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Considering the importance of good-quality plumbing, many homeowners and businesses will pay a pretty penny to hire an experienced plumber to do the job right. This means plumbers can command relatively high salaries across the board, ensuring that your plumbing business will have to pay a decent wage to attract workers who have the experience level you need.
In addition, the location of your organisation will also have a dramatic impact on how much compensation is expected. Naturally, bustling capitals with a high cost of living like Sydney, Melbourne or Perth mean the average salary is bound to go up. However, this can extend to certain regional areas too, especially if they’re undergoing a dire skills shortage or elevated demand.
If you’re looking to get your plumbing operation off the ground or just want to check whether you’re being paid fairly, we’ve put together the average total compensation a plumber can expect to earn around Australia. Whether you’re hiring a qualified plumber for your new company or want to assess your place in the industry, check out the following facts and figures.
Understanding how much it costs to hire a plumber with the skills you need means that you can determine how much your company must earn to support itself. Rather than hiring for a position where you’ve massively overestimated or underestimated the costs involved, consider how the data reveals what you can expect to pay.
The average plumber salary in Australia is $77,163 per year or $44.06 per hour. While these figures provide a useful base number for employers and workers alike, there’s an almost endless amount of mitigating factors that might cause this salary to rise or fall. As previously mentioned, wherever your operation is based around the country could have a seriously big impact on what your employees will demand.
However, there’s also a wide variety of plumbing professions that may charge more for specific expertise that enables you to take on more complex jobs. With experience level critical to your costs, some resources reveal that an entry-level plumber can expect to earn approximately $64,046. However, if your company wants to hire the best in the industry, expect to break the bank, as a highly-skilled plumber can command up to $91,900 per year.
Now that we’ve covered the national average salary for plumbers, we can explore the more intricate details that remain relevant to your organisation. We know that location is a defining characteristic behind what plumbers with similar job titles charge around Australia, so seeing this difference in black and white should help you avoid any nasty surprises.
Here’s a quick summary of the annual salary and per hour costs involved. But remember that a state-by-state breakdown still doesn’t quite capture every detail needed to forecast costs and revenue that impacts your success.
Victoria: $81,346/year, $46.45/hour
New South Wales: $71,249/year, $40.68/hour
Queensland: $76,372/year, $43.61/hour
South Australia: $69,515/year, $39.69/hour
Western Australia: $80,531/year, $45.98/hour
Tasmania: $79,798/year, $45.56/hour
Northern Territory: $87,066/year, $49.71/hour
Australian Capital Territory: $75,495/year, $43.11/hour
The average salary for plumbers on your team is bound to increase if you operate in a high cost of living location. While you might want to hire employees willing to take home a lower salary each week, keep in mind that your competitors could easily steal away your best workers if you’re reluctant to pay each person the wage their role calls for.
Plus, your operation will be limited to relatively simple jobs if you aren’t able to pay skilled plumbers the money they demand. This means you should adjust your expectations accordingly if you can only pay a below-average salary. Assess the following average salary and per hour costs involved with employing a plumber depending on their metropolitan location.
Melbourne: $82,657/year, $47.19/hour
Sydney: $74,181/year, $42.36/hour
Brisbane: $77,594/year, $44.30/hour
Perth: $84,599/year, $48.30/hour
Adelaide: $69,515/year, $39.69/hour
Hobart: $79,798/year, $45.56/hour
Darwin: $86,952/year, $49.65/hour
Canberra: $75,495/year, $43.11/hour
Although the location of your trade service is undoubtedly essential when figuring out the costs required to hire the best workers in your area, you must also consider what more skilled plumbers can demand in terms of pay. Naturally, workers with greater education and experience are bound to want higher compensation for their specialised talent.
As you might expect, the average residential plumber deals with systems found in everyday homes. For instance, these workers find themselves involved with newly built homes, as well as those that are undergoing major renovations. With a residential plumber specialising in smaller setups, they assess and fix systems that might have encountered problems due to building standards, general wear and tear, and drainage issues.
A commercial plumber typically has a wider skill set than a residential plumber, with the former dealing with an enormous variety of complex concerns every day. As this requires a commercial plumber to have the education needed to evaluate and resolve problems with large-scale water and heating systems, they can usually charge a premium average hourly pay that corresponds with their experience level.
While other types of plumbers specialise in residential or commercial projects, a service and repair plumber is trained to fix complicated problems that require extensive troubleshooting. Whether these problems appear in existing water systems or detailed pipe networks, a plumber with the service and repair job title can mend challenging leaks, tricky blockages and pressure issues that render a system unusable.
Once you’ve read through this guide to the average total compensation your operation will pay when recruiting a talented plumber, it’s time to optimise the rest of your company. FieldPulse is perfect for the job, with our comprehensive business management app designed to help you run your entire operation from the office and on location.
Rather than finding yourself buried in paperwork, use FieldPulse to process invoices, organise your upcoming jobs, send quotes, track client information and much more. This way, you can streamline your day-to-day decisions and rise above the competition. Schedule a free demo to discover how FieldPulse can save you time and increase revenue today.
