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What’s the difference between a lawyer and a plumber? One unclogs people’s drains, and the other cleans up people’s $h!t. Ba-da-bum.

The other day I had to call a plumber because our main line was clogged. In ten minutes, the plumber diagnosed the problem, snaked the line, and we were $300 poorer. Even after taking into account the travel time to get to our house, the plumber was billing at an impressive hourly rate. And, this plumber had no shortage of jobs to handle.

This all got me thinking. For a young person picking a career, would they be better off becoming a plumber instead of a lawyer?

Compared to the law, the barriers to entry into plumbing are low. To become a plumber, you don’t have to go to college and graduate school (and rack up loads of debt in the process), so plumbers can start earning much earlier than lawyers. Also, you can’t outsource or automate a plumber’s job like you can, and increasingly will, with legal jobs. One thing you can’t ignore, however, is that plumbing is a physical job. In law, you aren’t on your hands and knees (at least not literally) and you get to sit at a desk.

From the standpoint of job growth, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the number of jobs for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters to grow 16% from 2016 to 2026, more than the 8% that it projects for lawyers over the same time period.

A Comparison of Earning Potential

Let’s try to compare the two professions empirically from the perspective of lifetime earnings. To do that, we’re going to use some fictional archetypes:

The Plumbers

• Mario makes the national average salary for plumbers of $52,590.
• Luigi lives in Chicago and makes the average Chicago plumber salary of $81,630.

The Lawyers

• Joe makes the average lawyer salary and has the average amount of undergrad and law school debt.
• Jane also makes the average lawyer salary but earned full scholarships and has no debt.
• Donald makes the average lawyer salary but had to borrow heavily to pay for school.
• Elliott and Kamala are average-earning state government lawyers, but Elliot has no debt while Kamala borrowed heavily.
• Atticus and Sean are average-earning public interest lawyers, but Atticus has no debt while Sean took out an average amount of loans.

Key Assumptions Used in the Comparison:

1. Retirement at age 59 – law and plumbing are hard work, and while all the characters enjoy their jobs, they want to enjoy an early retirement.
2. Each person earns the average salary for their archetype for each year of work – since I don’t have good data on salary progression over a career, using the average salary is an imperfect way to balance out low-earning early-career years and higher-earning later-career years.
3. Federal income taxes were applied each year at 2019 rates for Single filers taking the standard deduction.
4. Undergrad loans @ 5% interest and law school loans @ 7% interest with both having 10 year repayment terms.

The Results

Take a look below at how our different archetypes do in terms of their total lifetime earnings.

As you can see, Mario, our average-earning plumber, does really well – he makes just shy of $2 million (net of federal income taxes) over his lifetime while Luigi does even better at $2.85 million (net of federal income taxes). However, these numbers pale in comparison to our average-income attorneys, who earn well above $3 million each (net of federal income taxes). Even Donald, who had to repay $300K in student loans (plus over $100K in interest), out-earns Mario by over $1.5 million over their respective careers.

Elliott and Kamala, our average-earning state government attorneys, also do well, and each out-earns Mario over the span of their careers by several hundred thousand dollars. However, Luigi, our plumber in Chicago, earns more in his lifetime than Elliott (who doesn’t even have any debt) and Kamala.

Each of our public interest attorneys do well too, earning about the same over their careers as Mario. However, when compared to our pal Luigi, both Atticus and Sean earn significantly less.

What income would an attorney with an average amount of educational debt need to make in order to match the career earnings of Mario, our average-income plumber? According to my calculations, that lawyer would need to have an average income of $69,798 over her career. A lawyer with a high amount of debt like in my table above ($300K between college and law school) would have to make an average income of $75,974 to match the career earnings of the average-earning plumber

Lessons from the Results

Here are my takeaways from looking at the data:

1. Income matters a lot and is the primary driver for lifetime earnings.
2. Debt matters too, though not nearly as much as income.
   1. Even for Sean, our lowest-earning, average-debt attorney, educational debt (principal + interest) only represented 10% of lifetime earnings
   2. For Joe, our average-earning, average-debt attorney, educational debt represented just 5% of lifetime earnings.
3. The average attorney far out-earns the average plumber.
4. There is huge difference in the lifetime earnings between different types of lawyers. The average-earning lawyer (the data for which comes from BLS and which by definition includes public interest attorneys) far out-earns the public interest attorneys.

How the Results Might Look Under Other Scenarios and Assumptions

I used some assumptions and defined some scenarios that made sense to me. However, changing some of the variables will change the results of the comparison. Here are some ways how the results could be different:

• Retirement Age. I assumed that everyone retires at age 59. It could be the case that the physical toll of plumbing makes it hard to work until that age. Or, perhaps public interest attorneys are so motivated by their mission that they work well into their 70s. Adjusting the number of years worked will impact total lifetime earnings.
• Federal Income Taxes. I assumed perpetual federal income tax rates at 2019 levels. I think it’s impossible to predict what federal income taxes will look like over the next 40 years. Maybe rates will be higher, maybe they will be lower. The only thing I’m sure of is that they won’t be the same as they are today.
• Static Archetypes. My table above assumes that once you’re a certain type of lawyer, you stay that lawyer for the rest of your career. The reality is that many lawyers move around, from the public to the private sector, from the private sector to public interest, etc. Lifetime earnings for switching attorneys will vary based on the amount of time spent in private practice, government and public interest.
• Geography. As I previously wrote, attorney salaries vary by geography. My table above might provide general data about what the national average-earning attorney makes over a lifetime, but once you get down to the state and city level, you’re going to see differences in average incomes and therefore lifetime earnings.

OK, So Is It Better to Be a Lawyer or Plumbers?

Like all good lawyers, my response is It Depends!

From just a pure lifetime earnings standpoint, lawyers generally do well as the lifetime earnings of the average-earning attorney outpaces those of the average-earning plumber. However, that’s just the average-earning attorney. Some will earn a lot more, and some will earn a lot less. For those that earn a lot less and come out of law school with significant debt, the answer isn’t so clear – at least in my example above, earning approximately $76K a year would make law and plumbing a wash.

Of course, that’s just talking about things from a money perspective, and very few people choose careers solely based on money (if they did, there wouldn’t be public interest attorneys!). At the same time, very few people have the luxury of not worrying about money at all, and I hope this post provides a framework for evaluating a career in law versus other paths.