Plumber Salary in New Jersey 2026,
$78,240 Median | BLS Data by City

New Jersey plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters earn a median $78,240 a year, $37.61 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $61,810 and $106,830 and a full range of $48,720 to $136,710. That is 22.6% above the $63,800 national median, in one of the widest bands of any trade.

Vineland at $77,060, then Trenton-Princeton at $76,360 and Atlantic City-Hammonton at $64,220, among New Jersey-only metros. All sit below the statewide $78,240 because the northern counties, where union commercial and industrial pipefitting concentrates, are counted inside the New York-Newark-Jersey City multi-state metro rather than as a New Jersey area.

No. New Jersey licenses master plumbers only, through the State Board of Examiners of Master Plumbers, after documented apprenticeship and journeyman experience and a written and practical examination. Journeymen and apprentices work under a licensed master's authority. Because only a master may pull permits and contract for work, the licence is the defining career threshold in New Jersey plumbing and the main reason the upper half of this wage band is so far from the lower half.

Master plumbers populate the top of the band — the New Jersey 75th percentile of $106,830 and the 90th of $136,710 — because the licence carries permit authority, foreman responsibility and the option of contracting independently. A journeyman with the same years on the tools but no licence is generally working nearer the $61,810 twenty-fifth percentile to the $78,240 median.

Substantially. New Jersey prevailing wage rates apply to public works projects, and in a state with heavy school, municipal, transit and water infrastructure spending that is a large share of the commercial market. Union agreements also carry pension, annuity and health contributions that a BLS wage figure does not capture at all, so the total package on organised work runs meaningfully above the $78,240 median shown here.

Because three distinct labour markets share one occupation code. Residential service plumbing in the southern and central counties pays near the bottom. Union commercial mechanical work — institutional buildings, hospitals, schools, transit — pays in the upper half on negotiated scale. Industrial process piping at the state's pharmaceutical, chemical and refining sites pays at the very top, with per diem and shift work on turnarounds. Add the master licence threshold and you get a distribution running from $48,720 to $136,710.

It is a wage figure, not a compensation figure. On organised New Jersey work, pension, annuity and health and welfare contributions add a substantial amount that never appears here, so the union side of the trade is understated. In the other direction, self-employed master plumbers running their own shops are largely outside the OEWS payroll survey, which is part of why the top of the band, while high, may still understate what an established New Jersey contractor earns. Overtime on shutdown and turnaround work also inflates individual annual figures relative to a straight forty-hour rate.

The master licence first, then the sector. Getting licensed by the Board of Examiners of Master Plumbers changes what you are legally permitted to do and is the largest single step available. After that, moving from residential service into union commercial or industrial pipefitting is what carries the rate from the $61,810 twenty-fifth percentile toward the $106,830 seventy-fifth. Medical gas certification, welding certifications for process piping and backflow prevention endorsements each add specific premiums, and foreman responsibility on large New Jersey projects adds another.