A commercial pipefitter works on the piping behind commercial buildings' heating and cooling — HVAC piping in hospitals, offices and data centers, as this guide's title has it.
The UA describes steamfitters as installing and maintaining high-pressure systems that move steam, hot water and chilled water.
In the May 2025 federal data, the industry employing the most Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters is building equipment contracting.
Below: the systems, pipefitter vs HVAC technician, pay and schedules, and the route in.
What is commercial pipefitting?
Commercial pipefitting is the buildings side of the pipefitting trade: the piping inside commercial buildings rather than the factory and plant work on the industrial side.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) describes pipefitters and steamfitters as installing and maintaining pipes that may carry chemicals, acids, and gases, mostly in manufacturing, commercial, and industrial settings, with steamfitters specializing in systems for liquids or gases at high pressure.
The commercial slice of that scope is the mechanical piping that moves heat through a building, and the buildings this page keeps in frame are the ones its title names: hospitals, offices and data centers.
There is no federal occupation called "commercial pipefitter."
O*NET merged the old Pipe Fitters and Steamfitters code with Plumbers into one occupation, 47-2152.00 Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, and its sample titles run from Pipefitter and Pipe Welder to Plumber and Drain Technician.
On this page, "commercial" is the jobsite split: building work rather than plant work.
The United Association (UA), the pipe trades' union, lists pipefitters and steamfitters alongside plumbers, sprinkler fitters, HVACR service technicians, pipeliners, welders and the metal trades among its trades — one umbrella over the piping work on both sides of the commercial/industrial line.
Where the jobs actually sit shows up in the industry data: in May 2025 the industry employing the most Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters was building equipment contractors, with 340,140 workers, ahead of utility system construction (14,960) and local government excluding schools and hospitals (11,480).
If you are new to the trade itself, the pipefitter career guide covers the whole occupation — settings, duties and the route in — before you specialize; the refinery-and-plant counterpart of this page is our industrial pipefitter guide.
The systems: chilled water, heating water and steam
The UA describes its steamfitters as fabricating, installing, maintaining, and repairing high-pressure systems that move steam, hot water, and other industrial fluids — including chilled water and compressed air — with welding, rigging, and hydrostatic and pneumatic testing in the work.
Read against a commercial building, that list is the mechanical room: chilled-water piping, hot-water loops, and steam piping on the systems that use it.
Data centers are one wing of this work.
The UA lists datacenters among steamfitter work, describing it as supporting advanced cooling and process piping for mission-critical operations.
(The domestic-water and fixture side of these buildings is plumbers' work under BLS's description — data center plumbing is its own corner of the trade.)
The demand signal behind data-center work is electricity, not hiring.
A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report released by the Department of Energy in December 2024 found U.S. data centers used about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and could use about 6.7% to 12% by 2028; the same report traces use rising from 58 TWh in 2014 to 176 TWh in 2023, with 325 to 580 TWh estimated by 2028.
Those are electricity-demand estimates — not jobs or construction-spending figures — and no federal source in our research converts them into a count of pipefitter jobs, so read them as context, not as a hiring forecast.
Commercial pipefitter vs HVAC technician
The two trades work the same commercial buildings but not from the same federal definition.
O*NET defines Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (SOC 49-9021) — the HVAC technician occupation — as workers who install or repair heating, central air conditioning, HVAC, or refrigeration systems, including oil burners, hot-air furnaces, and heating stoves.
Pipefitters and steamfitters, in BLS's description, install and maintain pipes that may carry chemicals, acids, and gases, with steamfitters specializing in systems for liquids or gases at high pressure.
What the sources do not do is divide the work.
The two definitions describe occupations, and none of them allocates piping versus equipment on a commercial job; how a given contractor draws that line was not verified in our research, and UA local jurisdiction is itself something our sources flag as varying by local, not to be generalised.
The one documented link is organizational: the same United Association that lists pipefitters and steamfitters among its trades also lists HVACR service technicians.
For where the line falls on a real job, the contractor running it is the source.
On pay, one caution comes first: because BLS combines plumbers, pipefitters, steamfitters, and sprinkler fitters in one occupation, there is no pipefitter-only federal wage.
What can be set side by side are the two combined occupations in the same survey — same source, same statistic, different occupation definitions.
In May 2025 the median for Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152, plumbers and sprinkler fitters included) was $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year, against $29.33 an hour ($61,010 a year) for Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (SOC 49-9021) — occupation-wide figures, not commercial-only rates.
If you are weighing the service side of the trade, the HVAC technician career guide covers it in depth.
Pay and schedules
Start with the honest benchmark.
Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) earned a median of $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year, in May 2025 per the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (OEWS, released May 15, 2026).
The 75th percentile was $40.92 an hour ($85,110 a year) and the 90th percentile $52.13 an hour ($108,420 a year).
Our sources carry no commercial-only line for the survey — every figure covers the whole combined occupation — so treat any "commercial pipefitter salary" number you meet elsewhere with that caveat.
State and metro tables live on our pipefitter salary page.
The industry cut gets closest to the commercial question, and the survey publishes two sizes of it.
The broader group, building equipment contractors (NAICS 2382, a group that also includes electrical contractors), employed 340,140 of the occupation's 465,840 wage-and-salary workers in May 2025 — the industry employing the most.
The narrower industry the same survey names Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors (NAICS 238220) employed 330,570 of the occupation, with an annual median of $63,010, an annual mean of $71,800, a 10th percentile of $43,720 and a 90th percentile of $107,780.
Read both cuts as occupation-wide figures within an industry, not as a commercial-pipefitter pay rate.
The outlook follows the same combined occupation: BLS projects 6.8% employment growth from 2025 to 2035, against a 3.5% average across all occupations, with about 42,000 openings a year.
The documented schedule facts are general ones: BLS says most plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters work full time, including nights and weekends, and are often on call to handle emergencies, and in O*NET survey data 27% of the occupation report a typical week of more than 40 hours while 73% report 40 hours.
No source we checked gives rotation patterns or schedules for commercial building work specifically, so we won't characterize them — for a given contractor, the posting and the interview are the source.
Career and pay information, not legal or financial advice — confirm any pay figure that matters to you with the employer or the agreement that sets it.
What the BLS figure leaves out
How to get into commercial work
The documented route in is apprenticeship.
BLS says most plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters learn through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship with about 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training each year plus technical instruction — paid training, worked on the job.
The union path runs through the UA, whose apprenticeships are registered with the U.S. Department of Labor and include 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training per year plus 216 hours of related classroom instruction.
The UA says it represents approximately 409,000 plumbers, pipefitters, sprinkler fitters, HVACR service technicians, welders, and related trades in North America (a count that includes Canada).
Confirm entry standards, classroom schedules and pay steps with the sponsor you apply to rather than with any general description.
Two notes for career changers.
First, the apprenticeship ladder serves the whole occupation: BLS's scope spans manufacturing, commercial, and industrial settings, so the same training leads to buildings work or plant work.
Second, apprentice pay has a federal floor but no federal ladder: federal rules for registered apprenticeship programs require a progressively increasing schedule of wages, with an entry wage not below the applicable FLSA minimum (or higher where another law or a collective bargaining agreement requires), while the percentage steps come from each registered program's standard or its collective bargaining agreement — not from federal law.
When you are ready to work, browse open pipefitter jobs to see who is hiring near you.
Career information, not legal advice — requirements change, so confirm current entry rules with your apprenticeship sponsor and, for registered programs, the U.S. Department of Labor.