Licensed supply, wages, demand, and real current openings for plumbers in Cook County, IL, from the state register (updated nightly), BLS, and live job listings.
Cook County, IL carries 944 licensed plumbers and a median wage of $103,380/yr ($49.70/hr).
A free report on your market: what the trade pays here, how that ranks nationally, and where your credential sits against the local licensed workforce. This market already pays more than every county within 150 miles. No account needed.
This county sits at the 100th percentile nationally for plumbers pay, above the median US county. Average weekly wages across the county's construction trades rose 8.3% year over year (BLS QCEW).
Real, current plumbers openings, 11 in Cook County itself, 1 elsewhere in the metro area (marked). Jobs by Adzuna.
Cook County holds 34% of the metro area's 2,812 licensed plumbers (the largest plumbers pool among its 13 counties), at 1.9 per 10,000 residents against 3.0 metro-wide.
Counted from ATI's nightly diff of the IL register itself, over the trailing year. Runs that failed a data-quality gate are excluded, so a scraper outage is never reported as workers leaving.
| Movement | Workers | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| New licenses issued | 43 | People who entered the licensed workforce here. |
| Licenses lapsed | 32 | Expired or not renewed. Retirement, relocation or leaving the trade. |
| Moved up a credential tier | 0 | Apprentice to journeyman, journeyman to master, and so on. |
| Net change | 11 | New licenses minus lapsed. Negative means the licensed base shrank. |
Employment from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for the industry this trade sits in; payroll from the Census County Business Patterns. Establishment counts are QCEW where the county is disclosed and an ATI estimate otherwise.
| Measure | Value | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Employer establishments | 1,351 | Physical business locations in this industry. |
| Industry employment | 13,565 | Everyone on those payrolls, not only licensed trades. |
| Annual industry payroll | $1,360M | Total wages paid across those establishments (Census CBP, 2023). |
County-wide construction activity, across all trades rather than plumbers specifically. Each figure names its source and the period it covers.
| Measure | Value | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| New housing units permitted | 4,969 | Last full year, county-wide. 10 per 10,000 residents. Permits lead construction hiring by months, so this is the earliest honest signal of work arriving (Census Building Permits Survey). |
| Construction employment | 45,892 | Everyone working in construction in this county, all trades and office staff. Average pay $1,871 per week. BLS QCEW. |
| Median year homes were built | 1961 | Older stock means more repair, replacement and retrofit work, which is steadier than new build and does not stop in a downturn (Census ACS). |
| Net migration | -17,465 | People who moved in minus people who moved out, from IRS address changes. Arrivals need housing, wiring, plumbing and heat. |
0.6 apprentices per 10,000 residents. A thin pipeline against an ageing licensed base is how a shortage forms years before it shows up in wages.
License register: 2026-10-05; Wages: 2025-05-31; Demand: 2026-10-05; Apprenticeship: 2025-12-31.
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