The national answer, and why it is a range
The headline figure comes from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, the same source the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook uses for its pay tab. For May 2025 it puts the median annual wage for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters at $63,800. Half of the wage and salary workers in the occupation earned more than that and half earned less.
BLS does not publish a plumber-only figure. Its occupation code 47-2152 covers all three titles together, so every number on this page describes the combined group. Plumbers handle water, gas, and drainage piping in homes and businesses, while pipefitters and steamfitters work mostly in industrial and commercial systems. If you want the training side of the trade, our plumbing apprenticeship guide walks through the four- to five-year path to journey level.
A single median hides a wide spread. The table below lists the national percentile points BLS released for the occupation. The mean sits above the median because a smaller group of high earners pulls the average up.
| Point in the May 2025 national distribution | Annual wage |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | $44,150 |
| 25th percentile | $50,190 |
| Median (50th percentile) | $63,800 |
| Mean (average) | $72,170 |
| 75th percentile | $85,110 |
| 90th percentile | $108,420 |
Read the table as a ladder. A worker at the 25th percentile earned $50,190; one at the 75th earned $85,110, a gap of $34,920 between the edges of the middle half. The top tenth cleared $108,420. None of those points is a starting salary or a master plumber salary; BLS ranks all wage earners in the occupation together, whatever their license level.
State by state: where plumber pay is highest and lowest
The state-level OEWS medians for the same occupation code show how much geography matters. We pulled all 50 states plus the District of Columbia from the BLS public data series for May 2025. The six highest and six lowest medians are below.
| State or district | Median annual wage | Median hourly wage |
|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $101,020 | $48.57 |
| Illinois | $99,950 | $48.05 |
| Oregon | $97,050 | $46.66 |
| Minnesota | $94,410 | $45.39 |
| Alaska | $93,920 | $45.15 |
| Massachusetts | $93,880 | $45.14 |
| Mississippi | $55,480 | $26.67 |
| South Carolina | $53,940 | $25.93 |
| Florida | $52,910 | $25.44 |
| Idaho | $52,380 | $25.18 |
| South Dakota | $51,620 | $24.82 |
| Arkansas | $48,660 | $23.39 |
The District of Columbia and Illinois both sit near $100,000. Arkansas, at the bottom, is about $52,000 below DC. Of the 51 state-level medians, 26 were above the $63,800 national figure and 25 were below it.
Pay and job counts do not line up neatly. California, Texas, and Florida employ the most wage-earning plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters, and two of them pay below the national median.
| State | Wage-and-salary employment | Median annual wage |
|---|---|---|
| California | 47,660 | $72,830 |
| Texas | 44,090 | $59,840 |
| Florida | 29,260 | $52,910 |
| New York | 23,210 | $77,490 |
| Illinois | 16,750 | $99,950 |
Texas has nearly as many wage earners in this occupation as California but a median about $13,000 lower. Illinois has about a third as many as California and a median roughly $27,000 higher. BLS notes on its OEWS questions page that workers concentrated in large urban areas with higher costs of living are more likely to earn higher wages, and that unionized establishments may pay differently from non-union ones. The survey does not break out how much of any state gap comes from either factor, so treat those as possible influences and not a measured explanation.
What the annual figure counts, and what it leaves out
An OEWS annual wage is a conversion. The program's frequently asked questions page says its annual wage estimates assume a full-time, year-round schedule of 2,080 hours. That is why the national median hourly wage of $30.67 and the $63,800 annual median line up: multiply one by 2,080 and you land within a few dollars of the other.
The same FAQ lists what is excluded from OEWS wage data. Overtime pay, on-call pay, shift differentials, holiday premium pay, weekend premium pay, and year-end bonuses are all on the excluded list, while production bonuses and tips are counted. For this trade that matters. The Occupational Outlook Handbook says most plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters work full time, including nights and weekends, and that plumbers are often on call to handle emergencies. A plumber who regularly takes paid emergency calls can earn more in a year than the base-rate figure suggests, and the survey has no column that captures it.
Self-employment is the second gap. The OEWS survey covers wage and salary employees and, per the same FAQ, does not include the self-employed or owners of unincorporated firms. Nationally, OEWS counted 465,840 wage-earning plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters in May 2025, while the Handbook reports about 510,600 jobs in 2025 for the occupation, a figure from the BLS employment projections program that also counts self-employed workers. The Handbook lists self-employed workers as 8 percent of the occupation. Their earnings, which can be higher or lower than the employee median, are not in any of the tables on this page.
Apprentice, journey-level, master: where they sit on the ladder
BLS does not publish separate wages for apprentices, journey-level plumbers, and master plumbers, so no official table tells you what each stage pays. What the Handbook does say is directional. Apprentices earn less than fully trained plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters, and their pay increases as they learn to do more.
The stages themselves are defined in the same Handbook. Workers complete an apprenticeship and pass the required licensing exam to become journey-level, which means they are qualified to work independently. Plumbers with several years of experience who pass another exam earn master status, and some states require master status to obtain a plumbing contractor's license. Most states and some localities require plumbers to be licensed, often after 2 to 5 years of experience plus an exam.
Put that next to the percentile table and a rough reading follows, with a clear limit. Apprentices are likely to cluster in the lower part of the distribution and licensed, experienced workers higher up, but BLS ranks everyone together and does not say which stage occupies which percentile. Use the 25th and 75th percentile figures as the boundaries of the middle half, not as stage-by-stage pay rates.
Using these numbers for a real decision
If you are pricing a job offer, start with your state row, not the national median. A $70,000 offer is above the median in Texas ($59,840) but below it in New York ($77,490) and Illinois ($99,950). Then ask the employer how overtime and on-call shifts are paid, because that money sits outside the BLS figure you are comparing against.
If you are weighing the trade against another one, compare within the same survey. On our electrician salary page, the national median for electricians is $63,190, within about $600 of plumbers. Welders and HVAC technicians have their own pages here, both built on the same May 2025 BLS wage release.
Industry also shifts the median. The Handbook's May 2025 industry breakdown puts government employers at $71,660, manufacturing at $65,770, heavy and civil engineering construction at $63,270, and plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors at $63,010. Contractors employ the largest share of workers in the occupation, about 65 percent, so the typical residential or commercial plumber is closer to that last row.
One caution on timing. These are May 2025 estimates published in 2026. BLS releases a new OEWS set each spring, and state medians can move by thousands of dollars from one year to the next, so check the date on any figure before you quote it in a negotiation.
Demand behind the pay
Wages are only half of the career question; the other half is whether the work will be there. The Handbook projects employment of plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters to grow 7 percent from 2025 to 2035, which BLS classifies as much faster than the average for all occupations. It also projects about 42,000 openings a year, on average, over that decade.
Most of those openings are not new positions. BLS expects many of them to come from replacing workers who move into other occupations or leave the labor force, for example to retire. On the demand side, the Handbook points to new construction and to the ongoing need to maintain and repair plumbing systems in existing homes and other buildings, and it says building codes requiring fire suppression systems in every state support employment of sprinklerfitters. None of that guarantees a raise in any one state, but it is the backdrop against which the medians above were set.