A pipefitter and a millwright are two different trades — and two different federal categories.
Pipefitters sit inside BLS's Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters group (SOC 47-2152); millwrights have their own code, SOC 49-9044.
In May 2025 the millwright category's median wage was $65,700 against $63,800 for the pipe-trades category — but there were 465,840 pipe-trades wage-and-salary jobs against 40,330 millwright jobs.
Here is the pipefitter vs millwright comparison: the work, the training, and the pay.
Pipefitter or millwright: the short answer
Start with the names.
"Pipefitter" is one title inside BLS's combined Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters category (SOC 47-2152), whose example titles also include plumber, master plumber, steamfitter, sprinkler fitter, gas plumber, and industrial gas fitter — BLS publishes no pipefitter-only wage or outlook inside it.
"Millwright" is its own federal category, SOC 49-9044, counted separately with its own employment, wage, and outlook figures.
That structural difference shapes every number on this page.
On pay, the medians land close: the millwright category's median was $31.59/hour ($65,700/year) in May 2025 against $30.67/hour ($63,800/year) for the pipe-trades category — the same BLS OEWS series and the same statistic, with the millwright figure the higher of the two at the median.
On opportunity, the gap is wide: 465,840 pipe-trades wage-and-salary jobs against 40,330 millwright jobs, projected growth of 6.8% from 2025 to 2035 against 0.9%, and about 42,000 projected openings a year on average against about 3,200 — 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 the lower growth projection; the bigger category carries more jobs, more annual openings, and growth well above the all-occupation average.
A millwright vs pipefitter search is this same comparison from the other side — the numbers do not change with the word order.
If you want the pipe-trades side in depth first, start with our pipefitter career guide.
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 are California (47,660), Texas (44,090), Florida (29,260), New York (23,210), and Illinois (16,750).
The industrial side of that work — refineries, plants, and process piping — is its own specialty, which our industrial pipefitter guide covers in depth.
On the millwright side, our research vault carries BLS's counts, which show where millwright jobs sit, but it does not carry a task-level duty list for the trade, so we won't invent one.
The federal industry data show the top employer groups as building equipment contractors (9,930 millwright jobs) — the same industry that leads the pipe-trades category's list as well — followed by nonresidential building construction (5,110), and commercial and industrial machinery and equipment (except automotive and electronic) repair and maintenance (3,140).
The states with the most millwright jobs are Texas (3,540), Michigan (2,900), California (2,230), Illinois (2,160), and Ohio (1,930).
If what millwrights actually do day to day is the heart of your decision, ask the contractors and programs doing that work in the places you would work.
The metro counts sharpen the same point.
The pipe-trades category's five largest 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 counts in each.
The millwright category's largest metro counts are Chicago-Naperville-Elgin (1,490) and Detroit-Warren-Dearborn (1,490), then Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands (820), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (710), and Kansas City, MO-KS (640).
Every millwright count on that list is under 1,500, while every pipe-trades count in its top five is five figures — a footprint difference worth weighing if you don't live near one of the metros on the millwright list.
On the physical side, BLS's 2023–2024 injury tables for private industry put the two categories close together on the one measure the saved data support: a job-transfer/restriction (DJTR) rate of 69.1 per 10,000 full-time-equivalent millwrights against 67.2 for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters; the comparison is DJTR-to-DJTR, from the same table.
Training: how you get into each trade
BLS says most plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters learn the trade through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship with about 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training each year plus technical instruction.
Union programs sit inside that pattern: the United Association says its apprenticeships typically last five years, with tracks in plumbing, sprinkler fitting, pipefitting, HVACR, steamfitting, and welding, and says UA 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 page does not say whether that classroom figure is per year.
How the steps fit together, and how apprentice pay steps up along the way, is laid out in our pipefitter apprenticeship guide.
On the millwright side, our research for this page does not include a verified program length or hour total, so we won't state one — ask the apprenticeship programs, trade schools, and employers you would train under what their route into the trade requires and how long it takes.
Pipefitter vs millwright salary
Here is the 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) | Millwrights (SOC 49-9044) |
|---|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $44,150 | $46,290 |
| 25th percentile | $50,190 | $56,390 |
| Median | $63,800 | $65,700 |
| 75th percentile | $85,110 | $81,500 |
| 90th percentile | $108,420 | $93,600 |
The columns cross.
The millwright column is higher at the 10th percentile ($46,290 against $44,150), the 25th ($56,390 against $50,190), and the median ($65,700 against $63,800); the pipe-trades column pulls ahead at the 75th ($85,110 against $81,500) and stretches further at the 90th ($108,420 against $93,600).
Read pay next to opportunity: the pipe-trades category projects 6.8% employment growth from 2025 to 2035 with about 42,000 openings a year on average, against 0.9% growth and about 3,200 openings a year on average for the millwright category, with 3.5% as the all-occupation average — projections that include the self-employed, unlike the OEWS job counts.
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 millwright category they are the Eastern Washington nonmetropolitan area ($149,750), San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA ($113,490), Kennewick-Richland, WA ($107,700), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA ($99,250), and New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ ($93,070).
Each list is its own ranking in the same series, so read them against their own labels, not against each other's order.
The industries with the highest annual medians lead with the same name on both lists: electric power generation, transmission and distribution tops each category's list ($115,310 for the pipe trades, $109,320 for millwrights), followed by petroleum and coal products manufacturing ($106,550) on the pipe-trades side and management of companies and enterprises ($95,190) and aerospace product and parts manufacturing ($92,420) on the millwright side.
Those are small niches, not typical jobs.
Three measurement rules apply to every wage 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