Mechanical contractor workforce population

Explore U.S. and major metropolitan employment in plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contracting. This official-data benchmark helps frame the commercial mechanical labor market—but does not isolate commercial-only workers.

Census County Business Patterns, NAICS 238220: Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors. Includes residential and commercial establishments and their covered employees across field, project and office roles. These are employment counts at workplaces—not resident population, available candidates or unique people across multiple jobs. Commercial-only employment is not separately identified.

25 metropolitan statistical areas ranked by 2023 reported NAICS 238220 employment; matched five-digit CBSA codes across selected years while retaining original Census geographic IDs. This is a major-market cohort, not every U.S. MSA. Metro boundaries are not held constant.

United States employment history

2019: 1,099,138 paid employees
2022: 1,176,759 paid employees
2023: 1,214,761 paid employees

Major metropolitan workforce comparison

Reported NAICS 238220 employment; not commercial-only population
Metro	2019	2022	2023	Change 2019–2023
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ Metro Area	68,765	64,703	64,994	-5.5%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metro Area	37,978	38,383	39,381	+3.7%
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Area	27,767	29,605	31,980	+15.2%
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN Metro Area	29,889	30,287	30,761	+2.9%
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD Metro Area	22,790	24,881	25,980	+14.0%
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX Metro Area	24,541	24,570	25,783	+5.1%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro Area	27,003	26,225	25,279	-6.4%
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ Metro Area	21,782	24,295	24,735	+13.6%
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro Area	21,399	22,825	22,860	+6.8%
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL Metro Area	20,524	21,493	22,209	+8.2%
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA Metro Area	18,594	19,523	20,477	+10.1%
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA Metro Area	16,137	16,944	17,675	+9.5%
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metro Area	19,251	19,956	17,189	-10.7%
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Metro Area	11,771	13,353	14,263	+21.2%
Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD Metro Area	12,678	13,266	14,088	+11.1%
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL Metro Area	12,086	13,305	13,700	+13.4%
Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV Metro Area	10,385	12,459	13,660	+31.5%
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metro Area	12,485	13,640	13,434	+7.6%
Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO Metro Area	14,126	13,424	13,155	-6.9%
Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area	11,614	12,788	12,976	+11.7%
Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC Metro Area	11,109	12,029	12,785	+15.1%
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA Metro Area	10,667	12,202	12,748	+19.5%
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metro Area	9,888	12,389	12,459	+26.0%
Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metro Area	10,594	11,978	12,387	+16.9%
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA Metro Area	9,573	12,093	12,098	+26.4%

Scope and methodology

CBP reports paid employment for the pay period including March 12, not annual-average employment. Counts include full- and part-time employees; they are not full-time equivalents.
This industry excludes some adjacent employers and specialties: equipment manufacturers/distributors, engineering firms, owner facilities staff and separately classified contractors. Do not add overlapping occupation counts to this industry total.
Nonemployer businesses, including many self-employed workers, are outside CBP employer employment. The figures are not a census of every person working in the broader mechanical sector.
Reported values are subject to Census disclosure protection and noise infusion. Suppressed or flagged unavailable observations are shown as unavailable, never zero or estimated.
Metro records match five-digit CBSA codes across the selected years and retain original Census geographic IDs, but official metro boundaries and names can change. Historical differences may reflect geography as well as employment change; comparisons are not constant-boundary growth estimates.
National totals come from the national source record. Metro values are not summed to create the U.S. total; metros omit nonmetropolitan employment.

Census County Business Patterns datasets — Official bulk data files used for these historical employment observations.

CBP methodology — Industry coverage, reference-period employment, disclosure protection and geographic definitions.

NAICS industry classification — NAICS 238220 defines the contractor benchmark; it does not split residential from commercial employment.

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