How much do boilermakers make in Washington in 2026?

The median boilermaker in Washington earns $95,200 a year, which works out to about $45.77 an hour based on a standard 2,080-hour year. That figure sits well above the national median for the trade, reflecting Washington's heavy industrial base — pulp and paper mills, refineries along the Puget Sound corridor, chemical plants, and the aerospace-adjacent manufacturing sector all run boilers and pressure vessels that need skilled hands.

Pay spreads wide in this trade. Workers at the 25th percentile bring in $71,500 a year, or roughly $34.38 an hour. Those are typically journeyworkers with a few years of experience, or workers in smaller industrial shops away from the major industrial centers. At the 75th percentile the number jumps to $117,040 — about $56.27 an hour — and that tier is generally where you find workers with deep specialization in welding certification, non-destructive testing (NDT), or lead responsibilities on turnaround crews.

The $45,540 gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is one of the widest spreads you'll see in any trade in the state. That tells you something important: in this trade, skill stacking and tenure pay off more than in many other craft occupations. A boilermaker who picks up extra weld certs — 6G pipe, for example — or earns NDT qualifications like UT or radiography can push toward the top tier faster than time alone would get them there.

Geography within Washington matters. The industrial concentration around Puget Sound — Tacoma, Everett, the refineries near Anacortes and Ferndale — generates the most consistent boilermaker work. Spokane and eastern Washington have industrial employers too, but work can be more sporadic and tied to project cycles. Workers who are willing to travel for refinery turnarounds and outage work, which often happen in concentrated windows of a few weeks, can log heavy overtime hours that push annual take-home well above the base salary figures shown here.

Overtime is a real factor in this trade. Boilermaker work is heavily tied to planned outages, plant shutdowns, and turnaround projects where crews run 60- to 70-hour weeks for short stretches. A worker earning the median base rate of $45.77 an hour earns $68.66 for every overtime hour (1.5x). A six-week turnaround with 20 hours of overtime per week adds roughly $8,200 on top of straight-time pay. Workers who position themselves to take those turnaround calls — and maintain the certifications to qualify — can see annual income that runs significantly higher than BLS wage figures capture.

Entry into the trade in Washington typically runs through a multi-year apprenticeship. Apprentice boilermakers earn a percentage of the journeyworker scale that steps up each year, so pay during the apprenticeship period will fall below the 25th percentile figures shown here. Upon completion of the apprenticeship and achieving journeyworker status, workers generally move into the range reflected in the BLS data.

Some boilermakers in Washington work under collective bargaining agreements and others work non-union. If you are covered by a union agreement, your specific rates, travel pay, and benefit contributions will be spelled out in that agreement — check directly with your local for the current scale and any recent negotiated increases, since contract wages update on their own schedule.

The numbers on this page come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, published May 2025. BLS figures are employer-reported and represent straight-time wages. They do not include overtime premiums, per diem, tool allowances, or the value of health and retirement benefits — all of which are common in boilermaker employment. That means the real total compensation picture for a fully employed boilermaker in Washington is generally higher than these wage figures alone suggest.