Electrician vs Plumber Salary: Which Pays More?

Pay Side by Side

The figures below are wages for employed workers. They are not split into base pay versus overtime, on-call premiums or bonuses, and self-employed electricians and plumbing contractors are not counted in them at all.

Before you treat the $63,190 and $63,800 medians as your own forecast, pull the state and metro area wage tables published alongside them for both occupations and read your own state's figure, and check your state labor department or licensing board for the licence you would be working under.

If you are weighing a specific offer, ask separately about base hourly rate, overtime multiplier, on-call stipend and any bonus rather than one headline annual number. Total compensation in both trades can sit well above base pay in a busy year and close to base pay in a slow one.

Why the Pay Differs

The plumbing median of $63,800 sits above the electrician median of $63,190 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). Here is what creates that separation — and the much larger separation between two people inside the same trade.

Plumbing licensing has an extra rung. Most states require electricians to pass a licensing test covering the National Electrical Code plus state and local electrical codes (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). Most states and some localities license plumbers, and that licence often requires 2 to 5 years of experience plus an exam; plumbers with several more years of experience can pass a further exam to earn master status (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). That master tier is a pay lever with no exact equivalent in most electrical licensing structures.

The extra hours come in a different shape. Most plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters work full time including nights and weekends, and are often on call for emergencies (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). Almost all electricians work full time as well, with some evenings and weekends, and overtime is common during scheduled maintenance or on construction sites (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). Electrical overtime clusters around planned shutdowns and construction deadlines; plumbing call-outs arrive unpredictably and are often paid at a premium or with a stipend. Ask which model an employer uses before comparing two offers, because neither is separated out inside the $63,190 or $63,800 medians.

The hiring market is bigger on the electrical side. Employment of electricians is projected to grow 9 percent from 2025 to 2035, with about 72,700 openings a year on average over the decade; plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters are projected to grow 7 percent, with about 42,000 openings a year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). More openings mean more competing employers in most labor markets, though that has not pushed the electrician median above the plumbing median.

Industry matters more than trade. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a separate median annual wage by industry for each occupation in the May 2025 data, including for government excluding state and local education and hospitals. Read the industry rows for both trades before assuming one pays better where you live: a plant maintenance role and a residential service role in the same trade can be further apart than the two national medians are from each other.

Earnings Over a Career

For the first four or five years, the two trades look almost identical. Both are normally entered through a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship with roughly 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training a year plus classroom technical instruction (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025), and apprentice wages are set by the sponsoring program as a share of the journey rate that steps up on a schedule. ONET places electricians in Job Zone Three, medium preparation needed, noting three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training plus, often, a licensing exam (ONET OnLine, U.S. Department of Labor).

The first real milestone is the licence. For electricians that is the state exam on the National Electrical Code and local codes (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). For plumbers the journey-level licence typically requires 2 to 5 years of experience plus an exam (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). In dollar terms, that step is what carries you up from the 10th percentile annual wage published for your occupation toward the $63,190 electrician median or the $63,800 plumbing median (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025) — look up both percentile values to see how large that move is in your trade.

After that the routes diverge in structure more than in headline pay. Plumbers who pass the master exam can advance to master plumber, supervisor or project manager, or start a contracting business, which may require additional licensing (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). Electricians have a well-established self-employment route, often in residential construction, with the option to set their own schedule (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). Those roles are where earnings move from the medians toward the 90th percentile figures published for each trade — and where self-employed income stops being captured by wage data at all, since a contractor's take-home depends on billable hours, overheads, insurance and collections rather than an hourly rate.

So the median gap tells you little about year 15. What does: whether you hold a master or contractor licence, whether your employer pays overtime and on-call premiums on top of base, and whether you move into supervision, project management or your own business.