accept undefined.
A line you set in advance is the only thing that keeps negotiating from drifting into accepting.
Signals that a shop is pricing the trade wrong include:
- The rate sits well below your local tables, and no package piece explains the gap
- The pay structure is vague — flat rate without the shop's rate sheet, or commission without the plan in writing
- On-call terms are undefined — the rotation, call-out pay, and what happens to the truck after hours
- The job requires certifications you do not hold yet, and the shop funds none of the path
- Nothing in writing — pieces you negotiated that never make it into the offer letter
Walking away cleanly is part of negotiating well: decline promptly and professionally, leave the door open, and put the energy into shops that price the trade properly.
Both boards are live — HVAC technician jobs and plumber jobs — so the next offer is not hypothetical for long.
This page is career information, not legal or pay advice. The wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 data and the projections are BLS Employment Projections 2025–35; pay rules vary by state, so confirm with your state labor department or the U.S. Department of Labor before you act.