Statistics
HVAC industry statistics
How many firms and technicians the trade has, how small most firms are, and where workers are scarce, from Census and BLS files.
Written by HYRE HVAC Research Desk Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
The short answer
HVAC industry statistics from federal files: in 2023 the US had 111,207 plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractor establishments employing 1,214,761 people, and 76.8% of them had fewer than 10 employees.
BLS counted 396,760 HVAC mechanics and installers on payrolls in May 2024, about 32 per 10,000 households. That ratio ranges from 54 in Idaho to 17 in Illinois.
How big is the HVAC industry?
Measured by firms and workers, it is large and made of small businesses. County Business Patterns counts 111,207 establishments in NAICS 238220, the federal industry code for plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors, with 1,214,761 employees in March 2023. That is 1.3% of all US business establishments in the file.
One caution comes first. The federal code does not separate HVAC contractors from plumbers, so these counts include both. No public federal file splits them, so treat any “number of HVAC companies” that does not mention plumbing with caution.
We do not publish industry revenue or market-size figures. They come from paid reports whose methods are not public, as our HVAC statistics page explains.
How small are most HVAC and plumbing contractors?
Very small. 64,871 establishments have 1 to 4 employees and another 20,587 have 5 to 9, so 76.8% have fewer than 10. Only 1,656 have 100 or more. The average is 10.9 employees.
HyreHVAC analysis: for a homeowner this is the practical point. Most contractors you call are small businesses, so checking the licence and insurance of the specific business matters more than its brand. Our HVAC licensing study shows how to check, state by state.
How many HVAC technicians are there?
396,760 on payrolls in May 2024, summing the BLS state estimates for the 50 states and DC. That counts wage and salary workers only. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, which also counts the self-employed, puts the occupation at 440,900 jobs in 2025, The gap of about 44,000 reflects the self-employed and the different reference year.
The largest workforces follow population: Florida (38,290), California (34,020), Texas (32,070), New York (22,710). BLS projects 11% growth in the occupation over 2025-35, with about 40,600 openings a year.
Where are HVAC technicians hardest to find?
Per household, in Oregon, West Virginia, Illinois among the states, and lowest of all in DC. Nationally there are about 32 HVAC technicians on payrolls per 10,000 households.
Idaho (54), Utah (52), Florida (48), Delaware (47) have the most. A state with few technicians per home may mean longer waits in a heat wave or cold snap.
BLS’s own measure, the location quotient, compares the occupation’s share of jobs in a state with its share nationally. Idaho is highest at 1.64, meaning HVAC technicians are 1.64 times as common in its workforce as in the nation’s. Illinois is among the lowest at 0.54.
Hiring advice that holds anywhere: see how we vet for the checks we think matter, and the quote checker to read a quote line by line.
What do HVAC technicians earn?
The median varies by state from $46,040 in West Virginia to $83,660 in Alaska a year, per BLS for May 2024. These are worker wages, not what a job costs a homeowner, and they are not a guide to prices. For career detail, BLS’s Occupational Outlook Handbook is the primary source.
What does the HVAC trade look like in every state?
| State | Contractor establishments (plumbing + HVAC) | Per 10,000 households | HVAC technicians on payrolls | Per 10,000 households | Location quotient | Median annual wage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 1,647 | 8.7 | 7,330 | 38.6 | 1.36 | $49,290 |
| Alaska | 264 | 10.3 | 790 | 30.7 | 0.96 | $83,660 |
| Arizona | 2,567 | 9.6 | 10,850 | 40.6 | 1.32 | $56,580 |
| Arkansas | 1,145 | 10.0 | 4,890 | 42.8 | 1.47 | $47,240 |
| California | 11,686 | 8.9 | 34,020 | 25.8 | 0.73 | $65,290 |
| Colorado | 2,620 | 11.6 | 8,870 | 39.3 | 1.19 | $63,420 |
| Connecticut | 1,318 | 9.5 | 4,440 | 32.1 | 1.03 | $73,910 |
| Delaware | 344 | 9.0 | 1,790 | 47.0 | 1.46 | $59,940 |
| District of Columbia | 37 | 1.2 | 370 | 11.7 | 0.20 | $83,390 |
| Florida | 9,353 | 11.6 | 38,290 | 47.5 | 1.51 | $50,580 |
| Georgia | 3,101 | 8.0 | 12,210 | 31.5 | 0.98 | $55,020 |
| Hawaii | 403 | 8.5 | 1,110 | 23.4 | 0.70 | $63,780 |
| Idaho | 904 | 13.8 | 3,570 | 54.4 | 1.64 | $52,730 |
| Illinois | 4,070 | 8.3 | 8,510 | 17.4 | 0.54 | $71,620 |
| Indiana | 2,008 | 7.7 | 7,620 | 29.3 | 0.93 | $60,310 |
| Iowa | 1,108 | 8.6 | 3,990 | 31.1 | 0.99 | $59,490 |
| Kansas | 1,028 | 9.1 | 4,100 | 36.4 | 1.11 | $56,750 |
| Kentucky | 1,379 | 7.9 | 6,230 | 35.8 | 1.21 | $58,880 |
| Louisiana | 1,623 | 9.4 | 5,040 | 29.2 | 1.03 | $53,510 |
| Maine | 781 | 13.8 | 2,110 | 37.4 | 1.29 | $62,130 |
| Maryland | 1,986 | 8.7 | 6,380 | 28.0 | 0.90 | $65,000 |
| Massachusetts | 3,069 | 11.3 | 7,960 | 29.3 | 0.85 | $76,990 |
| Michigan | 2,661 | 6.8 | 13,720 | 35.0 | 1.21 | $60,090 |
| Minnesota | 1,816 | 8.1 | 5,190 | 23.3 | 0.69 | $73,390 |
| Mississippi | 709 | 6.5 | 2,960 | 27.3 | 0.99 | $47,270 |
| Missouri | 1,915 | 7.9 | 8,360 | 34.4 | 1.11 | $60,330 |
| Montana | 712 | 16.4 | 1,050 | 24.2 | 0.80 | $58,600 |
| Nebraska | 837 | 10.9 | 3,080 | 40.3 | 1.18 | $59,690 |
| Nevada | 909 | 8.0 | 4,240 | 37.2 | 1.08 | $59,230 |
| New Hampshire | 776 | 14.4 | 2,120 | 39.4 | 1.21 | $64,410 |
| New Jersey | 3,454 | 10.2 | 10,680 | 31.5 | 0.98 | $69,800 |
| New Mexico | 691 | 8.8 | 1,820 | 23.1 | 0.82 | $55,020 |
| New York | 7,061 | 9.4 | 22,710 | 30.2 | 0.92 | $66,670 |
| North Carolina | 3,973 | 9.9 | 13,750 | 34.3 | 1.09 | $51,940 |
| North Dakota | 336 | 10.6 | 1,100 | 34.9 | 1.00 | $66,770 |
| Ohio | 2,970 | 6.3 | 13,570 | 28.6 | 0.95 | $60,490 |
| Oklahoma | 1,592 | 10.7 | 4,820 | 32.3 | 1.11 | $50,920 |
| Oregon | 1,337 | 8.1 | 3,690 | 22.3 | 0.73 | $62,740 |
| Pennsylvania | 4,154 | 8.1 | 16,930 | 33.0 | 1.09 | $61,120 |
| Rhode Island | 494 | 11.8 | 1,320 | 31.5 | 1.04 | $63,580 |
| South Carolina | 1,685 | 8.6 | 6,370 | 32.3 | 1.09 | $55,260 |
| South Dakota | 401 | 11.6 | 1,130 | 32.6 | 0.97 | $59,460 |
| Tennessee | 1,899 | 7.1 | 10,510 | 39.5 | 1.25 | $51,480 |
| Texas | 8,966 | 8.7 | 32,070 | 31.3 | 0.90 | $54,050 |
| Utah | 1,443 | 13.9 | 5,370 | 51.6 | 1.22 | $56,200 |
| Vermont | 303 | 11.7 | 1,050 | 40.6 | 1.35 | $60,170 |
| Virginia | 2,765 | 8.5 | 13,640 | 42.1 | 1.30 | $60,630 |
| Washington | 2,242 | 7.6 | 7,090 | 24.1 | 0.78 | $67,630 |
| West Virginia | 406 | 5.8 | 1,450 | 20.8 | 0.80 | $46,040 |
| Wisconsin | 1,944 | 8.1 | 5,930 | 24.8 | 0.79 | $62,030 |
| Wyoming | 315 | 13.9 | 570 | 25.2 | 0.79 | $50,920 |
Establishments: Census CBP 2023, NAICS 238220. Technicians, location quotient and wages: BLS OEWS May 2024, SOC 49-9021. Households: EIA RECS 2020.
How did we calculate these figures?
The 2023 national and state files (cbp23us, cbp23st) from the Census Bureau, downloaded October 26, 2026. Rows for NAICS 238220, all legal forms of organization. Establishment counts are never suppressed; employment counts carry Census noise flags.
The BLS May 2024 state workbook, downloaded October 26, 2026. Rows for SOC 49-9021 in the 50 states and DC. The national figure here is the sum of those state rows.
Divided by occupied homes per state from EIA RECS 2020, weighted. Households are a better base than population for a trade that serves homes.
One script reads all three files and writes every figure, chart and the CSV. The Outlook Handbook figures are quoted from BLS, as on our HVAC statistics page.
What do these statistics not show?
NAICS 238220 covers plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors together.
Sole proprietors with no payroll are not in OEWS or in CBP.
CBP is March 2023, OEWS is May 2024, households are 2020. Ratios mix years and are best read as rankings.
The occupation counts all HVAC mechanics, including those on commercial buildings, not only residential work.
How should you cite these statistics?
Please cite as: HyreHVAC Research Desk, “HVAC industry statistics,” hyrehvac.com/statistics/hvac-industry/, from Census CBP 2023 and BLS OEWS May 2024, retrieved October 26, 2026. Where you quote a single figure, name the agency file. The CSV below has every state.
Questions
How many HVAC companies are there in the US?
How many HVAC technicians are there?
Which state has the most HVAC technicians?
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Is there a shortage of HVAC technicians?
Written and audited by
HYRE HVAC Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the federal microdata file, the statute or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
The counts below are generated from the published pages themselves, last counted October 26, 2026, and they are what we have actually published rather than what we intend to.
- 18
- studies published
- 15
- federal sources read and cited
- 15
- studies published with their full dataset as CSV
- 51
- jurisdictions reproduced against EIA’s own tables
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Federal data comes from the agency that collects it, in the file that agency publishes. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we download the source and compute the figure ourselves.
- We validate against the agency before we publish. First, we use each federal microdata file to reproduce the agency’s own published tables. Our cooling research reproduces EIA’s state estimates and standard errors for all 51 jurisdictions. That check caught a variance formula that was off by a factor of four.
- Every estimate carries its uncertainty. These are survey figures, not counts. Standard errors are computed from the replicate weights the federal file supplies and printed beside the estimate. An estimate too imprecise to publish is reported as such rather than printed.
- Nothing is typed by hand. Prose, tables and charts all read from one dataset built by script, so a number in a sentence and the same number in the table below it cannot disagree.
- We publish the data, not just the conclusion. 15 of our 18 studies offer the full computed table as a CSV download on the page, so you can check the analysis or disagree with it. A study without a row-level dataset gets no download link and claims none in its structured data.
- We correct in public. Where we have published a figure wrongly we fix the figure, rewrite any analysis that rested on it rather than patching the number underneath it, and leave a dated correction note on the page.
- We do not install or sell HVAC equipment, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of CBP 2023 and OEWS May 2024, retrieved October 26, 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
The data behind this page
Every figure on this page is computed from one file, and that file is published here so the analysis can be checked, disagreed with, or reused.
Sources & retrieval dates
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