What should a plumbing apprentice job description include? (free template)

Duties and responsibilities.

Write the description before you advertise the job.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, essential functions are the fundamental duties of the position, not the marginal ones, and a written description prepared before advertising or interviewing is evidence of what is essential — a function can be essential because the job exists to perform it, because few employees are available to share it, or because it is highly specialised.

At the apprentice rung that evidence carries a specific warning: list the duties the apprentice actually starts on, not an aspirational journeyman list, because the description is what your plumbers will hold the hire to and what you will screen against.

Split the work the way your trucks actually run — residential or commercial, service and repair or new construction and remodels, emergency call-outs or scheduled maintenance — because that split is the fastest fit signal your posting gives.

Then name the day-one duties in your shop's words: jobsite setup and cleanup, material handling and supply runs, measuring and cutting pipe under a licensed plumber's direction, digging and backfilling trenches, drain machine work, fixture help, and documenting every job in your field software.

The code knowledge, rough-in skills and diagnosis come later — that is what the apprenticeship exists to build.

If you need the day-to-day definition of the role first, our career-side guide to what a plumbing apprentice does covers the job from the candidate's side; this page stays on the employer's side of it.

Physical demands, stated plainly.

Before a conditional offer you may state the job's physical requirements — lifting a set weight, climbing ladders, digging and working in tight spaces — and ask whether the applicant can meet them.

Putting them in the description does double duty: it tells candidates what the day costs their body, and it gives you compliant wording to screen on later.

Pre-offer you may also ask about skills, education, work history and required certifications and licences, and ask applicants to describe or demonstrate how they would do job tasks.

Licence and registration requirements — worded exactly.

Never write a generic "must hold a state plumbing licence" line in an apprentice ad: names, tiers and issuing authorities differ by state, and at the apprentice rung the requirement is usually a registration — sometimes two, and they are separate paperwork trails.

One trail is enrollment in a registered apprenticeship program, registered either by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Apprenticeship or by a recognized State Apprenticeship Agency.

The other is the state plumbing board's own apprentice registration or licence.

Finishing the program earns a completion certificate from the registration agency — it is not a trade licence, and the journeyman licence comes later from the board — so word them as two separate lines in the posting.

The board-side names are genuinely different state by state, so look yours up before you post.

In Colorado, anyone employed in the plumbing trade who is not a licensed plumber must register as a plumbing apprentice with the State Plumbing Board until licensed.

Maryland issues plumbing apprentice licences to candidates 16 and older through the state board.

Illinois's state levels are the licensed apprentice plumber and the licensed plumber — issued by the Illinois Department of Public Health, with no journeyman or master tier to name.

Maine requires a Trainee Plumber licence from the Plumbers' Examining Board — anyone doing plumbing work needs a licence.

Iowa apprentices must hold a board apprentice licence in addition to being enrolled in a registered apprenticeship program.

Minnesota lets apprentices in a DLI-registered program do plumbing work under direct supervision, while anyone not in such a program must register as a registered unlicensed plumber.

Kansas, by contrast, sets no statewide apprentice registration with a licensing board.

As of September 2026, 24 jurisdictions run the statewide apprentice/trainee → journeyman → master licensing ladder, and in seven states — Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming — there is no state plumber licence at all: cities, counties or an industry board do the licensing, so name the local licence your jobs actually fall under.

Then word the requirement the way the hire can actually meet it: "[State] [apprentice registration or licence name] (or willingness to register within [N] days of hire)", and, if you run a registered program, "enrolled in — or willing to enroll in — a registered apprenticeship program".

If the candidate can qualify after you hire them, say so rather than implying they must arrive licensed.

Verify before you post.

Apprentice registrations, fees and program rules change, and licensing is often local.

Confirm what your apprentice needs with your state plumbing board — or the city and county where licensing is local — and get the registration paperwork done before their first shift.

The state-by-state registration map, and what each board credits toward licensure, is laid out in our guide to how to hire a plumbing apprentice.

Pay and pay-plan disclosure.

Post a real range — the low, the high, and how the plan works.

At the apprentice rung this matters more, not less: BLS publishes no apprentice wage figure, and what it does say is that apprentices earn less than fully trained plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, but their pay increases as they learn to do more.

A posting with no numbers invites your strongest applicant to assume the worst and the competing shop's ad to answer for you.

A number of states now require the range in the posting itself.

As of September 2026, statutes confirmed to require a pay range in job postings include California (employers with 15 or more employees), Colorado, Washington State (15 or more), the District of Columbia, Maryland, Maine (10 or more, from July 29, 2026), Massachusetts (25 or more), Minnesota (30 or more), Illinois (15 or more), New Jersey (10 or more), New York (4 or more), Vermont (5 or more) and Virginia (from July 1, 2026).

Delaware's law is signed but does not take effect until September 26, 2027, and will not apply to employers with 25 or fewer employees.

Connecticut and Rhode Island do not require the range in the posting, but require the wage range on request, by the time of an offer, or before pay is discussed.

Our research did not confirm posting requirements in Hawaii or Nevada, and city ordinances were outside this check, so verify each state — and each city — where the job is located; the rules are compiled in our guide to pay transparency laws by state.

Several of these laws reach past the number.

Colorado requires a benefits description and how and when to apply in every posting; Illinois lets a hyperlink to a public page carrying the pay scale and benefits satisfy the rule; Minnesota and Washington require a general description of benefits; Washington, D.C. requires the minimum and maximum projected pay in every listing and disclosure of healthcare benefits before the first interview.

New York goes further on plan type: postings must clearly state if a position is commission-based.

Name the pay plan itself.

If you run a registered apprenticeship, federal rules require a progressively increasing schedule of wages consistent with the skill acquired, with an entry wage not below the FLSA minimum wage where applicable — and federal law sets no percentage steps: the "percent of journeyworker pay" ladder lives in each program's standards or collective bargaining agreement, not in the federal rule.

So post your program's actual steps, not a generic percentage.

For the market numbers behind the range, our plumbing apprentice salary page publishes the closest published BLS bands.

Schedule, on-call, supervision, truck and tools.

These lines filter more apprentices than any perk, so state each one instead of letting the new hire discover it.

Schedule: give the working days and hours and the honest seasonal shape of the work — most plumbers work full time, including nights and weekends, and plumbers are often on call for emergencies, so say where your apprentice lands in that reality.

Say when trade school falls, too: registered programs pair on-the-job hours with related technical instruction — the Labor Department recommends, but does not require, at least 144 hours of it per year — so name the class nights and whether class hours are paid.

Training time on the clock is still on the clock: ride-along and training time is paid work time unless all four tests are met — outside regular hours, truly voluntary, not directly related to the job, and no productive work performed — and a ride-along with your crew fails those tests, so budget the training period as paid time.

On-call: say whether there is a rotation, how often it lands on the newest hire, and how after-hours call-outs are paid.

Supervision: program standards must state a numeric apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio, and state licensing laws often set their own — so if your posting promises one-on-one mentoring, check both; state-by-state ratios are in our guide to the apprentice to journeyman ratio.

Truck and tools: say whether the truck is company-provided and whether it goes home with the apprentice, what you supply — fuel card, tablets, the large and specialty tools — and what the apprentice is expected to bring, such as hand tools.

If you fund licence and registration renewals, certification fees or trade school, name it; at the apprentice rung, paid training is the most credible line in the ad.

Apprentices read postings the way managers wish candidates read resumes: fast, and looking for reasons to stop.

An apprentice is comparing first rungs, and the first shop that treats the training as real wins the hire.

The fastest reasons to stop are all fixable in the copy.

No pay range.

At the entry rung candidates compare offers shop against shop, and a posting that hides the number reads as a number worth hiding.

In the states listed above it is also a legal exposure, not just a conversion problem.

A registration line the apprentice rung cannot satisfy.

Demanding a journeyman or master licence in an apprentice ad screens out everyone the ad is for, and a generic "state plumbing licence" tells the reader you have not checked your own market.

In the seven states with no state plumber licence there is no state licence to name in the first place, and Illinois's state tiers stop at "licensed plumber".

Name the exact apprentice registration your state — or city — requires, or state plainly that you will register the right candidate yourself.

Age-coded wording.

Apprentice ads drift young.

Terms like "young", "recent college graduate", "boy" or "girl" violate age-discrimination rules unless a statutory exception applies, and help-wanted ads may not show a preference for, or discourage, applicants based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age 40 or older, disability or genetic information.

Describe the work, not the person you imagine doing it.

Questions the posting cannot ask.

Stating the physical demands and asking whether the applicant can meet them is allowed.

Asking about past job injuries or workers' compensation history before an offer is not — keep those questions out of the posting, the application form and the phone screen.

Referral-only hiring.

Recruiting mainly by word of mouth through a mostly one-group workforce can itself be discriminatory if almost all hires come from that group.

Post the job publicly.

Small-shop assumptions.

Federal EEO laws cover private employers with 15 or more employees and the age law those with 20 or more, but state laws often cover smaller shops, so check yours.

EEO taglines are required for federal contractors; many other employers add an equal-opportunity line voluntarily.

Screening rules you have not checked.

Background-check, ban-the-box and paid-sick-leave rules vary by state and city and were not verified state by state in our research — confirm the rules where you hire before you screen.

Eligibility verification, before the first day.

While applications come in, check whether your state mandates E-Verify.

Florida and North Carolina require private employers with 25 or more employees to use it for new hires.

South Carolina requires every private employer to verify every new employee within three business days, and Arizona, Alabama and Mississippi require every employer to use it too.

The thresholds reported for Georgia, Tennessee and Utah were not verified in our research, so check your state's current rule directly.

Federal contractors covered by the FAR E-Verify clause must enroll within 30 days of contract award.

With the copy fixed, put the posting where apprentices actually look: browse current plumbing apprentice jobs to see what candidates see on the board.

For the line-by-line craft of the ad itself, our guide to how to write a job ad for HVAC technicians covers the title, structure and the words that earn the click, and how to hire a plumbing apprentice runs the full process from sourcing and pay to screening.

This page is employer career information, not legal advice. Confirm apprentice registration requirements with the issuing board — the state, or the city and county where licensing is local — pay-posting rules with each state labor department, and employment-law questions with an employment attorney.