There is no federal starting-pay statistic for plumbers, but year one has honest benchmarks.
In the May 2025 wage data, plumbing helpers — the closest tracked category — earn a median of $20.36 an hour ($42,360 a year), and the plumber trade's 10th and 25th percentiles sit at $21.22 ($44,150) and $24.13 ($50,190).
Which fits your first year depends on which "starting" you mean: an apprentice's first job, or a newly licensed journeyman's.
Here are both, and what moves a starting salary.
Starting pay for apprentice plumbers
Most plumbers start as apprentices or helpers, and the federal wage data treats that first year carefully: there is no apprentice wage line in the tables.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' own summary is that apprentices earn less than fully trained plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, and that their pay increases as they learn to do more.
The tables don't count apprentices separately either — OEWS respondents generally classify them in the journey occupation — so no apprentice-only wage exists to quote.
The closest tracked category is the helper occupation, Helpers—Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-3015).
In May 2025 (data released May 15, 2026), BLS counted 44,330 wage-and-salary helpers nationally, earning:
- Median: $20.36 an hour, or $42,360 a year
- Mean: $21.03 an hour, or $43,730 a year
- 10th percentile: $16.15/hr ($33,590/yr)
- 25th percentile: $17.76/hr ($36,940/yr)
- 75th percentile: $22.94/hr ($47,720/yr)
- 90th percentile: $27.78/hr ($57,780/yr)
Read those as benchmarks, not as a starting wage.
The number an individual apprentice earns comes from their program's wage schedule — registered apprenticeship rules require pay that rises as you learn, and each program's standards or union contract sets the steps.
What those steps look like year by year, and how to read one before you sign, is covered in our apprentice plumber pay guide.
One comparison frames where that first year sits: the trade above it.
Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) earned a median of $30.67 an hour ($63,800 a year) in the same data — the ceiling the entry figures sit underneath.
The number that applies is on your wage schedule
Starting pay for new journeymen
The other "starting" is the first year after you get licensed — no longer an apprentice, but new to the journeyman tier.
The honest answer is that no federal figure isolates you: BLS's OEWS program publishes wages only for the combined plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters occupation (SOC 47-2152).
There is no journeyman-only, master-only or first-year split anywhere in the table.
What the combined table does establish, from the same May 2025 release: a median of $30.67 an hour ($63,800 a year) and a mean of $34.70 an hour ($72,170), across 465,840 wage-and-salary jobs.
The percentiles run from $21.22/hr ($44,150/yr) at the 10th, through $24.13 ($50,190) at the 25th, $40.92 ($85,110) at the 75th and $52.13 ($108,420) at the 90th.
A first-year journeyman sits somewhere inside that spread — and no percentile in it belongs to newly licensed plumbers alone, because the table mixes every tenure level with pipefitters and steamfitters.
BLS publishes no starting-pay statistic, so a precise "first-year journeyman wage" would be invented.
The figure that matters is the offer in front of you; the benchmarks above tell you where it sits against the trade as a whole.
Regional differences
Where you start moves the number as much as what you are.
For the entry tier, the state medians for plumbing helpers (May 2025): Washington $56,140; New York $52,000; Hawaii $52,000; Maine $48,410; Arizona $47,990.
By metro the spread is wider: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA $65,600; Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA $63,210; the Hawaii/Kauai nonmetropolitan area $54,950; the Balance of Nevada nonmetropolitan area $52,340; New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ $52,000.
The licensed trade's table spreads further still.
The highest-paying metros for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters ran from San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA ($107,560 median) to Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA ($101,010) in the top five, against the $63,800 national median.
The state-by-state versions of that table are on our plumber salary page.
Watch the twist before you plan a move: the biggest job markets are not the top-paying ones.
The states with the most helper jobs — Texas (7,210), New York (4,840), Florida (4,500), North Carolina (3,070) and California (2,500) — put only New York on the helper top-pay list.
The pattern holds for the trade: California (47,660), Texas (44,090) and Florida (29,260) hold the most jobs, the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metros lead the metro counts with 21,040, 15,690 and 12,750 — and only Chicago also makes the trade's pay list.
How fast pay rises
The rise itself is the one part the federal rulebook guarantees: apprentice pay increases as you learn to do more, and every registered apprenticeship program pays a wage schedule that goes up with skill.
The step sizes — and how hours, school and competency move you up — are set program by program, not in Washington.
What the two rungs' own numbers show: the helper tier is small and steady — BLS projects employment to change 2.4 percent from 2025 to 2035 (45.3k to 46.4k jobs, including the self-employed), an average of 4,400 openings a year.
The licensed trade above it is where the volume sits: 340,140 of its 465,840 wage-and-salary jobs are in building equipment contractors alone, and BLS projects 6.8 percent growth from 2025 to 2035 (510.6k to 545.2k jobs), an average of 42,000 openings a year — faster than the 3.5 percent average across all occupations.
Those are employment numbers, not pay raises, but they describe the staircase: most of the openings you are climbing toward sit above the entry tier.
How fast your own number rises, no federal table can say — BLS publishes no figure for how quickly a new plumber reaches the trade median, so treat any "you'll hit $X by year N" claim as unsourced.
What is on the record is the range you are climbing inside, and the whole ladder — with what the BLS numbers do and don't show at each rung — is laid out in our plumber pay scale guide.
How to start higher
Starting pay isn't fixed.
The levers below are the ones the federal numbers actually support — and if you haven't entered the trade yet, the routes in are covered step by step in our guide to how to become a plumber.
- Compare every offer to the right benchmark. The helper median is $20.36 an hour ($42,360 a year) and the trade's 25th percentile is $24.13 ($50,190) — an offer far below the helper spread deserves a question before you accept.
- Weigh location deliberately. Helper medians run from $47,990 (Arizona) to $56,140 (Washington) across the top states, and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue's $65,600 leads the metros — but match the pay against living costs and where the openings are.
- Look where helpers are actually hired. 39,160 of the 44,330 helper jobs sit in building equipment contractors — that is the employer base for entry plumbing. Niche industries pay more (support activities for mining: a $56,000 median), but they are small.
- Treat the trade's top industries as destinations, not starting points. Electric power generation, transmission and distribution paid a $115,310 median and petroleum and coal products manufacturing $106,550 — small niches with few openings, not entry ladders.
- Get licensed on schedule. The trade's median ($63,800) and everything above it is the licensed table — which licence tiers exist and when you can sit for them are set by your state licensing board, or your city or county where licensing is local.
Career information, not legal or financial advice. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 statistics for the occupations named; apprentice wage schedules are set by program sponsors and, in union programs, by collective bargaining agreements; licence requirements are set by your state board — or your city or county where licensing is local. Confirm the numbers that matter with whoever sets them.