Helpers--Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($31,050) to the 90th ($54,860). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 43,640, or 0.03% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 6,950 jobs; the top three states sum to 36.0% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Louisiana posts a location quotient of 4.24, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $31,050 or less, and one in ten earns $54,860 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $23,810. The mean ($41,720) versus median ($39,270) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Helpers--Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters runs from the $58,240 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (6,950 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Helpers--Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters stands number 410 by employment and number 714 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Construction and Extraction Occupations, the group median wage is $54,660 across 60 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 28% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 24 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $39,270, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 2,980 jobs, 6.8% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $38,750 a year, against $49,170 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,272 a month before tax, $1,510 biweekly, $755 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($35,750) to the 75th ($46,550) is worth $10,800 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $43,197 would sit between the median ($39,270) and the 75th percentile ($46,550), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $35,750, is $3,520 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Construction and Extraction Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other, Floor Layers, Except Carpet, Wood, and Hard Tiles, Helpers--Carpenters, Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers, Fence Erectors, Plasterers and Stucco Masons. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.