How much do boilermakers make in Maryland in 2026?

Boilermakers in Maryland earn a median annual wage of $42,250, which works out to roughly $20.31 per hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That's the midpoint — half of boilermakers in the state earn more, half earn less. If you're just starting out or working in a lower-demand area, expect to land closer to the 25th percentile at $38,070 a year, or about $18.30 an hour. Experienced hands with a strong track record on complex jobs can push into the 75th percentile at $57,480 annually — around $27.63 an hour. All figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025.

That $19,410 spread between the 25th and 75th percentile isn't random. The biggest factors are years of experience, the type of work you're doing, and where in Maryland you're located. Boilermakers working on industrial installations — power plants, chemical refineries, and manufacturing facilities — tend to pull wages toward the top of the range. Maintenance and repair work is steady but often pays closer to the median. New construction and shutdown work can come with significant overtime, which pushes your take-home well above the base annual figure.

Geography inside Maryland matters too. The Baltimore metro area and the industrial corridor along the Chesapeake Bay have heavier concentrations of the power generation and manufacturing facilities that drive demand for boilermakers. Workers commuting to these sites or picking up outage work at utility plants have more chances to log hours that bump them above the median. Rural and suburban areas of the state have less of this industrial infrastructure, which can mean fewer hours and fewer specialty jobs that command premium pay.

Certifications and weld tests have a direct effect on where you fall in the range. Boilermakers who can pass multiple weld certifications — particularly those required for pressure vessel and ASME code work — are harder to replace and tend to negotiate higher rates. Rigging and millwright crossover skills also add leverage when talking to contractors, because a worker who can do more phases of a job is more valuable on a smaller crew.

No union scale data is currently available for boilermakers in Maryland through TradesPays. If you're working under a collective bargaining agreement, your base rate, fringe benefits, and overtime rules are set by that contract, and the BLS figures above may not fully capture your total compensation. Apprentice scale, journeyman scale, and foreman scale can all differ significantly under a union agreement, and benefit packages — health, pension, annuity — add real dollar value on top of the hourly wage.

For context, the difference between working as a boilermaker at the 25th versus 75th percentile in Maryland is roughly $19,410 per year before overtime. Over a five-year span, that gap compounds to nearly $97,000 in gross earnings. That's real money, and it underscores why investing time in certifications, weld tests, and specialty skills pays off faster in this trade than in many others.

If you're an apprentice in Maryland, the entry-level floor reflected in the 25th percentile ($38,070 / $18.30 per hour) is a realistic starting point, but it shouldn't be where you stay. Most boilermakers see meaningful wage progression once they demonstrate proficiency on code work and earn their journeyman status. The path from the 25th to the 75th percentile in this trade is achievable in under a decade for a worker who stays active, logs hours on industrial shutdown and construction projects, and builds a certification portfolio.

Use the numbers on this page as a benchmark when evaluating job offers, negotiating with a new contractor, or deciding whether a specific project is worth taking. The BLS OEWS figures are the most comprehensive publicly available wage data for the trade, collected from employer payroll records across Maryland and published May 2025.