What plumbers earn in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro
At $35.99 an hour (median), plumbers in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro run about 4% below the New Jersey median of $37.61 — a lower labor-cost market worth pricing deliberately.
Wage figures: U.S. BLS Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS), latest release. These are published labor-market averages — what plumbers are paid, not the price you should charge. Your quote is built from your own burdened costs plus overhead and margin.
The plumbers pay range in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro — and what it signals for pricing
Wages here span a real range, and that spread is itself a pricing signal:
| Experience level | Hourly wage |
|---|---|
| Entry level (10th percentile) | $23.27/hr |
| Median (50th percentile) | $35.99/hr |
| Experienced (90th percentile) | $68.37/hr |
That's a wide spread — top earners make over 2.9× the entry rate. Experience and specialization command a real premium here, so price toward the upper end and back it with proof of expertise.
BLS counts about 7,150 plumbers working in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro — a read on both your competition and your potential demand.
Percentiles & employment: BLS OEWS, latest release. What a worker is paid is the input to your price, not the price itself.
Turning Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro labor cost into a profitable price
The wage above is the input, not the price. To quote a plumber job and actually keep the margin, you load that wage into a burdened rate, add overhead, then price from the margin you need:
- Burden the wage — taxes, comp, insurance, and non-billable time turn a $35.99 wage into a higher true cost per field hour. See the labor burden guide.
- Recover overhead — every job carries a slice of your fixed costs. See overhead recovery.
- Price from margin, not markup — to keep 30% you mark up ~43%, not 30%. Run your numbers in the markup ↔ margin calculator.
For the full trade-specific method, see how to price plumbers work.
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro market context
Pricing doesn't happen in a vacuum — the local cost of living and customer base shape what the market supports:
- Median household income: $86,867 (Census ACS) — a read on what local customers can support.
- Median home value: $356,700 — higher-value homes often mean larger, better-funded projects.
- Population: 6,246,160 — the size of the local market.
Demographics: U.S. Census ACS 1-year. Cost index: BEA Regional Price Parities. Context only — price from your own costs.
Stop pricing from memory
The Contractor Authority System™ turns this into a repeatable process — burdened labor & overhead, change-order protection, and client-ready proposals. One-time $97.
FAQ
Per BLS OEWS (latest release), the median wage is $35.99 per hour and the mean is $40.22 per hour for this area. That's the labor cost input — a customer-facing job price adds burden, overhead, and margin on top.
Local wages, cost of living, demand, and competition all move the number — in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metro, plumbers run a median $35.99/hr across roughly 7,150 workers, with pay from $23.27 to $68.37 an hour entry-to-experienced. That's why a price built from your own burdened costs beats copying a regional average — use the area figure as context, not your quote.