The trades you're trying to hire, in one wage-and-headcount table
Hiring, not lead volume, is what actually caps growth for most home-service businesses. This is what the federal government's own wage survey says about ten of the trades an owner is staffing: how many people do the work nationally, what the job pays at the median, and how fast BLS expects each trade to grow through 2035.
| Metric | Value | Period | Source | Cite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
National employment, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) — wage-survey count, excludes self-employed A shortage of plumbers in your market is a local hiring problem, not a sign the trade is shrinking — nationally it's one of the largest skilled trades there is. OEWS is an establishment survey; it excludes the self-employed. The Occupational Outlook Handbook's 'Number of Jobs' figure for the same occupation, from BLS's separate Employment Projections program, runs higher — see the disagreement below. Verbatim from the sourceNational estimates for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters — Employment: 465,840; Employment Relative Standard Error: 1.3% Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | 465,840workers | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152), all industries, nationwide Benchmark plumber pay against the $30.67/hour median, not the higher mean, when you write a recruiting ad or set a new hire's rate. Median annual wage for the same occupation is $63,800; the mean (average), $72,170, is pulled up by top earners and owner-operators who bill themselves as tradespeople. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $21.22 $24.13 $30.67 $40.92 $52.13 (50th percentile = median); Mean Hourly Wage $34.70, Mean Annual Wage $72,170 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $30.67per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Projected employment growth, plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters, 2025-2035 Demand for plumbers is growing faster than the average occupation — expect hiring and subcontractor rates to stay competitive over the next decade, not soften. The same Handbook page's Quick Facts list a 2025 employment base of 510,600 — higher than the OEWS wage-survey count above — and most of the roughly 42,000 openings projected each year come from replacing workers who leave the trade, not from net growth. Verbatim from the sourceEmployment of plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters is projected to grow 7 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations. About 42,000 openings for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | +7% / +34,500 jobs | 2025-2035, BLS Employment Projections | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook | |
National employment, electricians (SOC 47-2111) — wage-survey count, excludes self-employed Electricians are the largest specialist trade measured here by headcount, so local candidate pools usually run deeper than for smaller trades like roofing. Excludes self-employed electricians; the Handbook's Employment Projections-based 'Number of Jobs' figure for the same occupation is higher (see disagreements). Verbatim from the sourceNational estimates for electricians — Employment: 757,220; Employment Relative Standard Error: 0.8% Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | 757,220workers | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, electricians (SOC 47-2111), all industries, nationwide Electrician and plumber median hourly pay are within 30 cents of each other — don't assume one trade is systematically cheaper to staff than the other. Median annual wage for the same occupation is $63,190 — essentially tied with plumbers. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $20.50 $23.76 $30.38 $40.36 $52.17; Mean Hourly Wage $34.37, Mean Annual Wage $71,490 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $30.38per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Projected employment growth, electricians, 2025-2035 At roughly 72,700 openings a year nationally, electrician recruiting gets harder before it gets easier — build retention into the plan, not just hiring. Quick Facts on the same page list a 2025 employment base of 821,000 — again higher than the OEWS wage-survey figure above, for the same OEWS-vs-Employment-Projections reason. Verbatim from the sourceEmployment of electricians is projected to grow 9 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations. About 72,700 openings for electricians are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | +9% / +75,900 jobs | 2025-2035, BLS Employment Projections | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook | |
National employment, heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers (SOC 49-9021) — wage-survey count HVAC is the smallest of the three classic trades here by headcount — factor that into how far you'll need to reach for qualified installers. Covers HVAC mechanics and installers only — not sales, design, or ductwork-fabrication roles, which BLS classifies elsewhere. Verbatim from the sourceNational estimates for heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers — Employment: 409,670; Employment Relative Standard Error: 1.3% Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | 409,670workers | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers (SOC 49-9021), nationwide HVAC pays slightly below plumbing and electrical on median hourly wage but is growing faster than either — today's wage gap may not hold. Median annual wage for the same occupation is $61,010, confirmed on the matching Occupational Outlook Handbook page, whose Job Outlook section puts 2025-35 growth at 11%, 48,200 new jobs, and about 40,600 openings a year — the fastest of the three classic trades measured here. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $19.25 $23.25 $29.33 $37.05 $45.78; Mean Hourly Wage $31.14, Mean Annual Wage $64,780 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $29.33per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, painters, construction and maintenance (SOC 47-2141), nationwide Painting pays roughly 20-25% below plumbing, electrical, and HVAC — part of why it's an easier trade to enter and staff up quickly. Excludes paperhangers, tracked under a separate SOC code (47-2142). National employment for painters is 225,190. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $18.00 $21.46 $23.75 $29.65 $37.89; National employment 225,190; Mean Hourly Wage $26.64, Mean Annual Wage $55,420 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $23.75per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, roofers (SOC 47-2181), nationwide With the smallest labor pool measured here, roofing crews are the hardest to scale quickly — plan hiring lead time accordingly. Roofing is the smallest of the ten trades in this dataset by national headcount — 135,490 workers — concentrated heavily in Florida and California. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $18.01 $22.24 $26.65 $31.44 $39.29; National employment 135,490; Mean Hourly Wage $27.95, Mean Annual Wage $58,140 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $26.65per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, carpenters (SOC 47-2031), nationwide Carpentry median pay sits close to HVAC — remodeling crews competing for carpenters are effectively bidding against HVAC employers for the same wage tier of worker. Carpenters are the second-largest construction trade by headcount in this dataset after electricians, at 670,090 nationally. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $19.43 $23.32 $29.12 $36.94 $48.03; National employment 670,090; Mean Hourly Wage $31.55, Mean Annual Wage $65,630 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $29.12per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median annual wage, maids and housekeeping cleaners (SOC 37-2012), nationwide Residential cleaning is the lowest-paid trade in this dataset by a wide margin — wage competitiveness, not just lead volume, is usually what caps crew growth. OEWS national employment for this occupation is 860,670; the Occupational Outlook Handbook's Employment Projections figure for the same occupation is notably higher — see disagreements. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Annual Wage $27,640 $30,350 $35,510 $39,590 $48,570; Mean Hourly Wage $17.83, Mean Annual Wage $37,080 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $35,510per year | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median hourly wage, landscaping and groundskeeping workers (SOC 37-3011), nationwide At almost 950,000 workers, landscaping has one of the deepest labor pools of any trade here — but also one of the lowest median wages, so expect high turnover without a pay premium. This is the narrow SOC 37-3011 occupation only. The related Occupational Outlook Handbook page 'Grounds Maintenance Workers' reports growth for the broader SOC 37-3000 group, which also includes tree trimmers and pesticide applicators, so its growth figure isn't a like-for-like match and isn't quoted here. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Hourly Wage $14.98 $17.40 $18.82 $22.52 $27.28; National employment 952,640; Mean Hourly Wage $20.33, Mean Annual Wage $42,290 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $18.82per hour | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
National employment, maintenance and repair workers, general (SOC 49-9071) — wage-survey count General maintenance workers outnumber every specialist trade in this dataset combined — this is where most in-house 'handyman' hires for property managers and hospitality clients come from. This is the single largest occupation of the ten measured here. It's a generalist role — a mix of two or more maintenance or craft skills, plumbing plus carpentry plus electrical, for example — concentrated in real estate, local government, and hospitality, not a licensed single-trade specialist. Verbatim from the sourceNational estimates for maintenance and repair workers, general — Employment: 1,529,700; Employment Relative Standard Error: 0.5% Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | 1,529,700workers | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Median annual wage, first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers (SOC 47-1011), nationwide A foreman role pays roughly double the median field-technician wage in this dataset — factor that gap into your promote-from-within planning. This is the highest-paid occupation of the ten measured here. It covers supervisors and foremen across all construction trades, not owners or general contractors as a business classification. Verbatim from the sourcePercentile 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% / Annual Wage $53,280 $63,400 $79,920 $101,460 $128,260; National employment 812,210; Mean Hourly Wage $41.56, Mean Annual Wage $86,450 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | $79,920per year | May 2025 OEWS | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles | |
Share of new construction establishments (NAICS 23) still operating five years after opening Roughly four in ten new trade businesses close within five years — surviving the first half-decade is itself a competitive advantage worth naming in your marketing. 57,753 construction establishments opened in the year ended March 2020; 32,608 of them (56.5%) were still open five years later. BLS doesn't break this out by home-service trade. Verbatim from the sourceMarch 2020 57,753 215,627 100.0 _ 3.7 / March 2025 32,608 203,715 56.5 91.0 6.2 Checked 2026-09-09 · opened by hand — the publisher blocks scripts | 56.5%still open at year 5 | Establishments opened year ended March 2020, tracked to year ended March 2025 — the most recent cohort with a full 5-year figure | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, Establishment Age and Survival Data |
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Where the sources disagree
We do not pick the “right” number for you. Where two honest sources count differently, both are here, along with the reason they differ.
How many plumbers, electricians, and HVAC mechanics actually work in the U.S. — OEWS wage-survey employment vs. the Occupational Outlook Handbook's 'Number of Jobs'
- 465,840 plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters BLS OEWS Profiles (wage survey), May 2025
- 510,600 ('Number of Jobs, 2025') BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters (Quick Facts), 2025
- 757,220 electricians BLS OEWS Profiles (wage survey), May 2025
- 821,000 ('Number of Jobs, 2025') BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Electricians (Quick Facts), 2025
- 409,670 HVAC mechanics and installers BLS OEWS Profiles (wage survey), May 2025
- 440,900 ('Number of Jobs, 2025') BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (Quick Facts), 2025
OEWS is an establishment-based wage survey that excludes the self-employed. The 'Number of Jobs' figure in the Occupational Outlook Handbook comes from BLS's separate Employment Projections program and its National Employment Matrix, which uses a different method and counts the self-employed — so it runs consistently higher than the matching OEWS count for the same occupation and year. In a trade full of one-van operators, that's not a rounding error — it's the size of the informal workforce OEWS never sees.
How many maids and housekeeping cleaners work in the U.S. — the gap here is proportionally larger than for the construction trades above
- 860,670 BLS OEWS Profiles (wage survey), May 2025
- 1,332,100 ('2025 employment') BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Data for Occupations Not Covered in Detail, 2025
Same OEWS-vs-Employment-Projections split as above, but the gap — about 55% — is far wider for this occupation than for the construction trades, likely reflecting a larger share of self-employed and informally arranged domestic cleaning work that OEWS's establishment survey simply doesn't capture.
What did not survive checking
These are claims we went looking for and could not confirm at the source. They are not in the table — and they are listed here so you do not spend time on them either.
- OEWS occupation wage data at the classic per-occupation URL format (bls.gov/oes/current/oesNNNNNN.htm and the year-specific bls.gov/oes/2025/may/oesNNNNNN.htm)
- Both URL patterns now redirect to a generic OEWS Tables index page instead of occupation-specific data — confirmed by opening bls.gov/oes/current/oes472152.htm directly. BLS moved individual occupation wage data behind the JavaScript-rendered profile tool at data.bls.gov/oesprofile, which every OEWS row in this dataset cites instead.
- Projected 2025-2035 job growth, absolute employment change, and annual openings for first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers (SOC 47-1011)
- No Occupational Outlook Handbook narrative page exists for this occupation — a guessed URL at the standard construction-and-extraction path returned a blank page, confirmed by opening it directly — and it doesn't appear on BLS's 'Data for Occupations Not Covered in Detail' summary page either. No projection figure could be verified.
- Annual average job openings for maids and housekeeping cleaners (SOC 37-2012)
- The only BLS projections source for this occupation is the 'Data for Occupations Not Covered in Detail' page, which publishes 2025 employment, median wage, and 2025-35 employment change and growth rate — confirmed manually — but no annual-openings figure the way full Occupational Outlook Handbook occupation pages do.
- 2025-2035 job growth for painters, roofers, and carpenters
- Not attempted — out of scope for this row budget. Occupational Outlook Handbook pages exist for all three and likely carry a verifiable Job Outlook section; flagged for a follow-up pass if more growth rows are wanted.
Methodology
Every wage and employment figure in this dataset comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) Profiles tool, and every figure was re-opened by hand in a browser, not by a script. Two things make that necessary. First, bls.gov answers a plain HTTP request — the kind an automated verification script sends — with a 403 Access Denied page, whether the URL is the OEWS profile tool or a static Occupational Outlook Handbook page; we confirmed this ourselves by fetching the Business Employment Dynamics survival table the same way and getting the same block. Second, and specific to OEWS: the classic per-occupation wage pages (bls.gov/oes/current/oesNNNNNN.htm) have been retired and now redirect to a generic index. The actual numbers live at data.bls.gov/oesprofile, which builds its tables with JavaScript after the page loads — a script that only reads the initial HTML sees an empty shell with no numbers in it at all. Anyone maintaining a copy of this data should expect the same: a plain script fetch will not get you May 2025 OEWS numbers, and even a headless browser needs to wait for the profile table to render before scraping it.
Growth projections for plumbers, electricians, and HVAC mechanics — the three trades that got full treatment (employment, wage, and growth) — come from the matching Occupational Outlook Handbook pages, on BLS's 2025-2035 projection cycle. That's a newer cycle than 2024-2034; BLS had already rolled the Handbook over to 2025-2035 by the time this dataset was assembled. The seven remaining trades get one representative wage or employment figure each rather than the full three-metric treatment, to keep the row count workable rather than thinly repeating every metric for every trade.
Two systematic disagreements are documented rather than resolved, because they aren't errors — they're two BLS programs measuring different universes. OEWS is an establishment payroll survey and excludes the self-employed; the Occupational Outlook Handbook's 'Number of Jobs' figure comes from BLS's Employment Projections program, which uses a broader method and counts the self-employed, so it runs consistently higher for the same occupation and year. That gap matters most for trades built on one-van operators — general contractors, cleaners, landscapers — where a meaningful share of the workforce simply isn't in OEWS's count.
Sources
How to cite this page
Husky Digital. What the home-service trades actually pay, by BLS. Last verified September 9, 2026. https://husky-digital.com/research/home-service-trades-workforce/
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