Pipefitters and boilermakers are separate federal categories, and the numbers split cleanly.
Pipefitters sit inside BLS's Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters category (SOC 47-2152) — 465,840 wage-and-salary jobs and a $63,800 median in May 2025.
Boilermakers (SOC 47-2011) are their own category: 10,190 wage-and-salary jobs and a $76,410 median.
This pipefitter vs boilermaker comparison covers the work, the unions, the full pay picture, and the travel each trade involves.
Pipefitter or boilermaker: the short answer
Start with what each name is.
"Pipefitter" is one title inside BLS's combined Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters category (SOC 47-2152) — the same federal category whose example titles include plumber, steamfitter, sprinkler fitter, gas plumber, and industrial gas fitter.
BLS publishes no pipefitter-only wage or outlook within it, so there is no pipefitter-only figure.
"Boilermaker" is its own category, SOC 47-2011, counted separately.
That structural difference drives everything else on this page.
On pay, the boilermaker category leads: its median wage was $36.74/hour ($76,410/year) in May 2025, against $30.67/hour ($63,800/year) for the pipe-trades category.
On opportunity, the numbers run the other way: 465,840 wage-and-salary jobs against 10,190 wage-and-salary jobs, about 42,000 projected openings a year on average against about 700, and projected growth of 6.8% from 2025 to 2035 against -1.8% for the boilermaker category — with 3.5% as the average for all occupations.
So the honest short answer is a trade-off, not a winner: the smaller category carries the higher median and a shrinking projection; the bigger category carries more jobs, more openings, and growth well above the all-occupation average.
The rest of this page fills in the work, unions, pay detail, and travel behind that trade-off — and if you want the pipe-trades side in depth first, start with our pipefitter career guide.
A steamfitter vs boilermaker search lands on this same comparison: steamfitters sit inside SOC 47-2152 alongside pipefitters, so our steamfitter career guide covers the other pipe-trades entry point.
The work: how the two trades differ
On the pipe-trades side, 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 category's largest employer group is building equipment contractors, at 340,140 of its wage-and-salary jobs, ahead of utility system construction (14,960) and local government, excluding schools and hospitals (11,480).
The states with the most jobs span the country: California (47,660), Texas (44,090), Florida (29,260), New York (23,210), and Illinois (16,750).
The boilermaker category's BLS records show a much smaller and more concentrated footprint.
Utility system construction is the industry employing the most boilermakers (2,130), ahead of building equipment contractors (1,830) and nonresidential building construction (1,630), and the states with the most boilermaker jobs are Texas (2,340), Louisiana (1,220), California (720), New York (410), and Florida (400).
Its top-paying industries by annual median — local government, excluding schools and hospitals ($117,040); petroleum and coal products manufacturing ($107,800); chemical manufacturing (3251, 3252, 3253, and 3259 only) ($99,800) — are small niches, not typical jobs; the pipe-trades list in the pay section below carries the same caveat.
One limit to flag honestly: our research vault carries BLS's counts, which show where boilermaker work sits, but it does not carry a task-level duty list for the trade, so we won't invent one.
If the day-to-day matters to your decision — and it should — ask the contractors and programs doing that work in the places you'd work what a normal week looks like.
Unions: who represents each trade
The pipe-trades side has a documented union structure.
The United Association (UA) says it represents approximately 409,000 plumbers, pipefitters, sprinkler fitters, HVACR service technicians, welders, and related trades in North America, and says its apprenticeships typically last five years, with tracks in plumbing, sprinkler fitting, pipefitting, HVACR, steamfitting, and welding.
The apprenticeship route itself is well documented: most plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters learn through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship with typically 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training plus technical instruction each year, in programs sponsored by unions, trade associations, and businesses.
Our union pipefitter guide covers that side in depth.
On the boilermaker side, our research for this page does not include a verified union membership figure, so we won't state one — check with the union you would join for current numbers and entry routes.
For a like-for-like federal number, BLS's union tables publish membership only at the occupation-group level, not for individual trades.
The construction and extraction occupations group was 16.4% union members in 2025, with 17.4% represented by a union.
Within that same group, full-time union members had median weekly earnings of $1,561 in 2025 against $1,004 for non-union workers — a raw comparison across a whole occupation group, not a pipefitter or boilermaker pay difference, and not a controlled union premium.
BLS's union tables publish no trade-specific membership rate or premium for either trade.
Pipefitter vs boilermaker salary
Here is the full May 2025 distribution, same series and same statistic on both sides — annual wage percentiles from BLS's OEWS.
| Annual wage (OEWS May 2025) | Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) | Boilermakers (SOC 47-2011) |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $44,150 | $50,490 |
| 25th percentile | $50,190 | $64,760 |
| Median | $63,800 | $76,410 |
| 75th percentile | $85,110 | $95,430 |
| 90th percentile | $108,420 | $110,370 |
The boilermaker column is higher on every row — the median gap is the headline ($76,410 against $63,800), and even the boilermaker category's 10th percentile ($50,490) sits above the pipe-trades 25th ($50,190).
Read the pay side together with the opportunity side, though: the pipe-trades category projects about 42,000 openings a year on average and 6.8% growth to 2035, while the boilermaker category projects about 700 openings on average and -1.8% growth, against a 3.5% all-occupation average.
Geography moves both numbers.
By annual median wage, the highest-paying metros for the pipe-trades category are San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA ($107,560), Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ($103,380), Bellingham, WA ($102,750), Minneapolis-St.
Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI ($101,630), and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA ($101,010); for the boilermaker category they are San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA ($135,290), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA ($110,370), Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ($109,640), Toledo, OH ($107,780), and Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY ($106,790).
Each list is its own ranking in the same series, so read them against their own labels, not against each other's order.
The top-paying industries on the pipe-trades side — electric power generation, transmission, and distribution ($115,310), petroleum and coal products manufacturing ($106,550), and pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing ($105,800) — are small niches, not typical jobs, and the boilermaker list in the work section above carries the same caveat.
Three measurement rules apply to every figure on this page.
OEWS wages exclude overtime pay, shift differentials, and non-production bonuses, so real annual earnings for workers who put in overtime can exceed these figures.
The annual numbers assume a 2,080-hour year.
And the left column includes plumbers and steamfitters — BLS publishes no pipefitter-only wage — so treat the comparison as category against category, not as an offer you can expect by title.
The programmatic tables live on our pipefitter salary page.
This is a category comparison, not a quote
Travel: where the jobs are
Set the two maps side by side and a practical difference appears.
The pipe-trades category's five biggest metro employment counts are New York-Newark-Jersey City (21,040), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (15,690), Chicago-Naperville-Elgin (12,750), Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington (11,980), and Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands (10,980) — five-figure employment in each of its five biggest metro areas.
The boilermaker category's largest metro count is 1,170 in Houston, then 680 in Baton Rouge, 330 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, 320 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, and 230 in Beaumont-Port Arthur.
That footprint is the travel story: the boilermaker list tops out at 1,170, while every one of the pipe-trades top five is a five-figure count.
If you don't live near one of the metros on the boilermaker list, choosing that trade is more likely to mean going to the work.
For the pipe-trades side, project-based travel is also its own discipline — our shutdowns and turnarounds guide covers how that work is structured for fitters.
On travel pay, keep the same discipline as everywhere else on this page: on union jobs, per diem and subsistence are set in each local's agreement.
Our research found no primary source for a "typical" per-diem amount for either trade, so we won't quote one — ask the locals and contractors you would travel for.
How the mechanics work is laid out in our per-diem guide.
Career information, not legal or financial advice. Pay figures are BLS's May 2025 estimates for broad occupational categories and change with the next release; confirm current wages, union terms, and entry requirements with the contractors, programs, and unions where you would work.