Plumbing jobs on the public payroll — federal, state and local government, school districts, and public authorities such as transit and housing agencies — are the subject of this guide.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the May 2025 median for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters employed in government — excluding state and local education and hospitals — at $71,660 a year, above the $63,800 trade-wide median.
The sections below map where the jobs sit in the data, what our sources can't verify about public hiring, and what the pay comparison does and doesn't say.
What government plumber jobs exist?
Government isn't one employer, and BLS's own table keeps pieces of it apart: the industry label for the public side reads “Government, excluding state and local education and hospitals.”
The searches behind this page also run through public authorities — transit systems, housing agencies, ports and airports — a lane our industry tables don't split out.
What the data counts cleanly is the trade as a whole.
The countable part comes from BLS's May 2025 survey: 465,840 wage-and-salary plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters nationally, with Local Government, excluding Schools and Hospitals, third among the industries BLS lists at 11,480 jobs.
For the trade overall, BLS projects 6.8% employment growth from 2025 to 2035, with an average of 42,000 openings a year.
Not every public-sector plumbing career stays on the tools — city inspection is one, and BLS's counts for it are in the city section below.
Two adjacent reads: the maintenance plumber jobs page covers the facilities side of the trade, and our jobs for plumbers off the tools guide maps the exits from field work.
Federal WG-4206 plumber jobs
Searches for federal plumbing jobs turn up a number: WG-4206.
Our sources don't verify what that series covers or how each agency classifies its plumber jobs, so treat it as a search label and let the announcement define the job.
The searches also turn up a site: USAJOBS.
Our vault doesn't verify how agencies post or where a given announcement lives, so treat it as a search starting point — alongside each agency's own careers pages — and read the announcement before you trust any summary.
Here is the honest part, because this page doesn't invent numbers: our research vault — built from licensing boards, BLS tables and credential bodies — carries no verified federal wage-grade table for plumbers.
No grade range, no step schedule, no current hourly rate.
Whatever the grade and pay on a given announcement are, the announcement itself is the source for them, and any third-party pay figure for a federal trade job should be treated as an estimate until you've read the posting.
What BLS can tell you is the government-wide picture.
Its May 2025 industry figures put the median for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters in government — a category that excludes state and local education and hospitals — at $71,660 a year, and that table isn't split into federal, state and local in the data we carry, so a federal-only median isn't something we can quote.
The pay section at the bottom sets that figure next to the private-sector numbers.
City, school district and transit jobs
Cities and counties are the public plumbing employers we can actually count.
BLS's industries table puts Local Government, excluding Schools and Hospitals, among the occupation's largest employers at 11,480 jobs in May 2025.
The label matters: the category is drawn to exclude schools and hospitals, so plumbers on a school district's or a public hospital's payroll sit outside that 11,480 rather than inside it.
Inspection is the plumbing-adjacent career this guide can trace into public employment: Local Government, as BLS groups it, is the largest employer of construction and building inspectors — 53,640 jobs in May 2025 — and the national median for that occupation was $35.91 an hour, or $74,690 a year.
What each jurisdiction requires isn't something our sources verify — ask the city or county that runs the inspections; the plumbing inspector guide covers the role and the credentials.
Then there are the named employers: the searches behind this section name MTA and NYCHA outright.
The honest answer for any named authority is the same — our vault carries no verified headcount or pay figure for any specific district or authority, so read the employer's own postings rather than an aggregator's estimate.
Civil-service exams and hiring timelines
There is no single public hiring process this page can describe: our research carries no verified data on civil-service testing or on how long public hiring takes, and we won't invent the steps.
So this section stays on what our sources do cover — the trade's credentials — and leaves the process specifics to the posting and the hiring agency.
The licence layer doesn't come from the employer — it comes from the licensing authority where the work happens, and it isn't uniform.
As of September 2026, seven states have no state plumber licence: Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming, where cities and counties or an industry board handle it instead.
Read the posting for the licence it asks for, and check that requirement with the issuing board the way you would for any job.
The trade's training, per BLS: most plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters learn through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship, with 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training plus technical instruction in a typical year.
The licence ladder, and which states license plumbers, is the subject of our plumber license guide; the full route is walked through in the plumber career guide.
On timelines, our data says nothing: we have no verified figure for how long public hiring takes, from application to offer.
Work from the posting's own dates, and don't assume one agency's process or pace tells you anything about another's.
Set reminders around each posting's closing date and required documents instead of counting on a pattern.
Hiring rules are the employer's — verify before you apply
Pay and pension vs private sector
The cleanest comparison in the public-versus-private question is one table from one survey.
BLS's May 2025 figures for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters by top industry put government at the front: a median of $71,660 a year — excluding state and local education and hospitals — ahead of manufacturing ($65,770) and heavy and civil engineering construction ($63,270), with plumbing/HVAC contractors at a median of $63,010.
The trade-wide median across all industries was $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year.
For the state-by-state picture, the plumber salary page carries the tables.
| Industry (top industries, May 2025) | Median annual wage |
|---|---|
| Government, excl. state and local education and hospitals | $71,660 |
| Manufacturing | $65,770 |
| Heavy and civil engineering construction | $63,270 |
| Plumbing/HVAC contractors | $63,010 |
Read it the right way: these are medians of whole industries in a single BLS survey, not an offer attached to any job.
An individual contractor role can out-earn an individual government role and the reverse — and because the survey excludes overtime pay, a heavy-overtime year in the field can change the real-world comparison in either direction.
The pension half of the question has no number in this survey: it measures wages and excludes benefits, and our research carries no verified comparison of public and private retirement benefits for plumbers.
Whether a given job carries a pension, how it vests and what it pays out — get that from the posting's benefits summary and, where one exists, the retirement system's member handbook.
For the union side of the question, our union benefits and pension page covers how those packages are built.
Career information, not legal advice. Pay figures are BLS medians for the occupation groups and industries named (OEWS May 2025, released May 15, 2026); hiring requirements are set by each agency — confirm with the employer and, for licences, your state board or city.
How BLS measures these wages