HVAC, Electrician and Plumber Pay and Job Outlook: The BLS Numbers

Your best HVAC tech told you this morning a shop across town offered him three dollars more an hour. You've got until Friday to answer. Before you counter, you want to know what the market actually pays, not what a recruiter's blog says. This page pulls the numbers straight from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: national pay, HVAC technician salary by state, where the jobs are, and how many openings BLS expects over the next ten years for HVAC, electrical and plumbing. Every figure carries its data year, and every table links back to the source so you can check it yourself.

The key numbers for three trades (BLS, 2025 data)

These come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. Pay is the median annual wage for May 2025. Jobs are 2025 employment. Growth and openings are BLS projections for 2025 to 2035.

Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook pages for HVACR mechanics and installers, electricians and plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters. Pay data May 2025; projections 2025–35.

HVAC leads on growth. Electricians lead on raw headcount and openings.

The spread matters more than the median

A median tells you the middle. Your hiring problem lives at the edges. Here's the May 2025 range BLS reports in each Handbook's pay section:

• HVACR: lowest 10% earned less than $40,050; highest 10% more than $95,210.
• Electricians: lowest 10% under $42,640; highest 10% over $108,510.
• Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters: lowest 10% under $44,150; highest 10% over $108,420.

That top-decile tech isn't a unicorn. It's a senior service tech or a licensed lead in a high-cost market, and that's the person a competitor is calling.

Who they work for changes pay too. BLS lists the May 2025 HVACR median at $60,030 for plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors versus $71,190 in wholesale trade. For electricians, government (excluding state and local education and hospitals) ran $79,820 against $61,570 at electrical contractors. Contractors are competing with employers who don't run trucks and don't take after-hours calls.

HVAC technician salary by state: where pay is highest

State rankings come from BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, which publishes estimates for every occupation in every state. The full state tables are on the BLS state wage tables.

Note these state figures are annual mean (average) wages, not medians, so they run a bit higher than the national medians above.

HVACR mechanics: top-paying states (May 2025, annual mean)

1. District of Columbia: $84,920
2. Alaska: $80,150
3. Washington: $78,860
4. Massachusetts: $77,760
5. New Jersey: $77,580

Source: BLS OEWS state tables, 49-9021, May 2025.

Electrician salary by state: top-paying (May 2025, annual mean)

1. Oregon: $99,750
2. Washington: $94,470
3. Hawaii: $92,870
4. Illinois: $92,230
5. Alaska: $90,040

Source: BLS OEWS state tables, 47-2111, May 2025.

Plumber salary by state: top-paying (May 2025, annual mean)

1. Oregon: $98,450
2. Illinois: $93,400
3. New Jersey: $92,590
4. District of Columbia: $91,200
5. Alaska: $90,460

Source: BLS OEWS state tables, 47-2152, May 2025.

Notice what's on these lists: high-cost states, strong union markets and places with long heating seasons. A top-paying state isn't automatically a hard place to hire. It's a place where your wage floor is higher.

Where the jobs are: states with the highest employment

State employment levels from the same OEWS release.

Source: BLS OEWS state tables, May 2025 (occupation codes 49-9021, 47-2111 and 47-2152).

Here's the useful contrast. In May 2025, Florida and Texas had some of the largest HVAC workforces in the country but mean pay well below California and New York ($57,310 in Florida and $59,130 in Texas, against $75,370 in California and $74,760 in New York). Big labor pool, lower wage floor, and a lot of shops fishing in the same pond. If you run trucks in a high-employment, lower-wage state, a dollar or two an hour moves people.

What the numbers mean for an owner

Openings far outrun growth

Look at HVAC. BLS projects 48,200 new jobs over ten years. That's roughly 4,800 a year. But it projects about 40,600 openings a year. The other 35,000 or so each year come from people leaving: BLS says many openings come from the need to replace workers who transfer to other occupations or retire.

Plumbing is starker. About 3,450 new jobs a year (34,500 over the decade) against about 42,000 openings a year. Electricians run about 7,600 new jobs a year against 72,700 openings.

The point for you: the shortage isn't mainly about growth. It's about churn. Most of the demand for techs is the industry refilling seats people walked out of. Every tech you keep is one you don't have to find in that market.

Demand is real, not a blip

BLS ties HVAC demand to commercial construction including data centers, residential building, more complex climate-control equipment and the steady need to retrofit and replace old systems. For plumbers, it names new construction plus ongoing maintenance and repair. That's recurring work, which means the pressure on your hiring doesn't ease when one construction cycle cools off.

Retention cost is the hidden number

Illustrative example: you lose a tech paid near the HVAC median, $61,010. Say the seat sits empty for six weeks while you recruit. That's missed billable work, overtime for the rest of the crew, and a new hire who won't run calls alone for a while. You don't need a precise figure to see it's bigger than the raise you didn't give. Our post on fixing the HVAC technician shortage walks through the recruiting side.

What to do with this data

Set pay bands by market, not by gut. Pull your state and metro from the BLS tables. Decide on purpose where you sit: at the median, at the 75th percentile, or above. If you pay below your local median, know you're betting on culture and schedule to make up the gap.

Build a visible career ladder. The gap between the 10th and 90th percentile is more than $55,000 in every one of these trades. Show a helper how they get from one end to the other at your shop: certifications, license levels, lead tech, service manager. Techs leave when they can't see the next rung.

Make the job fair. Pay gets a tech in the door. What makes them stay is the daily experience. Do the best calls always go to the dispatcher's favorite? Does the same tech eat every 4:30 PM no-heat call? Fair job assignment is one of the cheapest retention moves you have.

Cut the admin. Paper timesheets, phone tag about job details, and re-entering notes at night all land on your techs. Every hour of that is an hour they're not billing or not home.

Keep schedules predictable. BLS notes HVAC techs sometimes work overtime or irregular hours in peak heating and cooling seasons, plus on-call shifts. You can't remove the season. You can publish the on-call rotation ahead of time and stick to it.

For HVAC-specific operations, see our HVAC page.

Where FSM Navigator fits

Briefly, because this is a reference page. The FSM Navigator mobile app is offline-first on every plan, including Free, so techs aren't stuck re-entering notes when a basement kills their signal. On Pro, intelligent dispatch matches each job by skills, availability, proximity, SLA urgency and current workload, so no one tech quietly ends up with every easy job or every hard one. Pro timesheets build hours, overtime and punctuality from the status techs already set, so nobody fills out a paper sheet on Friday. And there's no user limit on Pro and Enterprise as you add techs.

How to use the BLS data yourself

• National pay and outlook: the three Occupational Outlook Handbook pages linked in the first table. They update with each projections cycle.
• State and metro pay: for current HVAC technician salary by state, plus electrician and plumber pay, use the BLS OEWS May 2025 state tables. Pick your state, then search for the occupation code: 49-9021 (HVACR mechanics and installers), 47-2111 (electricians) or 47-2152 (plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters).
• Mean vs. median: OEWS state rankings use the mean. Your competitors' pay ads usually quote a range. Compare like with like.
• Timing: BLS publishes new OEWS wage data each spring. Recheck your pay bands when it lands.

Pay bands help you hire. Keeping techs takes more than pay. Read Why Field Service Technicians Leave.