Last reviewed: September 2026 · By the HVAC Brief Editorial Team · Our sourcing and editorial standards
The short answer
HVAC industry statistics for 2026, drawn only from federal primary sources with the exact data series named so you can reproduce every figure. HVAC equipment producer prices are up 60.0% since 2019. There were 409,670 heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics employed at a median wage of $29.33 an hour. Contracting firms employed about 1,355,400 people.
Most published HVAC statistics pages name a source but do not date it or link it. Five figures that circulate widely do not survive a check against the primary data, and we show which ones below.
The headline numbers
Every row below names the federal series it comes from and the month or year it describes. Where a figure is a share rather than a count, we show the numerator and denominator so the arithmetic is visible. Nothing in this table is an estimate, a projection, or a market-research forecast.
| Measure |
Value |
Series |
Vintage |
| HVAC equipment producer prices, change since 2019 |
+60.0% |
BLS PCU333415333415 |
Aug 2026 |
| Consumer prices, change over the same period |
+30.6% |
BLS CUUR0000SA0 |
Jul 2026 |
| HVAC and refrigeration mechanics employed |
409,670 |
BLS OEWS 49-9021 |
May 2025 |
| Median wage, HVAC mechanics |
$29.33/hr |
BLS OEWS 49-9021 |
May 2025 |
| Median annual wage, HVAC mechanics |
$61,010 |
BLS OEWS 49-9021 |
May 2025 |
| Employees of plumbing, heating and AC contractors |
1,355,400 |
BLS CEU2023822001 |
2026-07 |
| Average hourly earnings at those firms |
$42.61 |
BLS CEU2023822003 |
2026-07 |
| US homes using air conditioning |
109.51M of 123.53M (88.7%) |
EIA RECS HC7.1 |
2020 |
| US homes with a heat pump as main heat |
16.13M (13.1%) |
EIA RECS HC6.1 |
2020 |
How much have HVAC equipment prices actually risen?
Producer prices for HVAC equipment manufacturing rose 60.0% between the 2019 annual average and August 2026, from an index of 203.0 to 324.8. Measured from 2020 instead, the increase is 56.9%. Consumer prices rose 30.6% over the same 2019 baseline, so equipment has risen at roughly twice the rate of general inflation.
The series is BLS PCU333415333415, the producer price index for NAICS 333415, air conditioning, warm air heating and commercial and industrial refrigeration equipment manufacturing. It measures what manufacturers charge, not what a homeowner pays installed.
August 2026 is the highest reading in the series since 2019. Prices rose in 21 of the 31 month-over-month comparisons from January 2024 onward, so the direction has been consistent rather than a single spike. Our analysis of what drove HVAC prices up breaks the increase down by cause and shows why the refrigerant transition is not the largest factor.
How many HVAC technicians are there, and what do they earn?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 409,670 heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers in its May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release. Median pay was $29.33 an hour, or $61,010 a year. The mean was higher at $31.14 an hour and $64,780 a year.
The occupation code is SOC 49-9021. It covers people who install and repair the equipment, which is a narrower group than everyone employed by an HVAC business.
| Wage measure, SOC 49-9021 |
Hourly |
Annual |
| Median |
$29.33 |
$61,010 |
| Mean |
$31.14 |
$64,780 |
The mean sitting above the median indicates the distribution is pulled upward by higher earners rather than being symmetrical. Metro-level wages vary widely around these national figures.
How many people work for HVAC contracting firms?
Employment at plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors reached about 1,355,400 people as of July 2026, up 18.8% from a 2019 average of roughly 1,140,992. Average hourly earnings across those payrolls were $42.61, up 40.2% from $30.39 in 2019.
This is a different measure from the technician count above. The series is BLS Current Employment Statistics for NAICS 238220, which covers everyone on the payroll including office and supervisory staff, and it groups plumbing with heating and air conditioning. BLS does not publish HVAC separately at this level.
The growth matters because it complicates the labour shortage narrative. A sector that added roughly a fifth of its headcount in seven years is not a shrinking trade, whatever hiring difficulty individual firms report. Our breakdown of HVAC contractor pay compares this wage growth against construction overall and the wider private economy.
How many US homes have air conditioning and heat pumps?
Of 123.53 million US housing units, 109.51 million use air conditioning equipment, or 88.7%. Another 14.02 million do not. A heat pump is the main heating equipment in 16.13 million homes, 13.1% of the stock.
These come from the Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey for 2020, tables HC7.1 and HC6.1, final data released March 2023. RECS runs every five or six years, so 2020 remains the current vintage and any 2026 figure you see attributed to RECS is either the 2020 survey or an estimate somebody built on top of it.
| Main heating equipment |
Homes (million) |
Share of stock |
| Natural gas central warm-air furnace |
53.26 |
43.1% |
| Heat pump |
16.13 |
13.1% |
| Electric central warm-air furnace |
13.82 |
11.2% |
Gas furnaces still heat more than four times as many homes as heat pumps do. Any claim that heat pumps have taken over residential heating is describing new installations in particular markets, not the installed base.
What changed in the rules in 2025 and 2026?
Two regulatory changes affect nearly every residential job priced in 2026. Refrigerant rules changed twice, and the federal tax credit that paid up to $2,000 toward a heat pump expired. Both are settled law and both are widely misreported.
- New R-410A equipment cannot be manufactured or imported. Under 40 CFR 84.54(a)(1), effective January 1, 2025, self-contained residential and light commercial equipment using refrigerant with a global warming potential of 700 or greater is out of production. R-410A has a GWP of 2,088.
- Existing R-410A inventory can still be installed. EPA’s final rule at 91 FR 31284, published May 26, 2026 and effective July 27, 2026, allows equipment manufactured or imported before January 1, 2025 to continue to be installed, with no federal end date. See what the R-410A rule actually says.
- The Section 25C credit expired. The Internal Revenue Service states the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit applies to property placed in service before December 31, 2025. Installation date controls, not purchase date. See what the 25C expiry costs a homeowner.
State rules can be stricter than the federal position, and several states run their own hydrofluorocarbon programmes. Confirm current requirements for the jurisdiction before relying on the federal rule for a specific job.
Five widely repeated HVAC statistics that do not hold up
These five figures appear across most HVAC statistics pages. Each fails a check against the primary source, either because the number is stale, the attribution names the wrong agency, or the vintage is missing so a reader cannot tell what year it describes.
| Commonly published claim |
What the primary data shows |
| “Equipment prices increased about 40% since 2020,” usually credited to trade press |
BLS PCU333415333415 puts the increase at 56.9% against the 2020 average and 60.0% against 2019. The circulating figure understates it. |
| “441,000 HVAC technicians employed,” credited to BLS with no year |
OEWS May 2025 reports 409,670 for SOC 49-9021. A larger number is either an older vintage or a broader occupation grouping, and the claim does not say which. |
| “Median technician wage $27.55 per hour” |
That is an earlier OEWS vintage. The May 2025 median is $29.33, about 6% higher. |
| “70% of new HVAC businesses fail in the first year,” credited to Energy.gov |
Misattributed. The Department of Energy does not publish establishment survival statistics. Business Employment Dynamics at BLS is the federal series that does. We are not substituting a figure here because we could not verify one at the NAICS 238220 level. |
| “About 90% of US households use air conditioning,” credited to EIA with no year |
Directionally right, imprecise. EIA RECS 2020 table HC7.1 gives 109.51 million of 123.53 million homes, 88.7%. RECS 2020 is still the current vintage. |
The pattern behind all five is the same. A figure gets published without a vintage, a second page copies it without checking, and within a few cycles the number is detached from any document that could confirm or refute it. Naming the series and the release date is what stops that.
How to cite and reproduce these figures
Every BLS number above is retrievable without a subscription. The public data API at api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/ accepts a plain POST with a list of series IDs and a year range, and returns JSON. No key is needed for small requests.
- POST a JSON body of the form
{"seriesid":["PCU333415333415"],"startyear":"2019","endyear":"2026"} to the timeseries endpoint.
- Read the monthly observations from
Results.series[].data[], filtering to periods M01 through M12 and skipping suppressed cells, which BLS returns as a hyphen.
- Compute the 2019 baseline as the mean of that year’s twelve monthly values, then index later observations against it.
EIA RECS tables are PDFs at eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/hc/. OEWS occupation data uses series IDs of the form OEUN000000000000049902101, where the trailing digits select the data type.
Cite this page
The HVAC Brief. “HVAC Industry Statistics 2026: Verified Federal Data.” Compiled from BLS series PCU333415333415, CUUR0000SA0, CEU2023822001, CEU2023822003, OEWS 49-9021 and EIA RECS 2020. Last reviewed August 2026. https://thehvacbrief.com/hvac-industry-statistics-2026/
Journalists and researchers may reproduce these figures with attribution. All underlying data is public.
Methodology and limitations
We include a figure only when it comes from a named federal series we retrieved ourselves, and we publish the series ID and vintage alongside it. We exclude market-research forecasts, vendor surveys and any figure whose original source we could not reach.
What these numbers do not tell you
- Producer prices measure what manufacturers charge. Installed prices add distributor margin, labour, permits and local conditions, so the direction is reliable but the pass-through to a specific quote is not.
- PCU333415333415 covers commercial and industrial refrigeration alongside residential HVAC, so it is broader than residential equipment alone.
- NAICS 238220 groups plumbing with heating and air conditioning contractors. No federal series isolates HVAC contracting at this level.
- OEWS SOC 49-9021 counts installers and mechanics, not everyone employed by an HVAC business. The two employment figures on this page are not interchangeable.
- EIA RECS 2020 remains the current vintage for equipment data; the 2024 survey’s heating and cooling tables are due in spring 2027 See what the 2024 survey release covers., released March 2023. Housing stock and equipment shares have moved since, and we do not extrapolate.
- Wage figures are nominal. Against consumer inflation of 30.6% since 2019, real gains are considerably smaller than the headline.
- Nothing here is legal, tax or engineering advice. Requirements vary by jurisdiction.
Frequently asked questions
How many HVAC technicians are there in the US?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 409,670 heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers in its May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release, occupation code SOC 49-9021. Separately, plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors employed about 1,355,400 people in total, a broader measure that includes office and supervisory staff.
What is the average HVAC technician salary in 2026?
The most recent federal figures are from May 2025. Median pay for SOC 49-9021 was $29.33 an hour, or $61,010 a year. The mean was $31.14 an hour and $64,780 annually. The mean exceeding the median indicates higher earners pull the distribution upward. Metro-level pay varies widely around these national numbers.
How much have HVAC prices increased?
Producer prices for HVAC equipment manufacturing rose 60.0% between the 2019 annual average and July 2026, according to BLS series PCU333415333415. Measured from 2020 the increase is 56.9%. Consumer prices rose 30.6% over the same period, so equipment inflated at roughly twice the general rate.
What percentage of US homes have air conditioning?
88.7% of US homes use air conditioning equipment: 109.51 million of 123.53 million housing units, per EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey table HC7.1 for 2020. Around 14.02 million homes do not. RECS runs every five or six years, so 2020 remains the current published vintage.
How many homes use heat pumps?
A heat pump is the main heating equipment in 16.13 million US homes, 13.1% of the housing stock, per EIA RECS 2020 table HC6.1. Natural gas central furnaces heat 53.26 million homes, more than four times as many. Claims that heat pumps dominate residential heating describe new installations in specific markets, not the installed base.
Is the HVAC industry growing?
By employment, yes. Plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors employed about 1,355,400 people as of July 2026, up 18.8% from a 2019 average near 1,140,992. Average hourly earnings rose 40.2% over the same period. That combination argues for competition over experienced workers inside a growing trade.
Can R-410A equipment still be installed in 2026?
Under federal rules, yes, provided all components were manufactured or imported before January 1, 2025. EPA’s final rule at 91 FR 31284, effective July 27, 2026, allows that inventory to continue to be installed and removed the earlier cutoff. New R-410A equipment cannot be manufactured or imported. Some states impose stricter limits.
Where do these HVAC statistics come from?
All figures come from federal primary sources: the Bureau of Labor Statistics for prices, employment and wages, the Energy Information Administration for housing and equipment shares, and the Code of Federal Regulations and Federal Register for rules. Each figure on this page names its series ID and vintage so you can retrieve it yourself.
Sources
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index by Industry: Air Conditioning, Warm Air Heating and Commercial and Industrial Refrigeration Equipment Manufacturing, series PCU333415333415, monthly through July 2026, via the BLS Public Data API v2.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, All Items, series CUUR0000SA0.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, SOC 49-9021, heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers, national estimates, May 2025.
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, NAICS 238220, series CEU2023822001 and CEU2023822003.
- US Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, tables HC6.1 and HC7.1, final data released March 2023.
- 40 CFR 84.54, via eCFR; EPA final rule 91 FR 31284, published May 26, 2026, RIN 2060-AW39.
- Internal Revenue Service, Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit.
By the HVAC Brief Editorial Team. The HVAC Brief is an independent trade publication: we do not sell equipment, take manufacturer advertising, or accept payment for placement in our research. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it and note the change.
