A plumbing foreman is the working supervisor of a plumbing crew: the plumber the contractor puts in charge of manpower, material, the schedule and the apprentices.
You become one by mastering the install side, learning plans and code, and running the day well enough that a crew follows you.
Here is what the job covers, how it compares to the lead and superintendent rungs, and what it pays.
What does a plumbing foreman do?
A plumbing foreman is the crew-level supervisor on a plumbing job — the working lead the contractor holds accountable for both what the crew installs and how the crew runs.
On new construction the foreman is the plumbing contractor's point of contact on site; in service work, the foreman is who the office relies on to keep trucks and techs moving.
Shops attach the title to different shapes of job; the responsibilities below are the ones the title carries.
Manpower and material come first.
The foreman sets the day's plan, assigns plumbers and apprentices to tasks, and stages or orders material so it is on the truck or the site before the crew needs it.
On construction jobs the plumbing rough-in lands in sequence with the other trades, so the foreman works to the general contractor's master schedule and flags conflicts before they cost days.
Quality and code are the second half.
The foreman checks the work going in against the plans and specifications, coordinates inspections with the plumbing inspector, and is the one who hears about it when a rough-in fails.
This is the half of the job that leans hardest on field experience.
The third piece is the people and the paper.
Foremen train and check apprentices, run crew timekeeping, write daily reports, and track material and change-order work back to the office.
The mix shifts with the job — a foreman on a small crew may turn tools all day, while a foreman running a large commercial job can spend most of the day coordinating — but the accountability runs one way: the foreman answers for the job.
Foreman vs lead plumber vs superintendent
Shops use the titles differently — a "lead plumber" at one company may do what a "foreman" does at the next.
Read by duties: a lead plumber is first among equals on one crew — plans that crew's day, checks its work, and is the person the customer or general contractor talks to.
A foreman is the contractor's supervisor for the job: possibly more than one crew, with site coordination, inspections, and the paperwork on top.
Compare the duties in a posting, not the label.
Above the foreman, the roles split by where they sit.
A superintendent stays on site and runs a whole project — sequencing crews and trades rather than one crew — while a project manager runs the job from the office: contracts, submittals, change orders, billing.
Some contractors combine the two on smaller jobs and split them on large ones; the foreman reports to one or the other.
Where that rung leads, our plumbing superintendent and project manager guide covers both roles and how each differs from crew leadership.
The licence rungs underneath the role — apprentice, journeyman, master — are covered in our plumber career guide, and the full ladder from apprentice to business owner in our plumber career path guide.
This page is about the first leadership rung above them.
Skills that get you promoted
The promotion case is built on the job you are already on — treat the crew you are on as the audition.
The technical bar is the trade itself — the licence rungs below cover that part; the skills that get a plumber moved up are crew skills:
Own a crew's day
Run the plan for a stretch while the foreman is elsewhere on site: assign tasks, stage material, hold the schedule, deal with the other trades. If a contractor is choosing, the plumber the crew already turns to is the one it can see.Read plans, specs and code
Foremen check work against drawings and the plumbing code, so fluency with construction documents is the daily toolkit of the role, not exam trivia.Carry the paperwork
Timekeeping, daily reports, material counts, change-order documentation — the half of the job the tool side never taught you, and the half that makes an owner able to hand you the keys.Train apprentices
A foreman's crew includes apprentices, and being the one who teaches and checks their work is a visible piece of crew leadership on a job.
None of these require waiting for an opening.
Every one of them can be practiced as a journeyman on the job you are already on.
When you are ready to look, start with the plumbing jobs listing.
Pay bump and trade-offs
Our sources carry no wage series for "plumbing foreman" as such.
The federal category that covers the job is SOC 47-1011, First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers — all construction-trade supervisors, every trade, not plumbing alone.
The category held 812,210 wage-and-salary jobs nationally in May 2025.
The national, industry and geography figures below are that category, from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics May 2025 release (published May 15, 2026).
OEWS covers wage-and-salary workers only; it excludes the self-employed.
The national median was $38.42/hour or $79,920/year; the mean was $41.56/hour or $86,450/year.
The percentiles around the median:
| Percentile | Hourly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| 10th | $25.62 | $53,280 |
| 25th | $30.48 | $63,400 |
| Median (50th) | $38.42 | $79,920 |
| 75th | $48.78 | $101,460 |
| 90th | $61.66 | $128,260 |
The closer cut is the industry figure.
Within NAICS 238220 — Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors — SOC 47-1011 employment was 60,520, with an annual median of $93,320, an annual mean of $96,560, a 10th percentile of $61,200 and a 90th percentile of $138,720.
That estimate covers plumbing and HVAC contractors together, so it is not a plumbing-only number.
More broadly, 148,850 of these supervisors work in Building Equipment Contractors — an industry group that also includes electrical contractors — with 106,330 in Nonresidential Building Construction.
Geography moves the number.
Top-paying states by annual median were Washington $109,570; Illinois $105,750; New Jersey $105,510; Oregon $103,070; and Hawaii $102,630 — while the jobs sit elsewhere: Texas 90,010; California 71,750; Florida 69,830; North Carolina 32,460; and New York 29,600 supervisors.
The metros with the most supervisors were New York-Newark-Jersey City 28,220; Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands 24,570; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington 21,530; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim 19,690; and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell 16,920.
The highest-paying metros by annual median were Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA $130,790; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $129,700; Kennewick-Richland, WA $126,630; Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA $121,130; and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA $120,810.
On the "bump": BLS measures plumber pay in a different occupation — SOC 47-2152, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters, national median $30.67/hour or $63,800/year in the same release.
The two numbers describe different jobs measured in different occupations, not a before-and-after raise; read them side by side rather than as a promotion premium.
The plumber series, national and by state, is on our plumber salary page.
Union scale is a wrinkle we cannot put a number on: our research found no separate wage series for union plumber foremen, so we cannot quote a union premium — how union wage packages are built is covered in our union plumber pay guide.
The trade-offs are not in the survey either.
Foremen trade tool time for paperwork and people problems, carry the schedule pressure when a job slips, and answer for the crew's work.
The figures above measure the role; the trade-offs are the part of it this survey doesn't price.
The survey leaves out overtime
License requirements for foremen
The foreman title is a company role, not a licence tier — the credentials that carry legal weight are the licence levels themselves, held by the person, not conferred by a job title.
Plumbing licensing is set at the state level, and in some states below it, so what a foreman must hold depends on where the job is.
As of September 29, 2026, our research catalogued the statewide ladders this way: 24 jurisdictions — the District of Columbia included — run the classic apprentice → journeyman → master ladder; 5 states top the journeyman licence with an individual contractor licence instead of a master licence (Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota); 4 have a journeyman-level licence with no state master licence (Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington); and 4 have a statewide licence with no journeyman rung (Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina).
In 7 more states — Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming — there is no state plumber licence; cities and counties, or an industry board, do the licensing.
The rungs and the rules behind them are covered in our state-by-state plumbing licence guide, and the journeyman rung — the level a foreman's crew leadership sits above — in our journeyman plumber guide.
Apprentices are the part of the licence question a foreman touches daily.
On a registered apprenticeship program, the program's standards must state a numeric apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio consistent with proper supervision, training, safety and continuity of employment; state licensing laws often set supervision ratios too.
Where an apprentice is on the crew, that written rule — the program's or the state's — is where the ratio comes from.
Career information, not legal advice — pay figures above are federal wage-survey estimates, and licensing and apprenticeship rules change; confirm the current requirements with your state licensing board, or the city or county where licensing is local.
Confirm the rules where you work