Plumber Career Guide,
Salary, Licence & Jobs 2026

Expect four to five years to journeyman. Most states require roughly 8,000 supervised hours through an apprenticeship before you can sit the journeyman exam, and apprenticeships pair those hours with classroom code instruction. The master licence typically requires two or more additional years as a licensed journeyman plus a second exam, so the full apprentice-to-master run is usually seven to eight years — all of it paid.

The BLS OEWS May 2025 national median for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) is $63,800/yr ($30.67/hr). Apprentices start near the 10th percentile of $44,150, masters sit around the 75th percentile of $85,110, and the top 10% — typically contractors, union pipefitters and service specialists — exceed $108,420. Union scale, state and service-versus-new-construction mix move the number substantially.

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Nearly every state licenses plumbers at the journeyman and master level, and where a state does not, its cities usually do. Licences are issued by state plumbing boards after documented supervised hours and an exam written against the plumbing code the state adopts — the Uniform Plumbing Code (IAPMO) in much of the West, the International Plumbing Code (ICC) across most of the East. Working unlicensed on permitted work is illegal in licensed jurisdictions.

The economics hold up: a $63,800 median with no tuition debt, around 44,000 openings a year through 2034, and a licence ladder that ends in owning a contracting business rather than topping out on wages. The honest costs are physical — trenches, crawl spaces, sewage and on-call weeks — and the multi-year apprenticeship requires patience. People who like diagnosis and visible, finished work tend to stay in the trade.

BLS counts all three inside SOC 47-2152, but the work differs. Plumbers handle potable water, drainage, gas and fixtures in buildings under the plumbing code. Pipefitters run high-pressure process piping — steam, hydraulics, industrial gas — mostly in plants and commercial mechanical rooms, often as UA union hands. Steamfitters are the steam-and-heating specialisation of pipefitting. Pipefitting generally pays above the combined median in industrial markets.

Apprentices earn a rising percentage of journeyman scale — commonly starting around 40–50% and stepping up each year — which lands first-year pay near the BLS 10th percentile of $44,150 in many markets. Union UA apprenticeships add benefits and pension contributions on top. The structural point is that the training years are income years: by the time a degree student graduates, a plumbing apprentice has been paid for four to five years and holds a licence.