Our AC went out last August on a 98-degree day. I called a local HVAC company in Palo Alto at 2 PM and a tech showed up by 4:30, which in retrospect was lucky because my wife had already called two other companies that couldn’t come until the next day. The guy diagnosed a blown capacitor, swapped it in about twenty minutes, and charged us $380. While he was packing up I asked him (because this is what I do now, apparently) how the pay was in HVAC. He said he’d been doing it for six years, made about $85,000 last year with overtime, and was thinking about getting his contractor’s license so he could start his own shop. He seemed happy. His truck had a full schedule on the clipboard.
This is the last article in a series of eleven I’ve been writing about salaries by state, and I wanted to end with HVAC because it fits a pattern I keep coming back to: the skilled trades pay better than most people realize, especially when you factor in that there’s no college debt, strong job security, and a pretty clear path from apprentice to business owner.
The Baseline Numbers
The federal survey puts the median for HVAC mechanics and installers at about $57,300 nationally, which works out to $27.55 an hour. The mean is a little higher at $59,810. The range is big though; bottom 10% earn around $39,130 and the top 10% clear $91,020. With overtime and on-call pay (which is common in this field because AC units don’t wait for business hours to break), a lot of techs take home more than the survey number suggests.
Growth is projected at 9% through 2033, adding about 40,100 new jobs. That’s well above the average for all occupations and roughly in line with what electricians are seeing. The demand is driven by the same things across all the trades: aging workforce, not enough people going into apprenticeships, and an endless supply of buildings that need their systems maintained.
One thing that jumped out at me: HVAC has a strong seasonal overtime component that doesn’t show up in the median. Summer and winter are the busy seasons (things break when it’s very hot or very cold, surprise surprise), and techs in those months can work 50 to 60 hour weeks. A tech making $28 an hour at straight time is pulling $42 at time-and-a-half, and a busy July can add several thousand dollars to a monthly paycheck. The guys I know in the trades say their W-2s are always higher than what they’d calculate from their hourly rate.
The Highest-Paying States
Alaska leads at around $83,660. Makes sense; when it’s negative 30 outside and the furnace dies, you’re not shopping around for a cheaper tech. You’re calling whoever can come right now and paying whatever they ask. The extreme weather creates year-round demand and the small labor pool in remote areas keeps pay high.
D.C. is second at $83,390, driven by government buildings and commercial complexes. Massachusetts is third at about $77,000, then Connecticut at $73,910 and Washington at $67,630. California pays well too, particularly in the Bay Area and LA, though the state-level number doesn’t look as high as you’d expect because there’s a lot of residential work in the Central Valley and Inland Empire that brings the average down.
Illinois is another state where HVAC does well, and I think that’s the same Chicago union effect I saw in my electrician article. Strong union presence in the building trades pushes wages up across the board. New York and New Jersey are similar stories; dense metro areas with lots of commercial HVAC work and unionized labor.
The Lowest-Paying States
West Virginia is at the bottom, about $46,040. Mississippi and Arkansas are right there at $47,270 and $47,240, which at this point I could write in my sleep. Eleven articles and those three states have been at or near the bottom in every one. Alabama ($49,290) and Oklahoma ($50,920) round out the lowest five.
Even so, $46K to $50K for a job that requires no college degree and has strong job security is not a terrible starting point. It’s more than teachers earn in Mississippi ($47K with a bachelor’s) and it’s in the same range as police officers in several southern states. The floor is low compared to something like pharmacy, sure, but the barrier to entry is also wildly different: an apprenticeship versus a doctoral degree.
How It Compares to the Other Trades
I’ve covered electricians, truck drivers, and now HVAC in this series, so I can finally do a side-by-side.
Electricians have the edge on pay. Median of $62,350 vs HVAC’s $57,300. The gap widens at the top end: master electricians in Illinois are at $89K while HVAC supervisors nationally are at about $77K. I think this is partly because electricians have a broader scope of work (residential, commercial, industrial, data centers, solar, EV chargers) and a longer apprenticeship that constrains supply more.
Plumbers and pipefitters are actually pretty close to electricians at about $61K median. Carpenters earn less, around $56K. Construction laborers are the entry point for the trades at about $44K.
So HVAC sits in the middle of the trades pack. Not the highest-paying, not the lowest, but with one advantage the others don’t have as much of: the work is split between installation (which is project-based and can be slow) and service (which never stops because equipment always breaks). That service component gives HVAC techs more income stability than, say, a carpenter who’s entirely dependent on new construction and remodels.
The Apprentice-to-Owner Path
This is the part I find most interesting about HVAC, and it’s similar to what I wrote about electricians.
You start as an apprentice or helper, earning $39K to $54K while you learn. Most programs are three to five years. After that you’re a journeyman making $57K to $70K depending on your state. Get a few more years under your belt, add some certifications (NATE is the big one; EPA 608 is required just to handle refrigerants), and you’re looking at $77K to $91K as a senior tech or foreman.
But the real money in HVAC, like in all the trades, is owning the business. The tech who came to my house is thinking about exactly this. Once you have your contractor’s license, you can hire other techs, run a fleet of vans, and charge for parts and labor at margins the techs themselves don’t see. HVAC business owners report income anywhere from $57K on the low end (solo operators in small markets) to $150K+ for established shops. The ones who build it into a real company with a dispatch system and a team of ten or fifteen techs can do considerably better than that.
The path from “learning to solder copper pipe” to “running a $2 million service company” takes maybe fifteen years. I don’t know of another career where you can go from $39K with zero debt to owning a profitable business in that timeframe without a college degree. Maybe electricians. Maybe plumbers. Basically the trades, and basically nowhere else.
Things That Push HVAC Pay Up
Specializing in commercial or industrial work pays a premium over residential. Hospitals, data centers, manufacturing plants, and large office buildings have complex systems that require more training and pay accordingly. A tech who knows how to work on a chiller is worth a lot more than one who only does split systems in houses.
Refrigeration is a niche within HVAC that pays well. Supermarkets, restaurants, cold storage facilities. If you’ve got the EPA certifications and the experience, this work is steady and lucrative.
The energy efficiency push is creating new demand too. Heat pumps are replacing gas furnaces in a lot of new construction and retrofits, especially in states with aggressive climate goals like California, Washington, and Oregon. Techs who know heat pump installation and maintenance are already in short supply. Geothermal systems are a smaller niche but they pay even better because so few people know how to work on them.
And honestly, the simplest way to earn more is to say yes to overtime and on-call shifts. Nobody wants a weekend emergency call at midnight when it’s 15 degrees outside, which is exactly why those calls pay so well.
The Series Wrap-Up
This is article eleven. I’ve covered nurses, teachers, electricians, truck drivers, police officers, pharmacists, the highest-paying jobs in every state, dental hygienists, data scientists vs software developers, real estate agents, and now HVAC. Across all of them, the same handful of patterns kept showing up.
Mississippi pays the least for everything. California pays the most for almost everything but cost of living eats a lot of it. The skilled trades pay better than most people give them credit for, especially when you skip the student debt. Healthcare careers are strong but the industry is stressed in ways the salary data doesn’t always show. And in every field, the specific employer and setting matter more than the state you’re in.
I’ll probably keep writing these. The data keeps surprising me and the conversations they start (with my neighbor, my dental hygienist, the HVAC tech who fixed my AC) keep giving me new angles to explore.
Full state breakdowns for HVAC technicians, plus comparisons at electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and construction laborers. State hubs for California, Texas, Illinois, and Alaska have the full occupation list.