The metro pay gap: where same-trade workers earn the most (and least)

A plumber in San Jose medians $107,560 a year. A plumber in Tampa medians $52,000 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Same trade, same pipe, same code — and $55,560 between them. That's not a typo and it's not a fluke. It's the metro pay gap, and it's bigger than most workers think.

We pulled the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics figures for the metro areas we cover — the May 2025 release, the most recent full dataset — and looked at where the same trade pays the most and the least. The spread between the top metro and the bottom metro is wide enough to change which house you can buy. Here's what the numbers say, and an honest warning about what they don't.

The headline: the same trade, $50K+ apart by metro

For all three trades below, these are metro-level medians — BLS reports wages for metropolitan statistical areas separately from whole-state numbers, and the metro figure is the one that's true for your actual labor market.

Electricians: $54,270 from top to bottom

Highest-paying metros	Median	Lowest-paying metros	Median
Portland, OR	$105,090	Orlando, FL	$50,820
Chicago, IL	$102,350	Birmingham, AL	$56,630
Seattle, WA	$101,780

BLS OEWS, May 2025, median annual wage for electricians.

Portland's electrician median ($105,090) is more than double Orlando's ($50,820) — a $54,270 gap for the same license and the same conduit (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The top tier clusters in the Pacific Northwest and Chicago, all clearing $100,000 at the median. The bottom sits in the Southeast.

Plumbers: $55,560 from top to bottom

Highest-paying metros	Median	Lowest-paying metros	Median
San Jose, CA	$107,560	Tampa, FL	$52,000
Chicago, IL	$103,380	Orlando, FL	$55,380
Minneapolis, MN	$101,630

BLS OEWS, May 2025, median annual wage for plumbers.

San Jose tops the plumber list at $107,560 — the highest single number in this whole post — against Tampa at $52,000, a $55,560 gap (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Chicago shows up in the top three for both electricians and plumbers, which tells you something about that market: it pays the trades well across the board.

HVAC techs: a narrower $33,310 spread

Highest-paying metros	Median	Lowest-paying metros	Median
San Jose, CA	$82,050	Birmingham, AL	$48,740
Seattle, WA	$80,100	Tampa, FL	$50,540

BLS OEWS, May 2025, median annual wage for HVAC techs.

HVAC techs see a real gap too — $82,050 in San Jose down to $48,740 in Birmingham, a $33,310 spread (BLS OEWS, May 2025) — but it's noticeably tighter than the electrician or plumber gap. HVAC work tracks building stock and climate demand more evenly across metros, so the top and bottom don't pull as far apart.

One thing to hold onto before we go further: every number above is nominal — not cost-of-living adjusted. We have no COL dataset ingested, and San Jose's high figure partly reflects San Jose's cost of living. The full warning is two sections down; just don't read the raw gap as pure take-home advantage yet.

Why the same trade splits this far apart

Look across all three tables and a pattern repeats. The top of every list is a high-cost coastal or major-metro market — San Jose, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis. The bottom is the same handful of Southeastern metros — Orlando, Tampa, Birmingham — showing up again and again. Orlando is the bottom electrician metro and near the bottom for plumbers. Birmingham anchors the bottom for HVAC. That's not coincidence; it's the local labor market setting the price.

Three forces drive most of the spread. First is cost of living, which we'll come back to in a second because it deserves its own warning. Second is how unionized the market is — Chicago and the Pacific Northwest run heavy union density in the building trades, and the negotiated scale lifts the whole median. Third is what's getting built: a metro with active commercial, industrial, and data-center work bids the wage up to pull skilled hands in, while a metro coasting on residential service work doesn't have to.

Notice which trade has the widest gap. Plumbers split $55,560 top to bottom and electricians $54,270, but HVAC techs only $33,310 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). Licensed trades with tighter labor supply and bigger commercial-project swings — plumbing and electrical — stretch further between the hottest and coolest markets. HVAC demand is more evenly spread because every building, in every metro, needs climate control.

The big caveat, up front: these numbers are NOT cost-of-living adjusted

Before you pack the truck for San Jose, read this part. Every figure above is a nominal wage — what the paycheck says, not what it buys. We do not have a cost-of-living dataset ingested, so we are not adjusting these numbers, and we won't pretend to.

That matters enormously here. San Jose's $107,560 plumber median is partly San Jose's rent showing up in the wage — housing, fuel, and groceries in that metro cost a multiple of what they cost in Tampa or Birmingham. A big chunk of that headline gap is the high-cost metro paying more because it has to, not because the plumber there ends every month with $55,560 more in the bank. Don't read the gap as pure take-home advantage. It isn't.

The honest version: a high nominal wage in an expensive metro and a lower nominal wage in a cheap one can land much closer than the table suggests once rent is paid. The table tells you the gross; it cannot tell you the net.

Where the data goes quiet

A few more limits worth stating plainly.

These are metro medians, not state medians. The OEWS metropolitan program reports wages for specific metro areas, which is a different cut than a whole-state figure. A metro median can sit well above or below its state's number — that's the point of looking at metros — so don't mix the two.

BLS does not split union from non-union. The metro median blends both into one figure. In a heavily-unionized market like Chicago, the union scale is part of what's pulling that median up; the number you'd personally hit depends on whether you're on a union book.

The median hides the range. Every metro has a 25th-to-75th-percentile spread, and where you land inside it comes down to experience, sector, and overtime. A top-quartile worker in a "low-paying" metro can out-earn a median worker in a "high-paying" one.

What to do with this

If you're considering the trade, geography is the biggest lever you've got — but weigh it against cost of living, not just the headline. A six-figure metro median is real, but so is the rent behind it. Start by seeing the full national picture on the electrician salary hub or the plumber salary hub.

If you're already in the trade, use the metro number as your floor in a negotiation. If you're an electrician in Chicago, the data says the median for your market is $102,350 — look it up directly on the Chicago electrician page and bring that to your next pay conversation. If you're a plumber anywhere near the Bay, the San Jose plumber page shows a $107,560 median; don't negotiate below your metro on a feeling.

And if you want these numbers to get sharper, add your own pay. We publish anonymously, never with a raw email address, and every submission tightens the metro picture for the next worker trying to figure out what the job is really worth where they actually live.

Data: BLS OEWS, May 2025, metropolitan program — median annual wages by metro area. These are nominal, not cost-of-living adjusted. See how we build these numbers.