HVAC Industry Statistics

These are the HVAC numbers we lean on when we write about service software at BlueCollarStacks: how many systems ship each year, how many homes depend on central air or a heat pump, how many contractors there are, what techs earn and how many new ones the trade needs. Equipment data comes from AHRI's monthly releases, workforce data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and business counts from the Census Bureau. Vendor surveys are labeled. We opened every source in October 2026.

Key takeaways

HVAC is a repair business more than an install business, at least right now. Housecall Pro's platform data shows repairs at roughly 88% of HVAC jobs in early 2026, and AHRI shipments of central AC and heat pumps dropped 20% in 2025 before recovering partway in 2026. Shipments swing hard from year to year. Service calls on the 88% of households that use air conditioning don't.

Heat pumps are close to half the market. They were about 47% of combined AC and heat pump shipments in 2025, and 63% of new single-family homes finished in the South that year had one. Only about 13% of households used a heat pump as their main heat in EIA's 2020 survey, so the installed base still lags new sales by a wide margin. That gap is years of replacement, service and maintenance-agreement work.

The labor math is tight. BLS projects 40,600 HVAC openings a year through 2035 on a base of about 440,900 jobs, and roughly one in five employed HVAC techs is already 55 or older. Women hold 2.7% of these jobs. Training is shorter than in plumbing (6 months to 2 years versus a 4- or 5-year apprenticeship), which helps shops that are willing to train their own.

Contractors aren't the top payers for their own techs. The median HVAC tech at a plumbing, heating and AC contractor made $60,030 in May 2025, while techs in wholesale trade made $71,190. A residential shop competing for experienced people is bidding against distributors, schools and facilities departments, not only the shop down the road. Spiffs, take-home trucks and a predictable on-call rotation are part of the pay conversation whether you price them or not.

The work is safer than roofing but not safe. HVAC techs died on the job at 6.7 per 100,000 full-time workers in 2024, about twice the 3.3 rate for all workers. BLS also says HVAC techs have one of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations, with burns from electrical parts or chemicals and strains from handling heavy equipment among the common hazards.

AI is mostly talk so far. In ServiceTitan's 2026 survey, 74% of residential contractors said they see AI as an efficiency engine, but only about a quarter were using it. The early adopters liked it: 48% reported higher productivity and 45% reported time savings. Treat those as self-reported results from a software vendor's survey, not measured outcomes.

The trade is mostly small shops. More than three out of four plumbing, heating and AC contractor locations had fewer than 10 employees in 2023, and there were another 178,663 plumbing and HVAC businesses with no payroll. For those shops, the software question is less about features and more about whether it cuts office time per call. If you're sorting through options, our guide to software for hvac businesses covers the tools top shops use for dispatch, maintenance agreements and flat-rate pricebooks.

Methodology

We used primary sources wherever they existed: AHRI's monthly shipment releases for equipment, the Energy Information Administration and the Census Bureau's new-housing survey for homes, County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics for business counts, and three BLS programs (the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the Current Population Survey and the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries) for the workforce. Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan figures are vendor research and are labeled. Each number was checked against the publisher's own page, PDF or data file in October 2026.

Where we calculated something, such as the heat pump share of shipments or the share of techs 55 and older, the stat says so and shows the raw counts. Two cautions: Census lumps HVAC and plumbing contractors into one industry code, and AHRI notes its shipment figures come from member reporting and can be revised.

How to cite this page

Quote any figure you like, and cite the original source listed under it. If this page saved you the digging, please also link here as "HVAC Industry Statistics, BlueCollarStacks, checked October 2026." If a publisher revises a number, let us know and we'll update it.