Everhour tracks job time and budgets while plumbing rates must cover labor, truck costs, licensing, benefits, and tax reserves.
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A plumber hourly rate answers a pricing question, not a payroll question. The BLS reported a May 2024 median wage of $30.27 per hour, or $62,970 per year, for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters under SOC 47-2152. That employee wage is a benchmark, not a self-employed bill rate, because BLS OEWS wage estimates exclude self-employed plumbers.
Your customer rate has to carry more than hands-on labor. It needs to recover service-vehicle costs, tools, insurance, licensing, exams, renewals, continuing education, bookkeeping, callbacks, unpaid admin time, substitute benefits, and tax reserves. Most states require plumbers to be licensed, so license-related costs belong in overhead instead of disappearing into profit.
Use this formula: `(target income + overhead + benefits substitute + tax gross-up) ÷ billable hours`. Billable hours are the hours you can charge to customers after parts runs, estimates, scheduling, invoice work, callbacks, training, and unpaid travel. A full calendar rarely turns into 2,080 customer-billed hours for a one-person plumbing business.
For example, a self-employed plumber wants $82,000 in owner income, expects $38,400 in overhead, budgets $19,200 for self-funded benefits, and sets aside $22,400 for tax reserves. If 1,600 hours are realistically billable, the required hourly rate is $101.25. Materials should be priced separately from labor, with markup handled as a materials policy instead of hidden inside the hourly labor rate.
Vehicle cost is a common undercount. Beginning January 1, 2026, the IRS optional standard mileage rate for business use of a car, van, pickup, or panel truck is 72.5 cents per mile. A plumber who drives 14,000 business miles has a $10,150 mileage-based cost before counting time spent driving, parking, stocking the truck, and moving between jobs.
Covered federal or federally assisted construction, alteration, or repair contracts over $2,000 add another pricing check. Contractors and subcontractors on those jobs must pay laborers and mechanics no less than locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for the applicable classification. That Davis-Bacon floor affects the labor cost basis before profit, overhead recovery, and administrative cost are added.
A one-off calculation is enough when you are checking a new service-call rate, repricing a maintenance package, or testing whether a subcontract job clears your minimum margin. It is also enough when the inputs are stable and the job is simple, such as one licensed plumber, one truck, one labor category, and a clear materials markup policy.
A managed workflow becomes necessary when several plumbers, apprentices, trucks, jobs, and billing methods run at the same time. Everhour Project Budgeting lets teams track time and money budgets, recurring budget periods, budget alerts, and budget protection as hours are logged. That gives a plumbing business a running view of whether estimated labor and actual labor still match the quote.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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No. The BLS May 2024 median wage of $30.27 per hour applies to wage and salary workers in the plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters occupation. BLS OEWS wage estimates do not include self-employed plumbers, and they do not price a plumbing business's vehicle costs, licensing costs, insurance, benefits substitute, admin time, or profit.
Overhead includes costs that keep the business operating but are not one clean customer labor hour. Common inputs include tools, truck expense, liability insurance, licensing fees, exams, renewals, continuing education, dispatching, bookkeeping, phones, software, shop space, advertising, and unpaid estimate time. Parts and fixtures should usually stay outside labor overhead and follow a separate materials pricing policy.
A self-employed plumber can generally deduct business vehicle costs using the standard mileage rate or actual expenses, subject to IRS rules. The standard mileage method uses 72.5 cents per business mile for 2026. The actual-expense method uses costs such as gas, repairs, insurance, license plates, depreciation, and lease costs. Use the method that matches the records you can support.
Apprentices and helpers should be priced through the job's labor cost structure, not ignored because their hourly wage is lower. Add their paid labor, payroll burden if they are employees, supervision time, training time, and any billable-rate difference by role. A single blended rate works for simple residential calls, while separate role rates work better for larger jobs.
Covered federal or federally assisted construction, alteration, or repair contracts over $2,000 require contractors and subcontractors to pay laborers and mechanics no less than locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for the applicable classification. That rule sets a labor and fringe floor for those covered jobs. It does not replace your overhead, vehicle, tax, and profit calculation.
Everhour Project Budgeting supports hour-based and money-based budgets, recurring budget periods, threshold email alerts, and budget protection. A plumbing team can compare estimated labor against tracked time while work is still active, instead of discovering after invoicing that service calls or installs ran past the quoted labor budget.
Everhour Billing & Invoicing turns tracked billable time and expenses into client invoices. It calculates invoice amounts from rates, time, and billable expenses while excluding non-billable work, then can export invoices to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks for accounting follow-through.
Set a defensible labor rate, then track every job against it. Everhour Project Budgeting connects logged time to money budgets, alerts, and budget protection for better plumbing job margins.
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