HVAC technician salary in Raleigh-Cary, NC

What the range actually looks like

Half of HVACR technicians in Raleigh-Cary earn more than $28.32 an hour and half earn less. The bottom tenth start around $18.83 and the top tenth clear $37.42, a spread of $38,670 a year between those two points.

The middle half of the trade here sits between $22.83 and $31.42, a band of $17,870 a year. The average sits $410 below the median, which is what you would expect when a smaller number of high earners pull the mean away from the midpoint.

How Raleigh-Cary, NC compares

The metro median is -3.5% against the national median and +2.9% against North Carolina. Comparing at more than one point matters, because a metro can pay well at the top and poorly at the bottom.

Raleigh-Cary ranks 220 of 383 metro areas by median HVACR wage and 38 by number of technicians employed.

The size of the local market

BLS counts 2,550 HVACR mechanics and installers working in Raleigh-Cary, NC, which is 0.6% of the 409,670 employed nationally. Local pay here runs above the North Carolina median and below the national one.

Outlook

BLS projects national employment in this occupation to grow from 425,200 in 2024 to 459,700 by 2034, a rise of 34,500 jobs or 8%, which BLS calls much faster than average. It expects about 40,100 openings a year over the decade, most of them from technicians retiring or moving to other work rather than from new positions.

These projections are national. BLS does not publish this projection by metropolitan area, so nothing above should be read as a forecast for Raleigh-Cary specifically. Source.

What this does not include

• Self-employed technicians are excluded from OEWS entirely, which matters in a trade with a lot of owner-operators.
• Wages exclude overtime, and exclude the value of benefits, vehicles, tools and on-call premiums.
• Each OEWS release combines survey panels collected over three years, adjusted to the reference period. It is a stable estimate rather than a snapshot of this month's job postings.
• BLS reports a relative standard error of 1.6% on the mean wage for this area. Smaller is tighter.

Where certification comes in

Technicians who maintain, service, repair or dispose of equipment that could release refrigerant generally have to be certified under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act, and employers here will expect it. It is a one-time credential with no renewal requirement, and which type you need depends on the equipment you intend to work on.

If you are heading into this trade in Raleigh-Cary, the free 100-question practice exam mirrors the real format, and the passing score page explains the 70% threshold the regulation actually sets.

Method

Occupation SOC 49-9021, Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers. Geography: Raleigh-Cary, NC, BLS area code 0039580. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Annual figures are hourly wages at 2,080 hours a year. Comparisons use annual median wages. For a multi-state metro, the state compared against is the first listed in the official BLS area title, here North Carolina. Published 2026-08-15.

Every metropolitan area for which BLS publishes complete unsuppressed estimates for this occupation gets a page, 383 of them. Each carries its own measured wage distribution rather than a template with the place name changed. Compare any of them in the salary explorer.