There is no national apprentice plumber wage: the federal wage tables publish no apprentice figure, and each registered program sets its own pay steps.
What the data does give you is the range apprentices work inside — plumbing helpers, the closest federal category, earn a median of $20.36 an hour ($42,360 a year), against $30.67 ($63,800) for the full trade.
Here is how the pay schedule rises year by year, and how to read an offer.
Typical apprentice plumber pay
Start with what doesn't exist: a federal apprentice wage.
The BLS wage tables count plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters together (SOC 47-2152) and publish no apprentice-only figure — the government's 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.
So the honest benchmarks are proxies.
BLS publishes no "starting pay" statistic, and the closest proxies for entry-level plumbing pay are the trade's lower percentiles and the helper category.
From the May 2025 OEWS data (released May 15, 2026):
- Helpers—Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-3015), the one trade-specific helper category BLS tracks: a median of $20.36 an hour, or $42,360 a year.
- The trade's lower percentiles: $21.22 an hour ($44,150 a year) at the 10th percentile, $24.13 ($50,190) at the 25th.
- The trade's median — the ceiling apprentices step toward: $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year.
None of these is an apprentice wage, and what an individual apprentice actually earns is the number on their program's wage schedule, which federal law lets each program set.
Treat the figures as sense-checks for an offer, not targets.
Our plumbing apprentice salary page keeps these benchmarks alongside what they can and can't tell you, and the trade-wide tables — state-by-state medians and the full percentile spread — are on our plumber salary page.
If you're still weighing how to enter the trade, our guide to the plumbing apprenticeship covers the routes in and how the term works.
Pay by year of apprenticeship
Apprentice pay is engineered to rise — but the federal government sets the shape of the rise, not the amounts.
The shape: registered apprenticeship programs must pay a progressively increasing schedule of wages, consistent with the skill the apprentice acquires, with an entry wage not below the minimum wage prescribed by the Fair Labor Standards Act where it applies — or below a higher rate another law or a collective bargaining agreement requires (29 CFR 29.5(b)(5)).
The term underneath it is what BLS describes for the trade: most plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters learn through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship, with 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training plus technical instruction each year.
United Association programs, which train plumbers among the pipe trades, typically run five years.
The amounts are not federal.
The federal rule sets no percentage of the journeyworker rate — step sizes come from each registered program's standards or its collective bargaining agreement.
That is why no honest national table of "first year, second year, third year" percentages exists, and why this page won't print one: our research verified no generic UA or PHCC apprentice wage schedule from a primary source, and no standard step-percentage schedule applies across UA and SMART locals — each local's joint apprenticeship and training committee (JATC) sets its own.
Where percentages are formal is federal construction.
On Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage jobs — federally funded contracts over $2,000 — apprentice rates are set as percentages of the journeyworker hourly rate by the registered program (29 CFR 5.5(a)(4)(i)).
An apprentice can be paid below the journeyworker rate only if individually registered in a program registered with the Department of Labor's Office of Apprenticeship or a recognized State Apprenticeship Agency, and the apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio on the job may not exceed the program's ratio.
Anyone paid at apprentice rates who is not registered must get the full wage-determination rate for the work they perform.
So the year-by-year answer lives in one document: your program's wage schedule.
Ask for it before you sign, and keep your own copy.
Where these steps fit the trade's whole plumber pay scale — and what the BLS numbers do and don't show at each rung — is covered in our pay-scale guide.
Your raise schedule lives in the program's standards
Union vs non-union apprentice pay
Union and non-union apprenticeship differ less in the wage rules than in who writes them.
Every registered program works under the same federal requirement — wages that rise with skill from an entry floor at or above the applicable minimum wage.
What changes is the document the steps live in.
In a union program, the steps are negotiated.
United Association apprenticeships are registered with the U.S. Department of Labor and combine paid on-the-job training with classroom instruction, typically across five years.
Pay steps, like the rest of the terms, come from the local's collective bargaining agreement, and each local JATC sets its own — no standard UA schedule applies across locals, and none was verified in our research.
In a non-union program, the sponsor's registered standards carry the schedule.
BLS counts unions, trade associations and businesses among program sponsors, so an open-shop contractor's registered program carries the same federal wage requirements as a JATC's — the difference is that the employer writes the standards rather than negotiating them.
On how the two compare in pay: BLS publishes no union membership rate or union pay comparison for plumbers specifically, so no verified "union premium" exists for the trade.
The broad figures that exist are occupation-group numbers.
In 2025, 16.4 percent of wage-and-salary workers in construction and extraction occupations were union members.
Full-time union members in that occupation group had median weekly earnings of $1,561 against $1,004 for non-union workers — a raw comparison across every construction and extraction occupation, not a plumber-only or apprentice-only figure, and not a like-for-like premium.
The comparison an apprentice can actually verify is the one in the offers in front of you: the wage schedule, the classroom arrangement and the benefits, each in writing.
Do apprentice plumbers get benefits?
Benefits are where two offers with the same wage can diverge — and where the data is quietest.
No federal table prices apprentice benefit packages, and our research verified no national figure, so what you're owed beyond the wage schedule is whatever your program's standards or contract says.
Get it in the same document as the wage steps.
What the record does establish:
- Federally funded construction carries fringes. The Davis-Bacon rules apply to contractors on federally funded or assisted construction contracts over $2,000 and require at least locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits. Registered apprentices on those jobs are paid their program's percentage of the prevailing rate.
- Wage statistics understate benefits. The BLS wage figures this page cites exclude benefits entirely — along with overtime pay and shift differentials — so the numbers are base pay as measured, and two offers with the same wage can differ in total compensation.
- Veterans in apprenticeship add a housing allowance. Under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, apprentices training full-time get a monthly housing allowance that starts at 100 percent of the E-5-with-dependents housing rate for months 1–6, then steps down: 80 percent for months 7–12, 60 percent for months 13–18, 40 percent for months 19–24, and 20 percent after 24 months. It is reduced proportionally in any month with fewer than 120 training hours.
Health coverage, retirement contributions, tool allowances and paid classroom time are all set by the sponsor or the local agreement — ask what's included before you compare two offers on wages alone.
How to evaluate an apprentice plumber offer
An apprentice offer is a multi-year contract with a raise schedule in it.
Check these before you sign:
- Get the wage schedule in writing — every step, with the wage or percentage for each period of the term. A registered program is required to have a progressively increasing schedule, so a sponsor that can't show you one is a warning sign.
- Confirm the program is registered with the Department of Labor's Office of Apprenticeship or a recognized State Apprenticeship Agency. Registration is what puts the federal wage rules behind your raises.
- Ask what you're paid during probation. A program's probationary period may not exceed 25 percent of the program length or 1 year, whichever is shorter, and it counts toward completion — the schedule should say what it pays.
- Compare the offer to the federal benchmarks: the plumbing-helper median of $20.36 an hour and the trade's entry percentiles above. An offer far below them deserves a question.
- If the work includes Davis-Bacon jobs outside the program's home area, ask which locality's ratios and wage percentages apply — on those jobs, the project's locality sets them.
- Know the backstop: on Davis-Bacon jobs, anyone paid at an apprentice rate who is not individually registered — or who works above the program's apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio — must be paid the full wage-determination rate for the work.
Career information, not legal advice. Apprentice wage schedules are set by program sponsors and, in union programs, by collective bargaining agreements; Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage rules are set by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. Confirm the terms that matter with your program sponsor and, for pay questions on federally funded jobs, with the Department of Labor.