Cameron Head remains a few months away from enrolling at Alabama A&M University to study business management.
But the 18-year-old already has a few things figured out as the fourth generation of his family to work at Head’s Plumbing Sales and Service in Atlanta.
"I really like money," he says with a smile.
So does Benjamin Harden. The 21-year-old has worked with Georgia's oldest Black-owned plumbing company for two years, following in his father Byron Harden's footsteps. But he knows what is available for him in this industry, too, particularly given a shortage of workers nationwide and in Georgia.
"A potential gold mine," Benjamin Harden says.
Granted, family connections have revealed opportunities for these two young adults to build a career and establish financial security.
But why aren't more people of color seeing what they're seeing?
Only 10.1% of the nation’s plumbers are Black or African American, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds. Others are missing out.
"I can make over a hundred thousand dollars a year just by working with my hands and using my brain," Byron Harden says. "I can take care of my family doing it. Any other African American can do the same thing."
True enough, although it also hasn’t been easy for Black plumbers or Head’s Plumbing.
Opening doors
Updates to the company’s logo, designed when Sheila and Phenus Head Jr. and his parents, Phenus Head and Lucy F. Beckum, opened the door in 1981, offer today’s prospective customers a more realistic stylized depiction of Head’s Plumbing. Submerged to his neck in water, twisting a pipe wrench, he’s now a plumber of color instead of being the white portion of a black-and-white stencil.
The original logo served as a mask for Head’s Plumbing in years not far removed from the Civil Rights Era in the South. But the result could still be crushing.
"You don't know the heartbreak of someone having a plumbing problem and they have unequivocal trust in you," says Khadija Head, the chief executive officer, "until you ring the doorbell and they see you.
"I have a plumbing problem, and it needs to be fixed," the Head's plumber would be told. "It's not going to be fixed by you."
Black residents made up nearly 47% of Atlanta’s population of 510,000 and about 33% of the Atlanta metropolitan area’s 6.3 million residents in 2023, according to CensusReporter.org.
The revised version of the logo should open doors—and perhaps minds.
"We're going to appeal to someone who's very intentional that they want to have someone that looks like them in their home," says Khadija Head, a Murray State University graduate and former college basketball player and coach who co-owns the business with her brother, company president Odari Head.
"We want to have individuals that seek us out because they're looking for a licensed professional plumber, and we just happen to be Black."
The Head’s technician team is predominantly Black, including six of seven technicians and one of the two apprentices. Having more people of color in the industry could provide not only greater balance but solve labor issues, too.
"We have this gap of skilled workers, and we need a way to fill the gap," Khadija Head says during a break in overseeing her team at a ServiceTitan Power the Nation project for Nicholas House in Atlanta. "We have to do something different. If we continue on the same trajectory and just expose individuals that aren't from the Black and brown community to the home service industry, it's going to be very hard to run this race."
Since service industries continue to face challenges in finding employees, it’s a race worth running.
Earning power
Entry-level plumbers, those with two years of experience or less, earn median salaries of $51,000, according to research by Payscale.com for ServiceTitan. Plumbers with two to four years' experience will find the median salary at $66,200. For four to seven years of experience, the median in Georgia is $71,800.
Cameron Head, a senior at McEachern High School in Powder Springs and one of Odari’s two sons, participates in a work-study program and goes to the Head's Plumbing office each afternoon. On top of having watched his family thrive—parents and grandparents have saved enough to fully fund Cameron’s college education—he's learning the industry and formulating ideas on how adding HVAC service could help Head's Plumbing grow.
"Just looking at yearly salaries of plumbers and HVAC technicians," he says. “You can really be a millionaire off it.”
Benjamin Harden is keeping score, too.
"With the shortage of workers, becoming a master, you can basically charge whatever you like for certain work, what you feel it's worth,” he says.
These young adults see dollar signs, but their parents see security in this trade.
"Everyone's not going to be a basketball player, football player," Odari Head says. "But this is something that you could go in, earn a good living and be able to provide for your family and be able to build something in it."
Like fathers, like sons. Now they welcome others to come along for the ride.
Making it sexy
Getting prospective plumbers into the truck is a challenge. Ron Anderson, president of the Georgia Plumbers' Trade Association, says his state could use another 2,000 to 3,000 plumbers to fill needs.
Yet hiring often consists of “one company stealing from another one,” he says.
The United States is projected to have 43,300 annual job openings and 6% growth in the number of jobs from 2023 to 2033, according to CareerOneStop, a U.S. Department of Labor site. Georgia is projected to see 820 annual openings, or 12% growth, from 2023 to 2033.
"We have individuals who are quickly aging out of the industry, but the number of individuals who have homes is steadily rising," Khadija Head says. "It's so important to be proactive in filling that gap and really passing on the skill set because it's unique in our industry with service and repair."
So how can the plumbing industry attract more prospects, including more Black or African American prospects?
Career education: Vocational skills classes once were a staple in U.S. high schools. And then preparing students to attend college became a focus, although earnings potential from a degree comes with a cost. U.S. college graduates' federal loan debt totals $1.693 trillion, and the average student leaves campus owing Uncle Sam $38,375, according to Education Data Initiative.
"And the jobs they're getting, the starting salaries are so low they're lucky to move out of Mom and Dad's house after they get through with the college debt," Anderson says.
Trades-focused education and programs might be on the way back. In 2023, according to the Freedonia Group, 18 states (Georgia wasn't one of them) enacted policies counting career and technical education courses toward high school graduation or adopted career-readiness objectives into state requirements.
"You've got to go to where the people are at,” says Odari Head, who holds both a degree from Tuskegee University and his master plumber license. "That means going into the school, starting at the grade level."
The number of students enrolled in vocational-focused community colleges rose 16% in 2023 to its highest level since the National Student Clearinghouse began tracking such data in 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported in April 2024.
Show the fun: Benjamin Harden’s love for gaming has led him to find … more plumbers?
“I didn't think I would run into any other younger people my age who are also doing plumbing,” he says.
And the kind of technology that appeals to Harden and his friends also can be used to appeal to potential employees.
“Most folks think of plumbers, and they think of the plumber’s crack,” Odari Head says. "We've got cameras we send down the sewer line. You control them like you're playing a video game. There is so much more to plumbing than stopped-up toilets and leaky faucets."
His sister mentions the software partner of Head’s Plumbing and how it can be another recruitment tool.
“They're making the trades sexy again,” Khadija Head says of ServiceTitan. “This generation, they were born with technology at the palm of their hand. So it's attractive to them.”
Develop your own training center: The Head’s Plumbing office is actually a house sitting along Campbellton Road, southwest of downtown Atlanta. Behind the house and storage facility sits about 2 acres of potential.
"We want to build a training facility to elevate our current technicians, but technicians that don't even work for us because the goal is to have more experienced people in the field and it's a great recruiting tool," Khadija Head says. "Have them on our site, see the advanced level of equipment we offer, the different services we offer."
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‘The trade is for us’
For now, Khadija Head shows off the Head's team and their work via video on TikTok and Instagram. She supports other business owners in learning about entrepreneurship and speaks at conferences, willing for anyone to hear her message.
"I want to make sure that individuals that look like myself and my brother understand that the trade is for us as well," she says. "My goal is not to have a company where we employ the largest number of Black and brown people. My goal is to inspire the largest amount of Black and brown people to one, join the industry, and two, start their own businesses because that means that they can employ other individuals.
“I'm in a unique position, and shame on me if I'm not pushing a needle to make sure individuals know what we're doing and know what's possible for themselves.”
