How Much Do Plumbers Really Make? The Honest Wage Spread

I have hired a lot of plumbers. Not as a coworker, as the general contractor writing the check. Twenty years of kitchen and bathroom remodels in the Pacific Northwest means a plumber walks onto almost every job I run, and I have watched which ones stay booked twelve months out and which ones are chasing work in February.

So when somebody asks me how much plumbers really make, I already know the honest answer is not a single number. It is a range that runs from roughly $44,000 to over $108,000 nationally, and what moves you inside that range is mostly geography, license status, and who signs your check.

Here is what the actual wage data says, percentile by percentile.

The Number Everyone Quotes, and the Two They Skip

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 puts the national median for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters at $63,800 a year across 465,840 wage and salary workers. That is the figure that ends up in every “the trades pay well” headline.

Two other numbers tell you more.

The first is the mean, $72,170. When the average sits $8,370 above the median, the top of the field is pulling the average up, which means the upside is real but it is not where most plumbers are actually standing.

The second is the spread itself.

Percentile	Annual wage
10th	$44,150
25th	$50,190
Median	$63,800
75th	$85,110
90th	$108,420

Source: BLS OEWS May 2025, national, SOC 47-2152. That last row is the one that gets screenshotted and posted without the first row attached.

Read it as a career arc instead of a lottery ticket. A first-year helper lives near the bottom rows. A licensed journeyman with a decade in lives around the middle. The 90th percentile is usually a master, a service tech on commission, a foreman, or somebody working commercial pipe in an expensive union market.

Where You Turn Wrenches Beats How Good You Are

This is the part nobody wants to hear, and it is the biggest single factor in the data.

Illinois plumbers have a state median of $99,950. Arkansas plumbers have a state median of $48,660. Same trade, same code book, a $51,290 gap on the median alone.

State	State median	State 90th percentile
Illinois	$99,950	$126,430
Oregon	$97,050	$147,100
Minnesota	$94,410	$121,050
Massachusetts	$93,880	$135,080
Washington	$81,030	$141,860
Florida	$52,910	$73,610
Arkansas	$48,660	$68,870

All figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 state medians, not national numbers. Cost of living explains part of that gap and not all of it. Oregon’s 90th percentile is $147,100. Arkansas tops out at $68,870, which is below the Oregon median.

The States With the Most Plumbers Pay the Least

Texas employs 44,090 plumbers, more than any other state. The Texas median is $59,840 and the Texas 90th percentile is $81,890, which lands below the national 75th percentile of $85,110.

Florida is second in headcount at 29,260 and sits at a $52,910 median.

Illinois, by contrast, employs 16,750 and pays a $99,950 median. Big plumbing labor markets are not automatically well-paid plumbing labor markets, and if you are picking where to start, that is worth more than any list of “best states for trades” you will find on a career blog.

What the First Five Years Actually Pay

Plumbing is a paid apprenticeship trade, which is the whole argument. Entry is typically a four to five year apprenticeship with about 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training a year plus classroom instruction. UA locals set their own hour requirements: Local 322 requires a minimum of 8,500 on-the-job hours, and Local 51 requires 10,000 on-the-job hours plus 1,230 classroom hours.

Most states, and some cities on top of that, license plumbers. Journeyman licensing usually takes two to five years of documented experience plus an exam, and master status takes another exam that some states require before you can pull a contractor license.

Our model prices the apprentice years at 50, 65, 80 and 90 percent of the state journeyman median, with $7,500 of training cost charged in year one. Run Washington through it, where the median is $81,030:

• Year 1: $40,515 earned, minus $7,500 training, nets $33,015
• Year 2: $52,670
• Year 3: $64,824
• Year 4: $72,927

Cumulative through year four: $223,436, with no debt attached. A four-year degree over those same four years is $60,000 out the door in tuition and fees and $37,850 owed at graduation.

That is a swing of roughly $283,000 in position before the plumber’s license is even hung on the wall. Every constant in that comparison, including the tuition and debt figures, is listed with its source on the methodology page.

The Ten-Year Number, Best State and Worst

The model runs both paths from age 18 for ten years, strips living costs and taxes out of both sides so neither gets an unfair edge, and reports cumulative net earnings after education costs and loan interest. The college path lands at $321,441 at year ten.

State	Plumber 10-year net	Edge vs the degree
Illinois	$917,258	+$595,816
Massachusetts	$852,438	+$530,997
Washington	$762,396	+$440,954
Texas	$550,604	+$229,163
Florida	$480,574	+$159,132
Arkansas	$446,981	+$125,540

The worst-paying plumbing state in the country still finishes $125,540 ahead of the average bachelor’s path over ten years. Not because plumbing is glamorous. Because four years of zero earnings plus $37,850 of debt at 6.39 percent is a deep hole to climb out of, and the plumber never dug it.

Ten years is a deliberately short window. Some degrees pull ahead later, and the methodology page says so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.

Three Things the BLS Number Does Not Include

This is where the honest accounting matters, and it cuts both directions.

Overtime is not in there. BLS OEWS converts hourly wages to annual figures by multiplying by 2,080 hours, a year-round full-time schedule. Storm work, night service calls, and shutdown weeks do not show up in that math, so a service plumber on call can clear meaningfully more than the published number.

Self-employed plumbers are not in there either. OEWS covers wage and salary workers. The guy who owns the van, carries the license, and bills the homeowner directly is excluded from the entire dataset, and in my experience as the GC hiring him, he is not the low earner on the job.

Your own costs are in your column, not theirs. Tools, boots, a truck in some shops, license renewals, continuing education. Nobody reimburses you for the back you spent twenty years crawling under houses on.

The Growth Story Is Retirements, Not a Boom

I would rather give you the unflattering version than the recruiting-brochure version.

BLS projects plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters to grow 4 percent from 2024 to 2034, from 504,500 jobs to 527,200. That is about 22,700 added positions across a decade. Meanwhile there are roughly 44,000 openings a year, and about 95 percent of those come from people leaving the trade or retiring out of it, not from new demand.

Read that correctly and it is still good news for a 19-year-old. The openings are real and they are steady. They just come from the generation ahead of you walking off the job for the last time, which is exactly what I see on my own jobsites when the best plumber I know starts talking about how many winters he has left in him.

Run Your Own Number Instead of Mine

National medians are a starting point, not an answer. Your state, your license path, and whether you land a paid apprenticeship or pay for school first will move your ten-year number by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Pull up the plumber hub for the full state-by-state wage table, or drop your state into the ROI calculator and see the two paths side by side with the actual numbers filled in.

The math is the math. Take a look at where you actually live before you decide either way.