Union vs Non-Union Pay for Plumbers and HVAC Techs: Total Package Compared

Yes, on BLS's published group numbers.

In 2025, full-time union members in construction and extraction occupations — the group that contains plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters — had median weekly earnings of $1,561 against $1,004 for non-union workers in the same group.

In installation, maintenance and repair occupations, the group that contains HVAC mechanics, the union figure was $1,571 against $1,140 non-union.

Read both numbers with their limits.

They are raw group comparisons — not controlled for occupation mix, region, age or experience — and BLS publishes no union-vs-non-union wage for plumbers or HVAC techs specifically.

A weekly figure also blends your hourly rate with your hours, and a weekly earnings figure leaves out benefits — the line that often decides this comparison.

So the honest version of is the union worth it — for a plumber or an HVAC tech — is not one number but four: the wage, the benefits package, how steady the hours are, and how much upside the pay structure leaves you.

That is the order this page takes.

Union membership is also the minority experience: 10.0% of U.S. wage and salary workers were union members in 2025, including 16.4% of employed wage-and-salary workers in construction and extraction occupations and 12.5% in installation, maintenance and repair.

Start with what does not exist.

BLS publishes no union or non-union wage for plumbers, pipefitters, HVAC techs or any other individual trade — its union tables cover broad occupation groups only.

Treat any national "union plumber hourly wage" or "union premium" figure with suspicion — BLS publishes none, and the only authoritative union rate is your local's current rate sheet.

What BLS does publish comes in two forms.

The OEWS wage series counts union and non-union workers together: in May 2025 (released May 15, 2026) the median for all plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters was $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year, and for HVAC mechanics and installers $29.33, or $61,010.

Full state tables live on our plumber salary and HVAC technician salary pages — read them as trade-wide numbers.

The second form is the union comparison itself, published for occupation groups.

For full-time wage and salary workers in 2025:

Three limits decide how far that table gets you.

It is raw: the union column and the non-union column are not matched groups — the workers differ in occupation mix, region, age and experience, and BLS adjusts for none of it, so this is not a premium you can add to your own paycheck.

It covers the whole group, not your trade: plumbers share their group with every other construction occupation, HVAC with every other repair occupation.

And it is weekly earnings, not an hourly rate — it mixes the pay rate with how many hours full-time workers put in.

For what the union rate actually looks like in each trade — how scale is set and what a rate sheet lists — see our union plumber pay and union HVAC pay guides.

The wage numbers on this page measure pay, not benefits.

BLS's OEWS wage statistics exclude benefits outright — along with overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses such as sign-on or holiday pay — and the union comparison above is an earnings figure, not a package value.

Annual OEWS figures assume 2,080 hours of work; none of these numbers prices a benefit fund.

Benefits are also where the federal data is thinnest, and what it has points one way.

The federal union-vs-non-union benefits figure in our research is access, not value: 91% of private-industry union workers had access to retirement benefits versus 70% of nonunion workers (BLS, March 2026 — all occupations, not specific to these trades).

Union-side retirement money is also fund money: the UA's National Pension Fund, for example, is a multiemployer defined-benefit plan funded solely by employer contributions and investment earnings, with no employee contributions — and not every UA local participates, with contribution rates varying by local.

Money like that never appears in a paycheck or in a wage statistic.

On the non-union side, benefits depend on the employer's plan — get them in writing.

Neither form of benefits shows up in an hourly rate.

No statistic in our research values either side's package, so the comparison has to happen at the offer.

Before you decide, get both packages in writing and line up the same lines:

• The base wage — and the overtime you can realistically expect, which wage statistics never capture.
• Health coverage: what the plan covers and what comes off your check for it.
• Retirement: contributions credited to a fund under the union plan, or a match you own on the non-union side.
• What the agreement or employer deducts — dues and fees on the union side. Dues, initiation and hiring-hall mechanics vary by local and were not verified in our research; ask the local directly.

Once those lines are filled in, the offer with the lower hourly rate can be the one paying more — which is why the headline rate is the worst place to stop comparing.

An hourly rate pays you for hours you work.

What it doesn't price is the weeks you don't — bench time between projects, a slow service season, a layoff.

A month on the bench moves your real annual income away from any annualized figure without changing the rate that produced it, so two jobs at the same rate can pay very different years.

How much bench time comes with a job is the number neither federal table publishes: BLS's union data cover broad occupation groups only, and our research found no federal statistic that splits layoff weeks by union status for either trade.

What the data does show is where the jobs sit.

Of the 409,670 HVAC jobs in May 2025, 305,330 were with building equipment contractors; of the 465,840 plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter jobs, 340,140 were.

Where your own weeks come from — project work that ends when the job ends, or service work that recurs — is worth asking about directly, whichever side you are on.

The demand backdrop is above average on both sides: BLS projects HVAC employment to grow 10.9% from 2025 to 2035 with about 40,600 openings a year, and plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters 6.8% with about 42,000 openings a year — both ahead of the 3.5% all-occupation average.

Growth doesn't pay rent in a slow month, though.

When you compare offers, ask what the last twelve months actually looked like: how many weeks ran short, and how work was assigned when it ran out.

On the union side, hiring-hall and out-of-work-list rules vary by local and were not verified in our research; on any side, the honest answer is the shop's backlog.

The non-union side's answer to a lower guaranteed rate is variable pay: commission on replacement work, flat-rate tickets, spiffs on equipment sales, overtime on emergency calls.

How much any of that adds is unverified at the national level — our research found no federal statistic for what commission adds to a service tech's income, and plans differ shop by shop — so judge any plan by a season of real numbers, not a recruiter's pitch.

Our non-union commission upside guide explains how these plans work.

Two things BLS does say about variable pay matter here.

Its wage data include commissions, production bonuses, incentive pay and tips — so the trade medians on this page already contain some of this money — but they exclude overtime, so a tech whose income leans on long weeks is undercounted by the OEWS medians.

And our research found no BLS wage series for the HVAC comfort-advisor and sales roles these plans feed, so no federal commission table can be built.

The trade-off is symmetrical.

A bargained scale sets the rate for your classification in writing.

Variable pay trades that certainty for upside: strong months can clear a fixed rate, slow months pay less — so ask whether the plan has an hourly base, guarantee or draw.

Whether that trade favors you depends on your book of work and your tolerance for variance, not on the trade itself.

If you are weighing service-side roles, browse HVAC technician jobs or plumber jobs to see how shops in your market structure pay.

Neither side wins every line, so the honest answer is a profile match rather than a verdict.

• You want the highest rate you can verify in advance. Full-time union members out-earned non-union workers in both occupation groups in 2025 — $1,561 against $1,004 in construction and extraction, $1,571 against $1,140 in installation, maintenance and repair — and the union side's benefits arrive as funded contributions, not wages. Check your local's current rate sheet rather than anyone's average; scale is renegotiated and local.
• You are a strong service tech who wants earnings tied to output. The non-union side offers variable pay, raises you negotiate individually, and the ceiling commission plans leave open. The price is variance, and a package that is only as good as your employer's promise — get it in writing.
• You care most about steadiness. Our research found no federal data on bench time by union status, so ask what last winter looked like — on the hall side and the shop side alike.

Two decisions sit outside this page.

If you are not in the trade yet, union vs non-union is really an apprenticeship question — the programs differ more than the pay does at that stage — and our union vs non-union apprenticeship comparison owns it.

For the trade-by-trade detail behind the averages, the union pay guides linked above go deeper.

The verdict in one sentence: on the raw federal numbers, union workers out-earn non-union workers in both trades' occupation groups — but the number that decides your year is written in an offer, and it has four lines: the rate, the package behind it, the weeks that come with it, and the upside the plan leaves you.

Career information, not legal or financial advice. Wage rates, benefit contributions and referral rules are set by each local's agreements and each employer's policies, and both change when renegotiated — confirm current figures with the local union or the employer before you rely on them.