Plumbing Sales Jobs: Supply House, Manufacturer Rep and In-Home Sales

Plumbing sales is not one job; it is four, and they sit at different distances from the work itself.

• Supply house counter sales — serving working plumbers from behind the counter
• Distributor outside sales — calling on contractors' offices for a wholesale house
• Manufacturer rep — carrying one brand's line across a territory
• In-home replacement sales — selling the job at the homeowner's table

Federal pay data reaches these jobs through two broad sales occupations, and neither is plumbing-specific.

The slice inside the trade's own industry — NAICS 238220, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors — counted 24,510 sales representatives of services (SOC 41-3091) at a median of $79,530 in May 2025.

The same industry counted 2,830 wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives (SOC 41-4012, the non-technical side), median $76,940.

BLS publishes no employment figure for retail salespersons inside that contractor industry in May 2025, and our sources carry no retail-salesperson slice for the wholesale industries supply houses sit in either.

The counter lane is the one seat on this page the cited data never isolates.

The industry those slices sit in is large: plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors employed 1,310,510 wage-and-salary workers across all occupations in May 2025, at an all-occupation median of $61,690.

Nationally, the two sales categories are each million-plus occupations — 1,256,010 services reps and 1,238,190 wholesale and manufacturing reps — but those totals are all-industry counts, so the slices above are the numbers that name this trade.

The four seats get a section each below; the trade they draw on is covered in the plumber career guide.

Counter sales is the trade's wholesale face: quoting stock orders, matching a fitting to the pipe it has to join, handling will-call pickups, keeping contractors moving when a substitution is needed.

Outside sales for a distributor is the same product knowledge pointed outward — calling on shops, quoting job material, opening accounts.

BLS's industry data shows where the rep occupation sits: Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods (BLS counts a defined subset of these industries) employed 225,260 wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives in May 2025, Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods (also a defined subset) 149,860, and Machinery, Equipment, and Supplies Merchant Wholesalers 112,430.

The pay series for the outside-rep side of this lane is SOC 41-4012.

Nationally the median was $34.65 an hour, or $72,080 a year, in May 2025, with a mean of $39.68 an hour ($82,530 a year) and percentiles running from $39,090 at the 10th to $137,550 at the 90th.

The 2,830 reps on plumbing and HVAC contractors' payrolls — contractor-side seats, not supply house staff — showed a median of $76,940, with a 10th percentile of $40,240 and a 90th percentile of $161,050.

Counter staff who are not classed as outside reps fall nearest to the retail series, and that proxy is weak: retail salespersons across all retail earned a national median of $35,410 in May 2025, and our sources carry no retail-salesperson figure for the plumbing and HVAC contractor industry or for wholesale distributors, so the number cannot be sliced any closer to a supply house counter.

By annual mean wage, the top-paying states for the wholesale and manufacturing rep occupation were Rhode Island $102,080, New Jersey $99,790, Washington $94,920, Massachusetts $93,750 and New Hampshire $93,400 — state figures for the whole occupation, every industry included.

This lane is one of the jobs for plumbers off the tools; that page maps the other eight.

Manufacturer rep work moves one brand instead of a whole warehouse: a fitting, fixture, water heater or tool maker's line, sold to wholesale distributors and contractor offices across a territory.

The selling job is product knowledge, trade relationships and coverage of a set territory.

For a plumber, the relationships are the transferable asset; the counter staff and contractors you already know are who this job sells to.

In the federal data this is the SOC 41-4012 occupation again: 1,238,190 wage-and-salary jobs nationally in May 2025.

BLS projects the occupation to decline 0.9% from 2025 to 2035, against a 3.5% average for all occupations, with 99,800 openings a year on average.

Pay follows the section above: national median $72,080, rising to $99,640 at the 75th percentile and $137,550 at the 90th.

The highest-paying industries BLS lists for this occupation are not plumbing ones — scientific research and development services topped the list at a $137,060 annual median, ahead of audio and video equipment manufacturing and footwear manufacturing.

These are small niches, not typical jobs, and not plumbing work.

In-home replacement sales is contractor-side selling: the salesperson visits the home, looks over the situation, prices the job and writes it — a repipe, a water heater replacement, a sewer line, a fixture package.

The pitch is technical, and that is where a field background pays: explaining what the installation actually involves is the credibility the role runs on.

The installs these jobs sell get performed by the field crew the company dispatches — see our service plumber page for that side of the trade — and the honest version of this job sells inside what the crew can do.

The closest federal series is SOC 41-3091, sales representatives of services.

Inside plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors, BLS finds this occupation in far greater numbers than the other sales lines it breaks out there: 24,510 jobs in May 2025, versus 2,830 wholesale and manufacturing reps and no published figure for retail salespersons.

In that industry slice the median was $79,530, the mean $88,680, and the percentiles ran from $42,710 at the 10th to $139,990 at the 90th.

Nationally the occupation counted 1,256,010 jobs, with a median of $33.65 an hour or $69,990 a year, a mean of $82,430, and a 90th percentile of $148,840.

BLS projects the occupation to grow 2.7% from 2025 to 2035, just under the 3.5% all-occupation average, with 115,700 openings a year on average.

By annual median wage, the top-paying states for the category were New York $92,190, Massachusetts $83,760, Rhode Island $81,450, California $80,850 and Washington $79,920.

The caveat that matters: this is a broad sales category spanning industries far from this trade — the largest employers BLS lists are computer systems design (116,400 jobs), management and technical consulting (84,670) and electronics and appliance retailers (77,600), none of them plumbing — and commission-heavy pay varies widely within it.

Commission plans are set employer by employer, and our research carries no verified commission structures or percentages for these roles, so get the plan in writing before you accept an offer.

What the verified data does show, all of it OEWS May 2025 with each series named — separate series, not comparable row to row:

Each row is its own BLS series, so no row is a like-for-like match for another — weigh an actual offer against your own overtime-inclusive year rather than these medians against each other.

The OEWS figures include commissions and production bonuses but exclude overtime, shift differentials and non-production bonuses, and the state-by-state field tables live on the plumber salary page.

The traits that travel well are the ones a plumbing background already built: fluency in the code and the materials, a working sense of what a job should cost, and the ability to explain a technical choice to someone who cannot evaluate it themselves.

Career information, not legal or pay advice. Wage figures are BLS OEWS medians and percentiles for the occupation groups and industry slices named, May 2025; commission plans are set by the employer offering them. Anything licence-related belongs with your state licensing board, or the city or county where licensing is local.