Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? New Jersey, at $105,370. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Washington is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Nevada wins — the money there behaves like $77,939. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for aircraft mechanics and service technicians is New Jersey at $105,370, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Washington; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Nevada at $77,939 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$79,870
People doing it
138,090
Highest paid
$105,370
NJ
Best off, really
$77,939
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,780
Highest tenth
$128,890
Lowest, really
$41,730
WV
States with data
50
National average
$84,740
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $41,730 up to $77,939.
- About 138,090 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $79,870. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $79,870 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. New Jersey leads the published set.
- The nominal spread for aircraft mechanics and service technicians approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $41,730 to $77,939, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 138,090 workers, aircraft mechanics and service technicians sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for aircraft mechanics and service technicians runs to 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $79,870 |
| Top tenth earn over | $128,890 |
| This salary | $79,870 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians
The national median for this job
$79,870around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $79,870 |
| Top tenth | $128,890 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $45,470 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Jersey · $105,370 |
| Spread | $59,900 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $84,440 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $86,895 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $94,890 | $75,585 | $77,939 |
| NM | $84,440 | $65,427 | $72,386 |
| WA | $98,980 | $78,462 | $72,274 |
| MD | $100,500 | $75,046 | $72,184 |
| NJ | $105,370 | $78,436 | $72,037 |
| AK | $91,150 | $72,954 | $71,724 |
| ND | $77,740 | $63,263 | $71,426 |
| LA | $79,780 | $62,948 | $71,253 |
| TN | $81,040 | $65,842 | $71,169 |
| NY | $102,800 | $76,125 | $70,731 |
| SD | $75,750 | $62,120 | $70,515 |
| AL | $82,260 | $63,215 | $70,263 |
| TX | $84,440 | $68,234 | $70,217 |
| CT | $96,830 | $72,374 | $69,799 |
| OH | $80,570 | $64,012 | $69,720 |
| KS | $80,270 | $61,109 | $67,926 |
| MS | $74,880 | $58,605 | $67,137 |
| OK | $74,390 | $58,316 | $66,054 |
| MA | $93,040 | $69,952 | $64,628 |
| NC | $76,980 | $60,423 | $64,185 |
| DE | $83,550 | $63,324 | $63,801 |
| MN | $81,980 | $62,452 | $63,456 |
| SC | $75,160 | $59,038 | $63,361 |
| IL | $81,680 | $62,394 | $63,116 |
| IA | $69,890 | $55,954 | $63,034 |
| PA | $78,000 | $61,308 | $62,880 |
| CO | $82,080 | $63,670 | $62,802 |
| VA | $82,200 | $62,692 | $62,226 |
| MI | $74,900 | $58,590 | $62,208 |
| WI | $73,930 | $57,906 | $62,199 |
| HI | $90,830 | $67,269 | $61,937 |
| MO | $71,470 | $56,687 | $61,777 |
| VT | $76,370 | $59,626 | $61,703 |
| NH | $79,610 | $64,836 | $61,546 |
| AR | $65,420 | $52,783 | $61,015 |
| GA | $75,640 | $58,867 | $60,877 |
| FL | $76,940 | $62,957 | $60,857 |
| KY | $67,920 | $54,352 | $60,079 |
| AZ | $75,300 | $60,324 | $59,664 |
| CA | $86,100 | $65,486 | $58,168 |
| UT | $70,160 | $55,065 | $57,962 |
| OR | $82,850 | $60,416 | $57,692 |
| MT | $64,170 | $51,476 | $57,041 |
| NE | $64,020 | $51,411 | $56,885 |
| IN | $63,400 | $51,281 | $55,629 |
| RI | $70,720 | $56,350 | $55,565 |
| ME | $67,890 | $53,328 | $54,922 |
| ID | $61,250 | $49,001 | $53,597 |
| WY | $56,680 | $47,722 | $52,530 |
| WV | $45,470 | $37,462 | $41,730 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $79,870, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Washington keeps the most at $78,462.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $41,730. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for aircraft mechanics and service technicians, with a national value of $79,870. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- The household modeled for aircraft mechanics and service technicians is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Washington retains the most, $78,462. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for aircraft mechanics and service technicians deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.