HVAC careers and the trades beside them

The mechanical trade that pays best of the six here is first-line supervisors, at a median of $79,860, and general maintenance workers least at $49,590. All six come from one Bureau of Labor Statistics release for May 2025, so they are directly comparable rather than assembled from different years and different sources, which is how most trade comparisons on the web are built.

Five of the six sit above the median for all occupations, which is $50,980 across 155,495,730 jobs. The exception is general maintenance workers, just below it. The mechanical trades pay above average, and the ones that require a licence pay furthest above.

Size and pay run in opposite directions, which is worth seeing before choosing on wage alone. General maintenance workers is the largest at 1,529,700 jobs and the lowest paid of the six, while stationary engineers number only 28,250 and are nearly the best paid. A high median on a small workforce describes a narrow opportunity rather than a strong one.

How you train for these trades differs by trade, and this site covers one of the six directly. There are 151 HVAC Excellence and PAHRA accredited HVAC programs across 38 states, ranked and documented alongside the licensing rules that apply in each. EPA Section 608 certification is federal and applies to anyone opening a refrigerant circuit, whichever of these trades they end up in.

The other five are reached by different routes, and the figures here are for comparison rather than instruction. Plumbing and electrical work are licensed in far more states than HVAC, so both run on longer and more standardised apprenticeships. Supervision is reached by promotion rather than by training. Stationary engineering usually needs a boiler operator licence, which several state pages on this site describe in their own terms.