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What This Work Costs, and Why Nobody Will Quote You Online

Most pages listing plumbing prices cite nothing at all. This one shows where the labor number comes from, and is honest about what it does not tell you.

Copper pipe and fittings laid out with a soldering tool

PressureTrace is a referral service, not a plumbing contractor. We connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands. Every state page sets out who licenses plumbers there and where to check, so you can confirm before work begins. We do not perform plumbing work, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call.

We do not set prices and we cannot quote you. What we can do is show the one number that drives most of a plumbing bill, and where it comes from.

What plumbers actually earn

The federal government surveys this. For occupation 47-2152 — plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters — across 436,160 workers:

Percentile	Hourly	Annual
10th	$18.60	$38,690
25th	$22.99	$47,810
Median	$29.59	$61,550
75th	$38.56	$80,190
90th	$49.59	$103,140

Wage percentiles: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, occupation 47-2152 (Plumbers, Pipefitters and Steamfitters), May 2023 release. BLS has since published a May 2025 release; these figures will be updated to it.

Water meter and isolating valve inside a wall cabinet, being adjusted

The mistake almost every cost page makes

A wage is not a bill rate. A plumber earning the median $29.59 an hour is not charging you $29.59 an hour, and anyone implying otherwise is misleading you. The rate you are quoted has to carry the van, the fuel, the tools, insurance, licensing, unbillable travel, the office, warranty work, and profit. The multiple between wage and shop rate is real and it is large.

So use these figures for what they are good for: comparing one area against another. Where wages run high, bills run high, and that is why the same job costs visibly more in San Jose than in a small Midwest town.

Top of a storage water heater with red-handled isolating valves on the inlet and outlet

Where the highest-wage metros are

Metro area	Annual mean wage
San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara, CA	$99,570
New York–Newark–Jersey City, NY–NJ–PA	$93,650
Chicago–Naperville–Elgin, IL–IN–WI	$92,060
San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA	$90,790
Boston–Cambridge–Nashua, MA–NH	$90,580

How to spend less without gambling

The reliable saving is not hunting for the lowest number. It is knowing what the job is before anyone quotes it, because the same complaint covers wildly different work.

A blocked aerator costs nothing and takes five minutes. Paying for a visit to do it is money thrown away.
A part-closed valve also costs nothing.
A PRV adjustment is a small job. A replacement is a bigger one.
Repiping a galvanized supply is a project.

Those sit orders of magnitude apart. Take a gauge reading first and you will know which conversation you are having.