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Texas · Plumbing

Plumbing contractors in Texas: market size, permits, and job values

2,400 plumbing contractors operate in Texas. Median job value is $2,905 and top-quartile contractors land jobs of $49,702+. Sourced from 409M building permits (2022-2024) and 365K specialty trade contractor records.

2,400

Plumbing contractors in Texas

All revenue tiers

$2,905

Median job value

Trade median: $10,872

$49,702

Top-quartile job value

75th percentile

$85/hr

Median bill rate (national)

Level benchmark

Permit volume trend, Texas

Building permits are the leading indicator of contractor demand. Texas logged 1.5M permit records in 2023, the last fully reported year, up +3.7% over 2022.

2022

1.5M

2023

1.5M

+3.7% YoY

2024

1.0M

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. Demand is expanding. Most plumbing contractors who fail in growth markets fail on cash flow, not sales, get the AR collection and progress billing tight before scaling crews.

Plumbing seasonality (2023, national)

Peak month: Aug. Slow month: Jan. Plan cash and crew capacity against this curve.

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Competition: who you're up against

Texas has 34,454 HVAC/plumbing/electrical contractors total. Of those, 4,352 are in the $1-25M revenue band, the typical ICP for fractional-CFO support. The Dallas-Fort Worth metro is the largest concentration. The average company has been in business 22 years.

23/yr

Median permits/contractor (state)

50/yr

Top 25% (p75)

130/yr

Top 10% (p90)

What this means for your P&L

The market is expanding, your books need to match.

Growing markets cover up bad finance habits. The plumbing contractors who scale to $10M+ in expansion phases are the ones who keep DSO under 50 days, hold service-agreement margin above 38%, and price labor to their local top quartile. Want to see where you actually sit?

Try the cash gap calculator →

Other trades in Texas

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.