Most people don’t realize how close $100,000 actually is if you start plumbing right now. Here’s the realistic path, year by year.
Year 1: Apprentice
You apply to a plumbing apprenticeship through a union hall or a licensed plumbing contractor. Starting wages for first-year apprentices land around $18 to $22 an hour depending on your area, which works out to roughly $37,000 to $45,000 a year. You’re going to school a few evenings a week and working on the tools during the day. You’re learning how water supply and drain systems work, how to read blueprints, and how to work with copper, PVC, and PEX.
You’re getting paid while learning a skill that will serve you for the rest of your career. No tuition. No debt.
Year 2 and 3: Building the foundation
Apprentice wages step up every six months. By the time you’re in your third year, you’re at roughly 60-70% of journeyman scale. Depending on your market, that’s $45,000 to $55,000. You’re starting to run your own portions of jobs under supervision. The work gets more interesting. You start to see how everything connects.
Year 4 and 5: Journeyman license
Most plumbing apprenticeships are four to five years. At the end, you pass your journeyman exam and get licensed. Nationally, journeyman plumbers earn a median of $70,000 a year, but in states with strong union scale like New Jersey, Illinois, New York, and California, journeymen regularly earn $85,000 to $95,000. Add overtime and that number climbs fast.
Entry-level plumber salaries rose 3.65% last year. The trajectory is going up, not sideways.
Year 6 and beyond: The master license changes everything
After a few more years working as a journeyman, you can sit for the master plumber exam. The master license is the key that opens every door. Master plumbers can pull permits, supervise crews, run their own company, and bid on commercial work. The national median for master plumbers is $85,000 to $95,000. Experienced commercial plumbers and those with their own business regularly earn $120,000 to $200,000 or more.
That’s a real number. Not an outlier story.
Why plumbing specifically?
Two things: demand and automation resistance. Every building built in America needs plumbing. Every one that exists needs maintenance. There is no app for fixing a burst pipe at 2am. Plumbing projections show 6% job growth through 2032, which is solid. But the more important factor is that there are simply not enough plumbers entering the field to replace the ones retiring.
That creates leverage. Real leverage, the kind that shows up in your paycheck.
FindLaborJobs.com was built for tradespeople who are serious about their careers. Create a free worker profile, upload your journeyman card and certifications, set your hourly rate, and let plumbing contractors find you. This is the worker profile platform the trades have needed for years. Think LinkedIn for blue collar workers. Employers are searching the database right now. Make sure you show up.