New York · Plumbing
Plumbing contractors in New York: market size, permits, and job values
2,000 plumbing contractors operate in New York. Median job value is $20,000 and top-quartile contractors land jobs of $100,000+. Sourced from 409M building permits (2022-2024) and 365K specialty trade contractor records.
2,000
Plumbing contractors in New York
All revenue tiers
$20,000
Median job value
Trade median: $10,872
$100,000
Top-quartile job value
75th percentile
$85/hr
Median bill rate (national)
Level benchmark
Permit volume trend, New York
Building permits are the leading indicator of contractor demand. New York logged 106K permit records in 2023, the last fully reported year, down -28.7% over 2022.
2022
149K
2023
106K
-28.7% YoY
2024
71K
still reporting
2024 counts are still filling in (late-arriving records inflate prior years), so treat the raw 2024 drop as a reporting lag, not real contraction. Census data shows US permitted units were roughly flat from 2023 to 2024. Where permit volume softens, more contractors fight for fewer jobs. The ones who tighten cash collection, shorten quote cycles, and protect maintenance revenue pull through; thin AR and slow billing compress.
Plumbing seasonality (2023, national)
Peak month: Aug. Slow month: Jan. Plan cash and crew capacity against this curve.
Competition: who you're up against
New York has 21,537 HVAC/plumbing/electrical contractors total. Of those, 7,116 are in the $1-25M revenue band, the typical ICP for fractional-CFO support. The New York-Newark metro is the largest concentration. The average company has been in business 26 years.
23/yr
Median permits/contractor (state)
48/yr
Top 25% (p75)
100/yr
Top 10% (p90)
What this means for your P&L
The market is tightening, your books need to match.
When permit volume softens, the plumbing contractors that survive aren't the ones with the most quotes, they're the ones who collect 80%+ of billed revenue inside 60 days, hold service-agreement margin above 38%, and don't blow project budgets by more than 10%. We benchmarked all three across 2,200+ contractors in Level's proprietary research. Want to see where you actually sit on each?
Other trades in New York
Plumbing contractors in other states
Permit data from public county tax-assessor and building-permit records (73.7M property records, over 400M permit records, 2022-2024). Contractor density from public company records (494M company locations). Bill-rate benchmarks from Level's proprietary contractor benchmark research (2,242 contractors, $13.25B in job revenue, 2.5M+ invoices). All data anonymized and aggregated. See the full Level Index.