There is no official starting salary for HVAC: BLS publishes no starting-pay statistic.
The closest federal proxies, from May 2025, are $19.25 an hour ($40,050 a year) at the 10th percentile and $23.25 ($48,360) at the 25th — figures covering all 409,670 HVACR mechanics and installers, not only new hires.
Your entry route decides where you actually start, and a few moves raise year-one pay faster than waiting.
Typical HVAC starting pay
There is no federal starting-pay statistic for HVAC.
The closest proxies are the bottom of the wage distribution for Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (SOC 49-9021): in May 2025 (data released May 15, 2026), the 10th percentile stood at $19.25 an hour ($40,050 a year) and the 25th at $23.25 ($48,360).
Read those as the proxy band for entry pay, with one caveat: the percentiles cover everyone in the occupation — new hires and 20-year veterans alike — so they bound the question rather than answer it.
For context, the occupation's median was $29.33 an hour ($61,010 a year) and its mean (average) $31.14 ($64,780), pricing the 409,670 wage-and-salary jobs.
Where those jobs sit is a separate count: of the occupation's 440,900 total jobs including the self-employed in 2025, 68% were with plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors and 6% were self-employed.
Two things the measure hides matter in year one.
OEWS counts commissions and production bonuses but excludes overtime pay, shift differentials, and non-production bonuses such as sign-on or holiday money — so a new installer stacking peak-season overtime can out-earn the published percentiles, and a shop's sign-on offer never shows up in them at all.
The full percentile table, every state, and the pay behind them live on our HVAC technician salary page; this page stays on the entry question.
Starting pay by entry route
Four routes into the trade: helper, registered apprentice, school graduate, installer.
The federal data prices two of them directly and the other two not at all, so this section names what exists and what doesn't.
(For the full journey from first job to licence, our guide to how to become an HVAC technician covers the routes step by step.)
Helper.
BLS defines no HVAC helper category.
The closest measured group is the broad federal category for helpers across all installation, maintenance, and repair trades (SOC 49-9098 — not HVAC-specific): its median was $19.05 an hour ($39,630 a year) in May 2025.
Treat that as the proxy band for helper pay, not an HVAC helper wage.
Registered apprentice.
There is no national apprentice wage to quote, and federal law does not set one as a percentage of journeyman pay.
What the federal apprenticeship rules (29 CFR 29.5) do require is a progressively increasing schedule of wages, with the entry wage not below the federal minimum wage where applicable.
The familiar "starts at half of journeyman scale and steps up each year" ladders come from each program's registered standards or its union contract — not from the Department of Labor — so the program standard is the only reliable source for what a specific apprenticeship starts at.
School graduate.
BLS describes the typical entry as a postsecondary nondegree award — programs of 6 months to 2 years — followed by lengthy on-the-job training; some techs train through multi-year apprenticeships instead.
Finishing a program does not move you into a higher federal pay category: the percentiles above remain the only federal figures, and your offer still gets set by the local shop.
Installer.
BLS counts installers in the same occupation as mechanics — the category's full name is Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers — so there is no separate installer starting wage either.
Any service-versus-installation pay difference is employer policy, and the federal data does not price it.
Ask for the wage schedule before you sign
Why starting pay varies by region
The same first year gets priced by different local markets, and the occupation-wide data shows the spread — with the standing caveat that these medians cover all workers, not only new hires.
By state, the highest May 2025 medians included Alaska ($77,430), Illinois ($77,410), Massachusetts ($77,300), and Connecticut ($76,610).
District of Columbia — which BLS counts as a state — tops that list at $84,390, but it is a market of 400 jobs, so read it as a data point rather than a destination.
By metro area, the highest medians 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).
Volume is a different map.
The most jobs sit in Florida (39,160), California (35,130), Texas (34,730), New York (24,430), and Pennsylvania (15,880).
By metro, New York-Newark-Jersey City leads with 21,820 jobs, then Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (10,910) and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (10,720).
The big markets post the most first jobs; the smaller, colder, and coastal markets above post the highest medians.
Neither list tells you what any single shop will offer — but both tell you where the market that sets your first offer runs hottest, and where the openings actually are.
How fast pay rises after year one
BLS prices the occupation, not years of service — the percentiles bundle new hires with veterans — so honest expectations for year two come from pay structures rather than a federal table.
Three structures do the work.
Apprentice steps.
The best-documented raises in the trade are written into registered apprenticeships: federal rules require a progressively increasing wage schedule as your skills grow, so those raises are contractual, not discretionary (29 CFR 29.5).
Paid learning time.
Ride-alongs and training time are paid work time under the Fair Labor Standards Act (29 CFR 785.27).
The Labor Department's test excuses unpaid time only when it is outside regular hours, truly voluntary, not directly job-related, and involves no productive work — a new tech's ride-along fails that test.
The learning weeks count toward your paycheck.
Peak-season overtime.
The published percentiles exclude overtime, and BLS notes HVAC technicians sometimes work overtime or irregular schedules during peak heating and cooling seasons.
Overtime-heavy months can push real earnings above the OEWS figures — one reason a first-year W-2 sometimes beats the published band.
The long ladder.
The distance between the entry band and the rest of the occupation is the raise structure: from the 25th percentile ($23.25) the median sits at $29.33 and the 75th at $37.05 ($77,060).
Those upper figures cover experienced workers of every kind — they show the room a first decade can hold, not a guaranteed year-three number.
Our HVAC pay by level guide walks the rungs one by one.
The market you are rising into keeps adding jobs: BLS projects employment in the occupation to grow 10.9% from 2025 to 2035, with about 40,600 openings a year — much faster than the 3.5% average across all occupations.
Growth does not hand out raises, but it does mean every rung is hiring; browse HVAC technician jobs at the level you are moving into.
How to start higher
None of these moves guarantees a higher number, and none of them is a bonus schedule — but each is backed by a federal rule, a federal figure, or state law, and together they decide which end of the entry band you start at.
- Pass the EPA 608 exam before you apply. Under 40 CFR 82.161, anyone who could reasonably be expected to violate the integrity of a refrigerant circuit while maintaining, servicing, repairing, or disposing of appliances containing regulated refrigerants must pass an exam from an EPA-approved technician certification program. The one exemption is for apprentices, and it holds only while they are closely and continually supervised by a certified technician — the supervising tech and the apprentice share responsibility for compliance, and the rule sets no time limit on the exemption. Only EPA-certified technicians may buy regulated refrigerants such as HFCs, with limited exceptions. Without the card, the circuit work stays under someone else's watch; with it, it is yours. Our EPA 608 certification guide covers the exam and how to schedule it.
- Pick a registered apprenticeship and read its wage schedule. The progressive raises are federally required, and the actual steps live in the program standard or the union contract (29 CFR 29.5). Comparing sponsors? Compare wage schedules in writing, not recruiting flyers.
- Finish what you enroll in. BLS describes the typical entry route as a postsecondary award of 6 months to 2 years followed by lengthy on-the-job training. The credential does not set your offer — the shop does — but the training is what the longest stretch of that first-year OJT builds on.
- Anchor on the posted pay range. In a growing set of states the range is in the job posting by law — California (employers with 15 or more employees), Washington (15 or more), New York (4 or more), and Colorado (all employers, in every posting), among others. Where a range is posted, statute put it there; treat the posted band as the negotiating frame instead of guessing.
- Don't chase the outliers as a rookie. The highest-paying industries in the federal data — computer systems design ($115,910 median), scheduled air transportation ($114,080), natural gas distribution ($105,630) — employ few HVACR workers and are niches, not typical first jobs.
This page is career information, not legal or pay advice. Wage figures are BLS OEWS medians and percentiles for May 2025; apprentice wage rules are federal (29 CFR 29.5) plus each program's registered standards; pay-posting rules are state labor law; refrigerant rules are EPA's. Confirm specifics with the program sponsor, your state labor department, or EPA before you act.
These are market benchmarks, not offers