How much should you pay a plumber, and on what pay plan?

Start from the national numbers, then correct for your state.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 465,840 wage-and-salary plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) in its May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics — the latest federal wage data, released May 15, 2026.

The national median was $30.67 an hour, $63,800 a year.

Half the workforce earns more than that, half less.

The percentile spread is what you actually hire inside: the 10th percentile was $21.22 an hour ($44,150 a year), the 25th $24.13 ($50,190), the 75th $40.92 ($85,110) and the 90th $52.13 ($108,420).

Because the 75th sits at $85,110 and the 90th at $108,420, somewhere between 10% and 25% of these workers earned six figures in base pay as BLS measures it — BLS does not publish the exact share.

Where you hire moves the whole band.

Ranked by annual median wage, BLS's top five "states" in May 2025 were District of Columbia $101,020 — BLS counts DC as a state — then Illinois $99,950, Oregon $97,050, Minnesota $94,410 and Alaska $93,920.

The volume sits elsewhere: the states with the most plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter jobs were California (47,660), Texas (44,090), Florida (29,260), New York (23,210) and Illinois (16,750).

A Texas or Florida shop hiring against the national median is often bidding against a cheaper local market; an Oregon or Minnesota shop is bidding well above it.

The full state-by-state table is on our plumber salary by state page.

Who employs the plumber matters too.

In 2025, 65% of plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter jobs were with plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors, and 8% of workers were self-employed.

May 2025 median wages by top industry: government $71,660; manufacturing $65,770; heavy and civil engineering construction $63,270; and plumbing/HVAC contractors $63,010 — within that contractor industry, BLS counted 330,570 of these jobs at a $63,010 median.

In other words: the typical residential-service employer is paying close to the national median, while government and manufacturing employers pull the top of the market up.

Two caveats before you anchor on any of this.

First, these are median wages for the combined plumber/pipefitter/steamfitter occupation — BLS publishes no plumber-only, residential-only or commercial-only figure.

Second, BLS wage data exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses such as sign-on bonuses, so a plumber who works calling hours can out-earn the published figures.

Curious what the other side of your posting sees?

Browse current plumber jobs on the board.

Demand context: BLS projects employment in this occupation to grow 6.8% from 2025 to 2035 — well above the 3.5% all-occupation average — with an average of 42,000 openings a year, which is why the band you post has to be deliberate rather than reactive.

BLS has no "starting pay" statistic and no journeyman-versus-master wage — the occupation is published as one combined SOC.

What you can do is read the ladder from the three places BLS does measure: the trade's own helper occupation, the percentile spread of the main SOC, and the supervisor occupation above it.

Helper and apprentice stage.

Plumbers' helpers have their own BLS occupation (SOC 47-3015, Helpers—Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters): a national median of $20.36 an hour, $42,360 a year, with the 25th percentile at $17.76 and the 75th at $22.94.

Most plumbers learn the trade through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship with 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training plus technical instruction in a typical year.

Apprentices earn less than fully trained plumbers, and their pay increases as they learn to do more — but federal rules for registered apprenticeship programs (29 CFR 29.5(b)(5)) require only a progressively increasing schedule of wages with an entry wage not below the FLSA minimum.

Federal law does not set apprentice pay as a fixed percentage of the journeyman rate: the familiar "50% rising to 90%" ladders come from each registered program's standards or a collective bargaining agreement, not from the Department of Labor.

On Davis-Bacon federal construction, apprentice rates are expressed as percentages of the journeyworker rate — per the registered program — and only individually registered apprentices may be paid them.

Entry into journeyman work.

For the first years of licensed work, the closest proxies are the bottom percentiles of the main occupation: the 10th percentile at $21.22 an hour ($44,150 a year) and the 25th at $24.13 ($50,190).

A newly licensed journeyman you can trust alone on service calls is usually worth more than those floor figures — they are the occupation-wide floor, not a journeyman rate.

Established journeyman.

The median of $30.67 an hour ($63,800 a year) is the center of gravity for what to pay a journeyman plumber, and the 75th percentile ($40.92, $85,110) is where strong, independent, customer-facing journeymen sit.

When you compete for a licensed journeyman in a tight market, you are usually bidding at or above the median — and your state's own median may sit far from the national one, so check the state table before you post.

Lead and supervisory pay.

Above the crew, BLS's broader category is first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers (SOC 47-1011) — all construction trades, not plumbers only — with a national median of $79,920.

Within plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors specifically, that supervisor median is $93,320.

Treat those as the neighborhood your lead plumber's pay lives in, and label it honestly in your own budgeting: it is the broader supervisor category, not a "lead plumber" occupation.

The dollar band answers "how much"; the pay plan answers "paid for what."

The same four blocks exist in plumbing as in HVAC — hourly, flat rate, commission and hybrid — and the choice follows the shape of your trucks' work more than the trade on the side of the van.

Hourly fits diagnostic service work, drain calls of unknowable length, and maintenance routes: the tech is paid for careful process, and you carry the slow hours.

Flat rate — book rate — fits defined repairs and contracted installations, where the job's scope is known before the truck rolls and a skilled plumber who beats book time earns more per clock hour.

Commission attaches mainly to replacement and installation sales, where the plumber is also selling the job.

Hybrid combines an hourly floor with a variable layer pointed at one or two measurable outcomes.

Many plumbing shops run more than one plan at once — hourly service techs, flat-rate install crews — and one caution travels with every block: BLS publishes no wage split by plan or by service-versus-construction work, so no federal number tells you what a "flat-rate plumber" earns.

The plan choice does not touch the wage-and-hour floor underneath it.

Flat-rate (per-job) pay does not remove the FLSA overtime duty — the regular rate is total job pay divided by hours actually worked, plus half-time for each hour over 40 — and commissions are pay for hours worked and must be included in the regular rate.

Because those calculations get technical fast, we keep the full comparison, including the regular-rate math and the narrow commission exemption, in our HVAC technician pay plan guide — the rules are the same on a plumbing truck, and it walks each plan through cost structure, behavior and compliance.

One plumbing-specific overlap: apprentices on a flat-rate crew.

If your apprentice is registered in a program, the program's wage schedule — not the book rate alone — sets the legal floor for that apprentice's pay, and on federally funded work the registered percentage ladder governs.

Design the book so a registered apprentice's guaranteed rate clears the program schedule in every week, not just on average.

Premiums are how you price the things the base band doesn't capture: authority, availability and responsibility.

BLS publishes no premium figures for plumbing, so the honest versions of these numbers come from your market — but the structure below is what shops are typically pricing.

Licence-tier premium.

Where plumbers are licensed, the classic ladder runs apprentice → journeyman → master, and each rung that adds signing authority is one to budget a premium for.

The ladder is not uniform: five states top the journeyman licence with an individual contractor licence instead of a master licence (Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota), four license at the journeyman level with no state master licence at all (Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington), and seven states have no state plumber licence — cities and counties do the licensing (Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Wyoming).

In a group of states the master licence is itself what lets a business contract for plumbing work — there is no separate state plumbing-contractor licence — so a master plumber or licence qualifier is not just a senior tech; they are the person whose licence stands behind your company's legal right to operate.

That is why a qualifier is worth paying a premium for, and why our guide to the HVAC contractor license qualifier role matters equally on the plumbing side.

Because BLS publishes no journeyman-versus-master wage, set the premium by asking what the licence holder can sign off in your jurisdiction — then verify current licence titles and requirements with your state board, or the city or county where licensing is local.

On-call premium.

BLS notes that most plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters work full time including nights and weekends, and that plumbers are often on call for emergencies.

That availability has a price, and note what the federal data deliberately leave out: BLS wage figures exclude overtime pay and shift differentials, so there is no national on-call premium to look up — the published medians do not contain it.

Decide the mechanics before you post: a standby rate for hours on call, a minimum callback payment for a run night call, or premium hourly for after-hours work — and put whichever you choose in writing.

What you should not do is assume availability is free, or let after-hours response erode into unpaid expectation.

Lead premium.

When a journeyman starts running the truck — training the apprentice, holding the schedule, owning the callback — you have crossed into supervisory pay.

The BLS supervisor benchmarks in the experience section above ($79,920 nationally, $93,320 at plumbing and HVAC contractors) mark the range; the premium itself is the gap between what you pay your best solo journeyman and what running the crew is worth to you.

Pay it deliberately: underpaid leads are how your competitor's recruiter finds its next foreman.

The wage figures in this guide are base pay as BLS measures it: they include commissions and production bonuses, but exclude overtime, shift differentials, non-production bonuses — and benefits entirely.

Two plumbers at the same median can cost their employers very different amounts, and the difference is often what wins the hire.

Benefits are where small shops lose and can choose not to.

In BLS's March 2026 Employee Benefits survey, 75% of private-industry construction and extraction workers — the group plumbers sit in — had access to employer medical care, and 66% had access to retirement benefits, with 49% participating.

Establishment size drives the gap you can exploit: at establishments with 1–49 workers, only 55% of workers had access to medical plans and 55% to retirement benefits, versus 90% and 91% at establishments with 500 or more.

Paid leave among construction and extraction workers: 71% had paid sick leave, 77% paid vacation and 82% paid holidays.

Matching the benefits norm of your size class — not the national average — is the cheapest way to stop losing offers on the benefits line.

Union versus open-shop benchmarks.

In 2025, 16.4% of wage-and-salary construction and extraction workers 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 — but read that as a raw comparison, not a plumber premium: it is not controlled for occupation mix, region or experience, and BLS publishes no union wage for plumbers specifically.

The benefit side is starker: 91% of private-industry union workers had access to retirement benefits versus 70% of non-union workers.

If you bid against a UA-signatory shop for the same journeyman, you are competing against the whole package — wage, pension and health — so know what the package costs before you assume your hourly number wins.

Truck and tools are compensation too.

A properly marked and outfitted service van — qualified nonpersonal-use vehicle rules apply to a van of 14,000 pounds or less with only a driver (or driver plus one passenger) seat and permanent shelving — lets the plumber commute without creating a taxable fringe.

On tools: reimbursements are tax-free to the tech only under an accountable plan, with receipts; and a shop that makes techs buy their own tools violates the FLSA in any week where that cost cuts into minimum wage or overtime owed.

A stated tool allowance, run through the plan correctly, is compensation a candidate can price — hand them a tool list and a surprise, and they will price that too.

Budget the drift.

Wages are moving: the Employment Cost Index shows private-industry construction and extraction wages up 3.9% over the year ended June 2026 (installation, maintenance and repair: 3.7%).

A band you set this year at last year's numbers is a band you will re-post within twelve months.

This page is employer career and business information, not legal or tax advice. Pay-plan and overtime treatment depends on your pay mix and state — confirm specifics with an employment attorney or the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, and licence questions with your state board or local licensing authority.