How do you hire a plumber? Sourcing, pay, screening and red flags

A plumber is your water and drainage line: installations and repairs of supply, drain, waste and vent systems, fixture and water-heater work, drain clearing, service calls, maintenance agreements, and rough-in work that has to pass inspection the first time.

On the business side that means billable hours per truck, callback risk, and permit sign-offs — so the hire decision is a licensing and liability decision as much as a staffing one.

The candidate pool is real, and every shop is fishing in it.

BLS counted 465,840 wage-and-salary plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters nationally in May 2025, and the industry that employs the most of them is building equipment contracting — the category HVAC and plumbing contractors sit in — with 340,140.

Most candidates already work for a shop like yours, which is why sourcing channels (below) matter more than posting volume.

Hire by level, not by title alone.

An apprentice or helper works under a licensed plumber and needs months of supervision before solo work is safe or legal.

A journeyman runs service calls and permitted work independently within their licence scope.

A master — or your state's top individual tier — is the level that can qualify a company's authority to contract.

That top tier deserves special attention: in a group of states — Texas among them — the individual master plumber licence is what lets a plumbing business contract at all, so a master-level hire is not just a tech, it is your qualifier.

The job title varies: Texas and Colorado call the role the Responsible Master Plumber — in Colorado the company itself registers as a Plumbing Contractor and that registration names a Responsible Master Plumber — while Montana and Massachusetts say master plumber of record, and Florida and Tennessee say qualifying agent.

The company-side rules are their own subject: plumbing contractor licence requirements by state covers them.

Decide up front what the hire must do on day one — solo service calls, permitted installations, on-call rotation — and what you will train.

The worker-side description of the job lives in our guide to what a plumber does, and you can see how candidates shop for the role on the plumber job board.

Plumbing licences are issued by states and cities — there is no national plumber licence a hire can carry between jurisdictions — and the tiers are not the same anywhere.

As of September 2026, 24 states issue a statewide licence with the classic apprentice → journeyman → master ladder.

Five — Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and South Dakota — top out at an individual contractor licence instead of a master tier.

Four — Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — issue a journeyman-level licence with no state master licence.

And four — Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina — have no journeyman rung at all.

At least eight states have no general state plumber licence.

In Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming, cities and counties do the licensing, and Nevada's cards come from an industry board.

Ohio is the eighth: the state licenses plumbing contractors — businesses — only, with no individual plumber licence to look up.

So do not assume every state licenses plumbers, and do not treat a licence title from one state as the same credential in the next.

Where exams are hands-on, the licence is a stronger signal of real bench skill.

Practical exam components exist for plumbing licences in Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey's master exam, New Mexico and Utah, plus Montana's diagram-based practical and local practicals in New York City and Omaha.

Practically, your verification routine is short.

Ask every candidate for their licence number and the issuing state, then look it up in the issuing board's public licence lookup — where licensing is local, that lookup belongs to the city or county.

Match the tier to the work you need done unsupervised.

And check the company side: where the master licence is also the contracting licence, the hire you are interviewing may be the credential your own authority to work hangs on.

Licence rules are state- and city-specific, and they change.

Before you post the job or extend an offer, confirm the current tiers, exam steps and any registration duties with your state plumbing board — or with the city or county that issues licences where licensing is local.

Registered apprenticeship pipelines are the steady source.

Associated Builders and Contractors runs 67 chapters with more than 450 registered craft-training programs, and PHCC state chapters also operate registered programs — both are places to hire apprentices out of, or to enroll the helpers you already have.

The same channels job seekers use are the ones you can post through.

BLS points apprenticeship seekers to state employment services, state apprenticeship agencies, local contractors and union-management apprenticeship committees, and to apprenticeship.gov — the union-management committees run the JATC programs graduating journeymen in your market.

If you can host one, the Defense Department's SkillBridge program lets you take on service members in their last 180 days of service as training providers.

Referrals from your current crew will be your fastest channel, but all-referral recruiting has a legal edge: recruiting mainly by word of mouth through a mostly one-group workforce can itself be discriminatory if almost all hires come from that group.

Mix channels, and keep the ads clean — job ads may not signal a preference for or against applicants by race, sex, age 40+, disability or the other protected classes.

Finally, post where working techs already look for trade work.

Our hub for hiring HVAC and plumbing techs collects every employer guide, and a niche board puts your opening in front of plumbers rather than the general public — use the Post a Job button below when the posting is ready.

One caveat before any "plumber salary" number: BLS reports a single occupation, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (SOC 47-2152), so its figures cover pipefitters and steamfitters too — there is no plumber-only federal wage series.

Within that SOC, the median wage was $63,800 a year ($30.67 an hour) in May 2025, and the middle half of the occupation earned between $50,190 (25th percentile) and $85,110 (75th percentile).

Know what those numbers measure.

OEWS counts only wage-and-salary workers, excluding the self-employed, and it excludes overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses such as sign-on bonuses while including commissions and production bonuses.

A tech who works heavy overtime can out-earn the printed figures — BLS does not publish by how much.

You are competing in a growing trade: BLS projects employment in the SOC to change 6.8% from 2025 to 2035, with about 42,000 openings a year on average — growth BLS calls much faster than average.

State-by-state figures sit on our plumber salary pages; anchor your offer to your own metro before a candidate shows you a competitor's.

On the pay plan itself: hourly is the simplest to run compliantly, and flat-rate (per-job) and commission plans are common — but the FLSA math does not change with the label.

A flat-rate tech is still owed overtime computed on total job pay divided by hours actually worked.

Commissions count in the overtime regular rate, and a spiff schedule you announce in advance — a dollar amount per maintenance agreement sold, for instance — is a promised, non-discretionary bonus, no matter what you call it.

Bonuses and commissions paid monthly or quarterly must be apportioned back over the weeks they were earned, with extra overtime owed for any week that had overtime hours.

The one overtime exemption that can fit commission-heavy pay plans, section 7(i), is narrow and decided case by case for a shop like yours — do not assume it covers your plumbers.

And since no government source publishes typical flat-rate percentages or spiff sizes, whatever plan you choose, write the numbers into the offer letter rather than leaving them to shop folklore.

Write the job description before you advertise.

Under the ADA, a written description prepared before advertising or interviewing is evidence of which functions are essential — and for a plumber, that list is also your screening rubric: solo service work, permitted installations, on-call rotation, licence level required.

The interview rules cut both ways.

Before an offer you may ask about licences, certifications, skills and work history, and you may ask candidates to describe or demonstrate how they would do a task — a drain diagnosis walked through out loud tells you more than a résumé bullet.

You may state physical demands and ask whether the candidate can meet them.

You may not ask about past job injuries or workers' compensation history — "ever hurt your back on the job?" is off-limits before an offer.

Verify the licence, not the story.

A licence number that clears the issuing board's lookup, in a tier that matches the work you need, is the single most predictive document in the file — the licence section above lists what the tiers look like state by state.

Ask about a recent job the candidate ran start to finish and have them talk through the choices; you are listening for method, not for memorized code citations.

If a screening company runs the background check, the FCRA sequence applies: a stand-alone written disclosure before the report is ordered, a copy of the report and the "Summary of Your Rights Under the FCRA" before any adverse decision, and an adverse-action notice after.

Keep the screen targeted — EEOC guidance weighs the nature of the offense, the time elapsed and the nature of the job, with an individualized assessment.

And if a record makes you hesitate on someone you want, the DOL's Federal Bonding Program issues free $5,000 fidelity bonds covering the first six months of an at-risk hire's employment.

Most of these are checkable in an afternoon, which is the point — a red flag you can verify is a decision, not a vibe.

• The licence number does not clear the lookup. A number the issuing board does not recognize, a name that does not match, or a tier that does not fit the claimed history ends the interview. Watch the title, too: a candidate advertising "master plumber" in Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon or Washington cannot hold one from their state, because those states issue no state master licence.
• Pressure to be paid as a 1099 subcontractor for work that looks like employment. Under the FLSA, status turns on the economic realities of the relationship, not the label, and true independent contractors get no minimum-wage or overtime protection. Misclassification exposure follows the work arrangement, not the paperwork both parties signed.
• Vague about what their licence level lets them do. A plumber who cannot say which tasks they may perform unsupervised in their state has either never worked inside a regulated ladder or has worked around one.
• Dismissive of permits and inspections. Rough-ins that "never get pulled" in jurisdictions that require permits become your liability the day the hire pulls one under your company.
• Cannot walk through a recent job start to finish. Sizing decisions, pressure and drain tests, what failed, and what the callback was — a working plumber narrates these easily; a résumé-only candidate stalls.

There is no industry-standard ramp-up for a new plumber — the schedule is yours to set, and what follows is an example structure, not a benchmark.

One payroll rule comes first: ride-along and training time is paid work time.

The conditions for unpaid training are narrow — outside regular hours, voluntary, not job-related, no productive work — and a new-tech ride-along fails them.

A workable shape: the first stretch on ride-alongs, learning your truck setup, pricing, and paperwork; then simple service calls solo, with a senior plumber reviewing the tickets; then permitted work, once you have watched the hire document a real job to your standard.

If your state registers apprentices or requires board notification for new hires, confirm that registration step with your board during the first week rather than after the first ticket.

If you pay a senior plumber to mentor the new hire, mind the overtime math: a mentor bonus or per-trainee stipend promised in advance is a non-discretionary bonus, and it belongs in the mentor's overtime regular rate.

If you run tech levels, write down the criteria for each step and the evidence for moving someone up.

Pay differences tied to documented seniority, merit, or production are defensible under the Equal Pay Act; undocumented ones are how equal-pay claims start.

By the end of the first quarter you should hold the same three artefacts for every plumber you hire: a clean licence verification on file, tickets that show solo work at the promised level, and a documented level review.

The strongest retention lever specific to this trade is the licence ladder itself.

Tie pay progression explicitly to the state's tiers — apprentice to journeyman, journeyman to master — and you give the tech a career while building your own qualifier pipeline; in the states where the master licence is the contracting licence, the plumber you keep is the licence your company runs on.

Funding exam fees and study time is cheap next to a vacancy in the qualifier seat.

For the pay conversation, budget from a real number: BLS's Employment Cost Index shows wages and salaries for construction, extraction, farming, fishing and forestry occupations rose 3.9% over the 12 months to June 2026, and for installation, maintenance and repair occupations 3.7%.

Label it what it is — wage growth for the occupation group, not a promised individual raise — and use it to keep your rates from drifting under market between reviews.

Remember what your techs see when they look around: the occupation is projected to grow 6.8% through 2035 with about 42,000 openings a year, and BLS calls that much faster than average.

Good plumbers get recruited.

The shops that keep them are the ones with predictable hours, a truck that works, a documented level path, and a licence ladder that pays.

This page is employer career and business information, not legal advice. Confirm licence and registration requirements with your state plumbing board — or the city or county where licensing is local — and check pay-plan and classification questions with an employment attorney before you roll them out.