Plumber Salary in Virginia 2026,
$60,470 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Virginia figure is $60,470 a year, or $29.07 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $43,970 at the 10th percentile to $78,050 at the 90th. That is 5.2% below the national median of $63,800. The row is SOC 47-2152, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters — broader than the job title, since industrial pipefitting sits inside the same figure.

Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk at $61,870, narrowly ahead of Richmond $61,480, then Winchester $57,760, Lynchburg $57,210 and Charlottesville $56,510. The whole table spans about 9%, and Hampton Roads edging the capital reflects the naval, shipyard and industrial maintenance work concentrated on the coast.

Yes — and unusually, the licence is personal. The Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation's Board for Contractors issues journeyman and master tradesman licences in plumbing to individuals, on documented trade experience, approved education and an examination. That is different from states where only the contracting business is licensed and an employed plumber needs no credential of their own. In Virginia the licence is the entry gate, and the master licence is a documented step above journeyman.

Accumulate the documented trade experience DPOR requires — usually through a registered apprenticeship or supervised employment — complete the approved trade education, and pass the journeyman tradesman examination administered for the Board for Contractors. That is the step from the $43,970 tenth percentile into full journeyman practice around the $60,470 median. The master tradesman licence, requiring further experience and examination, is what supports contracting and the $78,050 top decile.

It bites earlier than in most states. Virginia's schedule is progressive to 5.75% and reaches that top rate at a comparatively low income, so a plumber at the $60,470 median is likely paying the top marginal rate on part of their earnings — including on overtime and call-out hours. Peer states publishing nearly identical medians, such as Nevada at $61,610 and Texas at $59,840, levy no income tax at all, which is worth factoring into any cross-state comparison.

It changes who holds the leverage. Where a state licenses only the contracting business, an employer can hire any competent person and the credential stays with the firm; in Virginia the journeyman and master tradesman licences belong to the individual, are portable between employers, and cannot be substituted for. That restricts the supply of people legally able to do the work, and it gives a licensed plumber a bargaining position that an unlicensed-state counterpart does not have — even though the state median, at $60,470, still sits below the national figure.

It is not a plumber-only number. SOC 47-2152 reports Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters together, and pipefitting on industrial and process systems generally pays above residential plumbing. In Virginia that matters particularly, because shipyard and naval maintenance in Hampton Roads and the mechanical work on data-centre construction are pipefitting jobs sitting in the upper half of the same row. A residential service plumber should read the $49,350 twenty-fifth percentile as the closer benchmark.

The licence first, then the sector. Moving from trainee to a DPOR journeyman tradesman licence is the step that makes independent work possible and takes a plumber from the $43,970 tenth percentile to the $60,470 median. After that, the move into commercial and industrial pipefitting — shipyard, naval, process and data-centre mechanical work — is most of the distance to the $71,780 seventy-fifth percentile. The master tradesman licence and crew or contracting responsibility reach the $78,050 top decile.