How much do boilermakers make in Virginia in 2026?

Boilermakers in Virginia earn a median wage of $67,540 per year, which works out to roughly $32.47 an hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That number sits in the middle of the pack — half of boilermakers in the state earn more, half earn less. If you're just starting out or working in a slower market, expect pay closer to the 25th percentile at $54,390 annually, or about $26.15 an hour. Experienced hands and those working premium industrial jobs can push into the 75th percentile at $75,170 a year, about $36.14 an hour.

The spread from bottom quartile to top quartile is roughly $20,780 per year. That's not a small gap. It reflects real differences in experience, employer type, and the kind of work you're doing. A boilermaker wrench-turning on a small HVAC project is not making the same money as one doing high-pressure vessel work at a power plant or chemical facility along the Virginia coast or in the Shenandoah Valley industrial corridor.

Virginia's boilermaker work tends to concentrate around power generation facilities, industrial manufacturing plants, and shipbuilding and ship repair operations — particularly in the Hampton Roads area, which hosts some of the largest naval and commercial shipyards on the East Coast. Those environments typically pay at or above the median because the work is technically demanding and the stakes for bad welds or faulty pressure vessel repairs are high. Employers in those sectors generally want certified journeymen who can pass weld tests and work safely in confined spaces and at elevation.

Inland, boilermakers find work at pulp and paper mills, chemical processing plants, and fossil fuel or biomass power generation sites. Pay in these settings varies more by contract and the size of the facility than by geography alone.

Overtime is a real factor in this trade. Boilermakers often work scheduled outages and turnarounds, which stack hours fast. A worker earning $32.47 an hour base who logs 300 hours of overtime in a year is adding roughly $14,600 in premium pay on top of their base salary — assuming time-and-a-half at $48.71 an hour. Many experienced boilermakers plan their annual income around outage season, not just their base rate.

No union scale data is available for boilermakers in Virginia at this time. Union scale rates, where applicable, typically set a floor for journeyman wages and include negotiated benefits like pension contributions and health coverage that do not show up in the gross wage figures above.

All wage figures on this page come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025. These are employer-reported figures and represent straight-time wages only — they do not include overtime, bonuses, or the value of benefits.

If you're sizing up a job offer, start with the $67,540 median as your baseline. Then ask whether the role is union or non-union, what the overtime outlook looks like during outage season, and whether travel or per diem is part of the package. Those factors can move your real annual take-home well above or below what the base wage alone suggests.