Plumbing Permit Volume: What 437,000 New York Permits Show About Demand
The short answer
New York City plumbing permits peaked at 38,250 in 2017 and fell to 25,040 in 2025, a decline of 34.5 percent. Producing that figure requires combining two city permit systems. Either one alone gives an answer wrong by hundreds of percentage points.
What this page is. A corrected time series of plumbing permit volume in New York City, the largest openly published municipal plumbing permit record in the United States. It combines 436,469 permits from 2013 onward across the two city systems that hold them, plus market structure and seasonality analysis drawn from the full 782,926-permit legacy file. Our guide to plumbing permit requirements explains which jobs need a permit in the first place.
Why this had to be built from two datasets. New York moved permit filing from a legacy system to DOB NOW around 2019 to 2021. Anyone querying the legacy dataset alone sees plumbing permits fall 94.3 percent between 2017 and 2025. Anyone querying DOB NOW alone sees them rise 415.8 percent between 2019 and 2025. Both are artifacts of the migration. The real change is a 34.5 percent decline from the 2017 peak. This page publishes both component series so the correction is checkable.
The short version
- Combined plumbing permit volume peaked in 2017 at 38,250 and stood at 25,040 in 2025, a decline of 34.5 percent.
- Volume fell 25.2 percent in 2020, rebounded 24.6 percent in 2021, then declined 18.4 percent between 2022 and 2025.
- The 2021 rebound did not reach pre-pandemic levels. Every year since 2021 has been lower than the one before it.
- Querying either city dataset alone produces an answer that is wrong by an order of magnitude in either direction.
- Permit issuance is far less seasonal than the trade’s reputation suggests. The busiest month indexes at 107 and the quietest at 90, a spread of 17 points.
- March and August are the joint busiest months. February is the quietest.
- 99.7 percent of legacy plumbing permits were pulled by holders of a Master Plumber licence.
- The permit market is highly concentrated. The top 1 percent of permit-pulling businesses hold 48.3 percent of permits, and the top 10 percent hold 83.2 percent.
- At the other end, 37.5 percent of businesses in the record pulled exactly one permit, and the median business pulled two.
The series, reconstructed
Legacy is the DOB Permit Issuance dataset, permit type PL. DOB NOW is the DOB NOW Build approved permits dataset, work type Plumbing. Neither column is a complete series on its own.
| Year | Legacy system | DOB NOW | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 31,999 | 0 | 31,999 |
| 2014 | 33,715 | 0 | 33,715 |
| 2015 | 35,744 | 0 | 35,744 |
| 2016 | 36,586 | 4 | 36,590 |
| 2017 | 38,232 | 18 | 38,250 |
| 2018 | 37,279 | 56 | 37,335 |
| 2019 | 30,621 | 4,435 | 35,056 |
| 2020 | 11,311 | 14,907 | 26,218 |
| 2021 | 9,577 | 23,097 | 32,674 |
| 2022 | 5,996 | 24,676 | 30,672 |
| 2023 | 4,230 | 24,559 | 28,789 |
| 2024 | 2,908 | 23,124 | 26,032 |
| 2025 | 2,164 | 22,876 | 25,040 |
| 2026 | 1,188 | 17,167 | 18,355 |
2026 is a partial year and is shown for completeness only. It is excluded from every comparison on this page. Source: NYC DOB Permit Issuance and DOB NOW Build Approved Permits, retrieved 27 September 2026.
What the sources actually say
- Combined permits, 2025: 25,040. Source: NYC DOB datasets, retrieved 27 September 2026.
- Peak year: 2017 at 38,250. Source: NYC DOB datasets.
- Change from peak to 2025: minus 34.5 percent. Source: calculated by The Plumbing Brief.
- Pandemic year change, 2019 to 2020: minus 25.2 percent. Source: calculated from NYC DOB datasets.
- Rebound, 2020 to 2021: plus 24.6 percent. Source: calculated from NYC DOB datasets.
- Post-rebound trend, 2022 to 2025: minus 18.4 percent. Source: calculated from NYC DOB datasets.
- Legacy-only apparent change, 2017 to 2025: minus 94.3 percent, an artifact. Source: calculated from NYC DOB Permit Issuance.
- DOB NOW-only apparent change, 2019 to 2025: plus 415.8 percent, an artifact. Source: calculated from DOB NOW.
- Busiest months: March and August, index 107. Quietest: February, index 90. Source: calculated from 782,926 legacy permits.
- Master Plumber licence share of legacy permits: 780,225 of 782,926, or 99.7 percent. Source: NYC DOB Permit Issuance.
- Borough split of legacy permits: Manhattan 288,663, Brooklyn 190,005, Queens 179,327, Bronx 65,829, Staten Island 59,102. Source: NYC DOB Permit Issuance.
- Top 1 percent of permit-pulling businesses hold 48.3 percent of permits. Source: calculated from NYC DOB Permit Issuance.
- Top 10 percent hold 83.2 percent. Source: calculated from NYC DOB Permit Issuance.
- Businesses pulling exactly one permit: 18,746, or 37.5 percent of those identified. Median business: 2 permits. Source: calculated from NYC DOB Permit Issuance.
How little the year matters
Index 100 is the average month. Calculated across all 782,926 legacy permits.
| Month | Permits | Share | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 59,258 | 7.8% | 93 |
| February | 57,322 | 7.5% | 90 |
| March | 67,734 | 8.9% | 107 |
| April | 62,929 | 8.3% | 99 |
| May | 64,658 | 8.5% | 102 |
| June | 66,896 | 8.8% | 105 |
| July | 65,768 | 8.6% | 104 |
| August | 68,022 | 8.9% | 107 |
| September | 62,537 | 8.2% | 98 |
| October | 67,055 | 8.8% | 106 |
| November | 61,035 | 8.0% | 96 |
| December | 59,078 | 7.8% | 93 |
Source: NYC DOB Permit Issuance, calculated by The Plumbing Brief.
Our checks
Derived finding 1: the dataset migration trap
Formula. Compare the trend produced by each source alone against the trend produced by the two combined.
Calculation. Legacy alone, 2017 to 2025: minus 94.3 percent. DOB NOW alone, 2019 to 2025: plus 415.8 percent. Combined, 2017 to 2025: minus 34.5 percent.
Finding. Two defensible queries against official city data produce answers that differ by more than 500 percentage points and both are wrong. Any municipal permit analysis spanning a system migration must combine the source systems or state that it does not.
Inputs. NYC DOB Permit Issuance; DOB NOW Build Approved Permits.
Limitations. The two systems may not define a permit identically, and a small number of records could appear in both during the transition. The combined series should be read as the best available reconstruction, not an exact count.
Derived finding 2: the recovery that never completed
Formula. Year-on-year change in combined volume across the pandemic and after.
Calculation. Minus 25.2 percent in 2020, plus 24.6 percent in 2021, then minus 18.4 percent from 2022 to 2025.
Finding. The 2021 rebound recovered most of the pandemic loss but stopped 12.4 percent short of 2019. Volume has fallen in every year since. The 2025 figure of 25,040 is below the 2020 pandemic trough measured against the 2017 peak.
Inputs. NYC DOB datasets.
Limitations. Permit counts measure filings, not work value or hours. A shift toward fewer, larger jobs would show as declining volume without declining activity, and this data cannot distinguish the two.
Derived finding 3: plumbing permits are barely seasonal
Formula. Monthly permit count indexed against the average month.
Calculation. Range from 90 in February to 107 in March and August, a spread of 17 index points.
Finding. Permit issuance varies by about plus or minus 9 percent across the year. For a trade widely described as seasonal, the permitted work is close to flat, with only February showing a clear dip.
Inputs. NYC DOB Permit Issuance, 782,926 permits.
Limitations. Permits are pulled before work starts and cover planned work. Emergency and repair work that requires no permit is invisible here, and that is the part of the trade most likely to be weather-driven.
Derived finding 4: half the permits go to one percent of firms
Formula. Share of permits held by the top 1 percent and top 10 percent of permit-pulling businesses, ranked by permit count.
Calculation. The top 499 businesses hold 48.3 percent. The top 4,999 hold 83.2 percent. The median business holds two permits and 37.5 percent hold exactly one.
Finding. The permitted plumbing market in New York is severely concentrated. Roughly half of all permits are pulled by about 500 businesses, while tens of thousands appear once and never again. Our report on whether plumbing companies are consolidating looks at concentration nationally through census revenue data.
Inputs. NYC DOB Permit Issuance, top 50,000 businesses by permit count, covering 757,774 of 782,926 permits.
Limitations. Business names are free text and the same firm may appear under several spellings, which would overstate the number of distinct businesses and understate concentration. The query was capped at 50,000 businesses covering 96.8 percent of permits, so the long tail is truncated. No business is named on this page.
How this report was built
Methodology
Sources. Two NYC Open Data datasets, queried directly: DOB Permit Issuance filtered to permit type PL, and DOB NOW Build Approved Permits filtered to work type Plumbing.
Why both. Explained in derived finding 1. Using one alone is the single largest error available in this data.
Dates. Legacy issuance dates are stored as text in MM/DD/YYYY and were parsed by string match on year. DOB NOW dates are proper timestamps. Boiler records are a related New York dataset, covered in our report on NYC boiler inspection filings.
Exclusions. 2026 is partial and excluded from all comparisons. Seasonality and market structure use the full legacy file because it is the longer record.
Estimates. The combined series, percentage changes, seasonality index and concentration shares are calculated by this publication, with formulas stated.
No firms named. Permittee business names are present in the source data and are used only to count concentration. No business is identified on this page.
Last updated. 27 September 2026.
Data limitations
- This is New York City data. It is not a national permit series, and no equivalent national plumbing permit count is published.
- Permits measure filings, not work value, hours or revenue. Fewer, larger jobs look identical to less work.
- Work that requires no permit, including much emergency and repair work, is entirely absent.
- The two source systems may define a permit differently and a small number of transition-period records could be duplicated across them.
- Permittee business names are free text, so the distinct-business count is approximate and concentration is likely understated.
- The concentration query was capped at 50,000 businesses, covering 96.8 percent of permits.
- The residential flag is populated on only 357,269 of 782,926 legacy permits, so no residential split is published here.
- Borough figures cover the legacy file across all years and are not restricted to the 2013 onward series.
Source quality ranking
Tier 1. NYC DOB Permit Issuance and DOB NOW Build Approved Permits, municipal regulatory datasets published through NYC Open Data.
Tier 2. None used.
Tier 3. None used.
Excluded. Any permit trend drawn from a single NYC dataset spanning the 2019 to 2021 migration.
The corrected figure to use
- New York plumbing permits peaked in 2017 and are 34.5 percent below that peak in 2025.
- Query one city dataset and permits fell 94 percent. Query the other and they rose 416 percent. Both are wrong.
- Half of all plumbing permits are pulled by about 500 businesses.
- 37.5 percent of permit-pulling businesses appear exactly once.
- Plumbing permits are barely seasonal. The busiest month runs only 17 index points above the quietest.
Correction summary
Plumbing permit volume in New York City peaked in 2017 at 38,250 and stood at 25,040 in 2025, a decline of 34.5 percent, according to an analysis combining the city’s two permit systems. Volume fell 25.2 percent in 2020, rebounded 24.6 percent in 2021 without reaching pre-pandemic levels, and has declined in every year since, losing a further 18.4 percent between 2022 and 2025. The analysis had to combine two datasets because New York migrated permit filing to a new system around 2019 to 2021. Querying the legacy dataset alone shows a 94.3 percent collapse and querying the new system alone shows a 415.8 percent rise, both artifacts of the migration. The data also shows the permitted market is highly concentrated, with the top 1 percent of permit-pulling businesses holding 48.3 percent of permits while 37.5 percent of businesses appear exactly once.
How to frame it
- New York plumbing permits are a third below their 2017 peak
- Half of New York’s plumbing permits go to 500 firms
- The plumbing permit collapse that never happened
- Plumbing is not as seasonal a trade as everyone says
- The post-pandemic plumbing rebound stopped short and reversed
Download the data
Every figure in the table above is published as a CSV under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Attribution: The Plumbing Brief.
Both source systems and the combined series, 2013 to 2026 (CSV)
Questions about the correction
Are plumbing permits rising or falling? In New York City they are falling. Combined volume peaked at 38,250 in 2017 and reached 25,040 in 2025, a decline of 34.5 percent.
Why do other analyses of this data disagree? Because New York migrated permit filing to a new system. The legacy dataset alone shows a 94.3 percent fall and the new system alone shows a 415.8 percent rise. Only the combined series is meaningful.
Did plumbing permits recover after the pandemic? Partly. Volume fell 25.2 percent in 2020 and rebounded 24.6 percent in 2021, which left it short of 2019. It has fallen every year since.
Is plumbing a seasonal trade? Less than its reputation suggests, at least for permitted work. March and August index at 107 against February at 90, a spread of about plus or minus 9 percent.
Which borough issues the most plumbing permits? Manhattan, with 288,663 in the legacy record, ahead of Brooklyn at 190,005 and Queens at 179,327.
How concentrated is the plumbing market? Highly. The top 1 percent of permit-pulling businesses hold 48.3 percent of permits and the top 10 percent hold 83.2 percent.
How many firms pull only one permit? 18,746, or 37.5 percent of those identified. The median business pulled two.
Who is allowed to pull a plumbing permit in New York? In practice, Master Plumber licence holders. They account for 780,225 of 782,926 legacy permits, or 99.7 percent.
Is there national plumbing permit data? No equivalent national series is published. The Census Building Permits Survey counts residential construction permits, not plumbing permits specifically.
Does a falling permit count mean less plumbing work? Not necessarily. Permits measure filings, not value or hours, and a shift to fewer larger jobs would look the same. Unpermitted repair and emergency work is not counted at all.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-27.
How to cite this report
The Plumbing Brief, “Plumbing Permit Volume: What 437,000 New York Permits Show About Demand”, https://theplumbingbrief.com/plumbing-permit-volume/, accessed [date].
