Yes — for hands-on people who want well-paid work without a degree, if you can live with the physical toll, the dirty days and the on-call nights.
The federal data backs the financial case: plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters earned a median of $63,800 in May 2025, and BLS projects 6.8% employment growth from 2025 to 2035 — much faster than average — with about 42,000 openings a year.
This page lays out both sides.
Is plumbing a good career? The short verdict
Plumbing is a good career for people who want physical, well-paid work that cannot be outsourced — and an honest no for people who need clean, climate-controlled, predictable work.
The data supports the money: a median of $63,800 a year in May 2025, with the 90th percentile at $108,420.
It supports the demand case too: 6.8% projected employment growth from 2025 to 2035 against a 3.5% all-occupation average, and about 42,000 openings a year.
The trade-offs are just as real: this is decade-scale physical work, much of it in cramped or dirty spaces, and emergency calls do not respect evenings or weekends.
Which list describes you matters more than the numbers, so this page gives both, with the figures behind every claim.
For what the job involves day to day, start with our plumber career guide — this page stays on the decision itself.
The pros: pay, demand, no degree and a path to your own shop
The honest case starts with what the data supports, and it supports four things:
- Pay that scales with skill. $63,800 a year at the median, $85,110 at the 75th percentile, $108,420 at the 90th — May 2025, all workers in the trade.
- Demand growing much faster than average. 6.8% projected growth 2025–35 versus 3.5% across all occupations, with about 42,000 openings a year.
- Entry without a degree. Helper jobs and registered apprenticeships pay while you train.
- Local work that cannot be offshored. Every install and repair happens on-site, at the building.
Pay.
The median wage for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters was $30.67 an hour ($63,800 a year) in May 2025, and the mean was $34.70 ($72,170).
The spread matters more than the midpoint: the 25th percentile earned $50,190, the 75th earned $85,110, and the 90th percentile — the top of the measured distribution — was $108,420, which puts six-figure years inside this trade, not at its fringes.
Location moves the number: the highest-paying metro areas by median included San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California ($107,560); Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN ($103,380); Bellingham, Washington ($102,750); and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA ($101,010).
Be skeptical of six-figure industry headlines, though — the highest-paying industries in the federal data (electric power generation at $115,310, petroleum and coal products manufacturing at $106,550) are small niches, not typical jobs.
The full percentile tables, state by state, live on our plumber salary pages.
Demand.
BLS projects employment to grow 6.8% from 2025 to 2035 — from 510.6k to 545.2k jobs including the self-employed — much faster than the 3.5% average for all occupations, with about 42,000 openings a year.
There were 465,840 wage-and-salary jobs in May 2025, and they are everywhere: the states with the most jobs were California (47,660), Texas (44,090), Florida (29,260), New York (23,210) and Illinois (16,750), and the biggest job centers were the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro (21,040 jobs), Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim (15,690) and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin (12,750).
Most techs work for building equipment contractors — the industry group employed 340,140 of them — so this is contractor work in existing buildings, not factory or office employment.
No degree, and paid training routes.
The entry routes are helper jobs, registered apprenticeships and trade school — and the first two pay while you train, because federal rules require registered apprenticeship programs to run a progressively increasing schedule of wages.
Trade school instead charges tuition.
Either way, nobody apprentices their way through a four-year degree to reach this trade's median.
A path to your own shop.
Plumbing is one of the trades where business ownership is a normal destination rather than an exception: experienced plumbers who clear their state's contractor-level requirements run their own shops and crews.
What each rung legally requires is set state by state — and often city by city — so treat licensing as local.
The rungs, and what each takes, are traced in the career path guide linked at the bottom of this page.
What the BLS numbers include — and miss
The cons: physical wear, dirty work, on-call and weather
Now the other side, because the costs are real.
They fall into two buckets: what the work does to your body, and how it fills your calendar.
The physical toll is measurable.
Federal injury data puts it above the average job: plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters recorded 144.5 days-away-from-work cases per 10,000 full-time workers in 2023-2024, against 86.6 for all occupations; the rate that also counts restricted duty or job transfer (DART) was 211.7.
BLS lists the common injuries plainly: cuts from sharp tools, burns from hot pipes and soldering equipment, and falls from ladders.
In O*NET's worker survey, 21% of plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters say they work in cramped spaces or awkward positions every day and another 43% at least weekly; 25% report daily exposure to high places.
Those survey percentages describe exposure, not injury rates — but they describe where the working day is spent: under sinks, in crawl spaces, on your knees.
The work is often dirty.
Drain backups, sewage, sump pits, water-heater rooms nobody else wanted to enter — the unglamorous jobs are a permanent part of the trade.
If a blocked sewer line at 7 a.m. is beneath you, this is the wrong trade; if it is a puzzle with a fix at the end, you will do fine.
On-call is how the trade covers emergencies.
Pipes burst at 2 a.m., water heaters fail on holidays, and residential service shops rotate night and weekend coverage.
The published wage figures do not count that overtime — but the schedule cost is real even when the extra pay is welcome.
If your life cannot absorb a midnight flood call, that is the single most important fact on this page.
Weather is part of the job.
Service work and new construction both put you outdoors and in unconditioned spaces: exterior lines and trenches in January, mechanical rooms in August heat, crawl spaces that hold whatever temperature the season chose.
Dressing for the site is a daily skill, not an occasional one.
None of this is a dealbreaker for everyone — it is the honest price list.
The trades that pay without a degree charge in body and schedule; the office jobs that spare the body charge in tuition and time.
Decide which bill you would rather pay.
Who does well as a plumber?
The trade rewards a specific profile, and it is worth checking yourself against it honestly.
- You'll probably like it if: you like diagnosing problems — a no-water call is a puzzle with a fix at the end; you want paid, physical, varied work over a desk; you can work a route alone and talk to homeowners without being drained by it; and you can keep learning, because plumbing code and fixtures keep changing under your hands.
- You'll probably struggle if: you need a climate-controlled, predictable 9-to-5; an on-call rotation would wreck your home life; you underestimate a decade of kneeling, crawling and carrying; or sewage and drain work genuinely turns your stomach.
On who leaves: over the whole decade the projected net growth is 34.5k jobs, while openings run about 42,000 a year — so most openings exist to replace workers who retire or change occupations.
People do leave the trade, for the reasons above and for ordinary life reasons, and the trade keeps hiring behind them.
That is normal for the skilled trades, and it is why the entry door stays open.
Walk in knowing the cons list is real, not as marketing copy to be discounted.
Is plumbing a good career for women and career changers?
For women: nothing in the trade's entry path is gendered.
Apprenticeships and licence exams are open to anyone who meets them, and advancement runs on hours, exams and reputation — not on who is strongest in the room.
The physical demands in the cons section are real, and working plumbers manage them the way the trade manages everything: technique, proper tools, two-person lifts and practice.
We will not quote a share of women in the trade because our research vault holds no verified figure — what we can say is that the licence rungs and the pay scale are the same for everyone who clears them.
For career changers: plumbing is a practical second trade, because the entry routes do not require a degree and the training routes pay.
Adults arrive with customer-facing skills and work habits that residential service values, and the entry routes — helper, apprenticeship, trade school — are the same ones any new entrant takes.
What changes with age is the arithmetic: a career changer comparing a current salary against apprentice-year pay is making a different calculation than an 18-year-old.
Read the spread honestly — the 25th percentile earned $50,190 and the median $63,800 in May 2025, so the occupation's midpoint lands mid-career, not in year one — and compare it against what you earn now, not against six-figure headlines.
How plumbing compares with other trades
At the median, the three big building trades pay within a hair of each other.
The differences are in growth and in what you actually work on:
| Trade (BLS category) | Median pay, May 2025 | Projected growth, 2025–35 | Openings a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) | $63,800 | 6.8% | About 42,000 |
| Electricians (SOC 47-2111) | $63,190 | 9.2% | About 72,700 |
| HVACR mechanics and installers (SOC 49-9021) | $61,010 | 10.9% | About 40,600 |
All three project above the 3.5% average for all occupations.
Read the table's edges carefully: electricians show the most openings largely because they are the largest trade — 757,220 electrician jobs against 465,840 plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters and 409,670 HVACR mechanics and installers in May 2025 — and the plumbing figure combines plumbers with pipefitters and steamfitters in a single federal statistic BLS does not split.
So choose by the work, not the table.
Pick plumbing if water, waste, venting and gas piping appeal more than air-side refrigerant work or code-driven wiring — and if running your own shop is part of the ambition, keep the licence ladder in view.
All three are physical, all three carry on-call realities somewhere in the trade, and the honest answer is that the pay data will not make this decision for you.
The work you want to do all day will.
This page is career information, not legal or pay advice. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 and Employment Projections 2025–35; licensing requirements, where they exist, are set by your state licensing board or the city and county where licensing is local — confirm specifics with them.
How to test it before committing
Before you commit years, buy the trade a season.
The tests below cost little and tell you more than any quiz:
- Take a helper job for a season. It is the paid, low-commitment entry route — you will carry tools, watch licensed plumbers work, and find out within weeks whether the spaces and the pace suit you.
- Do the crawl-space test honestly. One afternoon in a crawlspace or an unheated basement tells you whether the cons section was abstract. If you come up energized, that is data.
- Talk to working plumbers, not recruiters. Ask what a burst-pipe call at 2 a.m. does to a week, what the dirtiest job they do is, and what they would tell their own kid.
- Read your state's licence rules early. What each rung requires is set state by state, and often city by city — check with your licensing board before you plan around any timeline you read online.
If the tests go well, the routes in are laid out step by step — helper first, then apprentice, then licensed — in our guide to how to become a plumber.