Plumber Salary & Business Income Statistics: 88+ Wage, Revenue, and Market Benchmarks for 2026

Headline plumber salary and business income statistics

Key takeaways for plumbing owners

• Plumber wages are solid, but owner income is a different animal. Payroll, callbacks, drive time, trucks, insurance, parts, and marketing all take their bite before the owner gets paid.
• The U.S. plumbing market is large and fragmented. IBISWorld reports no company over 5% share, which means local operators can still win if they run tight routes, price correctly, and show up where customers search.
• Labor remains the pressure point. BLS projects 44,000 openings per year, so recruiting and retention should be treated like a profit center, not a side chore.
• Valuation data shows the spread between revenue and owner earnings. A company can pass $1 million in revenue and still need disciplined margins to create real take-home income.
• Online visibility matters because market demand does not automatically land on your schedule. If your best jobs are leaking to another company, review your plumbing SEO statistics, Google Business Profile, local pages, and call tracking.

1. Plumber wage benchmarks for 2026 planning

The cleanest wage baseline is still the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook reports median annual pay of $62,970 and median hourly pay of $30.27 for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters in May 2024.

For an owner, the important part is not just the median. It is the spread. The lowest 10% earned less than $40,670, while the highest 10% earned more than $105,150. That spread tells you why a company with weak hiring systems can either underpay and lose good people, or overpay without enough billable work to support payroll.

2. Plumbing business income, market size, and valuation benchmarks

Owner income is not the same as plumber wages. A tech can look at an hourly rate. An owner has to look at revenue, gross margin, net margin, labor burden, booked calls, average ticket, callbacks, vehicle costs, and the slow weeks nobody puts in the brochure.

For market context, IBISWorld reports the U.S. plumbers industry at $191.4 billion in 2026, with about 129,000 businesses and a 3.1% market-size CAGR from 2021 to 2026. It also says no company holds more than 5% market share. In plain English, this is still a local operator market.

That fragmentation is good news if your company can answer calls, quote cleanly, and show up in the right service areas. It is bad news if your website is thin, your Google Business Profile is stale, and your dispatch board relies on hope and one paid ad account.

3. 88+ plumber wage, revenue, and market benchmarks

The table below includes more than 88 source-cited benchmarks. Some are direct wage or market values. Others are operating benchmarks that help explain why two plumbing companies with the same number of trucks can produce very different owner income.

4. How a plumbing owner should use these numbers

Do not read this data like a trivia list. Read it like a service board. Where are the leaks? Where is money getting stuck? Where are good calls going before they ever hit your phone?

Set wages from production, not guesswork

If your licensed tech pay is near the BLS median, your pricing, booking rate, and routing need to support it. If you are trying to hire top 10% talent, build the math around top 10% pay before you post the job. The market does not care if your old pricebook still feels comfortable.

Separate owner salary from company profit

Owner pay should not be whatever is left in the account after payroll clears. Compare your salary, retained earnings, and reinvestment separately. A healthy plumbing company pays the owner, funds training, keeps trucks reliable, and still has money to improve visibility.

Use local demand data before adding trucks

If your current service area is not producing enough booked calls, a new truck can make the problem more expensive. Before expanding, check the basics: Google Business Profile categories, review velocity, service-area pages, conversion tracking, and your local SEO statistics against the towns you actually want to serve.

Make marketing answer to revenue

Rankings are useful, but booked plumbing jobs pay the bills. Track lead source, call quality, booked-job rate, average ticket, and repeat work. If a campaign cannot connect back to jobs on the board, it is not finished. It is just a shiny report with a wrench missing.

If you want help checking where calls are leaking, start with the free audit. We will look at your site, Google Business Profile, reviews, service-area coverage, and obvious conversion gaps before recommending a plan.

Methodology and source notes

This roundup was built from public wage, market, business valuation, software industry, and plumbing industry sources available during June 2026 drafting. Priority went to government and primary industry data, especially BLS wage and employment data, followed by IBISWorld market figures, BizBuySell transaction benchmarks, and industry software reports that publish plumbing-specific operating data.

Some market-size figures differ by source because they define the plumbing market differently. For example, a pure plumbers-industry report, a fixtures-and-fittings report, and a plumbing technology roundup may all use different boundaries. When the definitions differ, this article labels the source and uses the benchmark for planning context rather than pretending every number measures the same thing.