Architectural and Civil Drafters
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays this job the most, at $97,880. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $65,284 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- The District of Columbia leads for architectural and civil drafters at $97,880 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $65,284 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
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
$66,150
People doing it
103,700
Highest paid
$97,880
DC
Best off, really
$65,284
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$46,260
Highest tenth
$99,710
Lowest, really
$45,742
NM
States with data
50
National average
$70,740
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $45,742 to $65,284.
- 103,700 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $66,150. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $66,150. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, The District of Columbia pays most.
- Interstate variation in architectural and civil drafters pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $45,742 to $65,284, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- National employment in architectural and civil drafters is 103,700 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for architectural and civil drafters in 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Architectural and Civil Drafters
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $46,260 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $66,150 |
| Top tenth earn over | $99,710 |
| This salary | $66,150 |
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 Architectural and Civil Drafters
The national median for this job
$66,150around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $46,260 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $66,150 |
| Top tenth | $99,710 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Architectural and Civil Drafters, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $50,230 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $97,880 |
| Spread | $47,650 |
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 | $63,320 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $65,161 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $97,880 | $72,337 | $65,284 |
| TN | $69,220 | $57,526 | $62,180 |
| ND | $64,720 | $54,180 | $61,170 |
| GA | $74,940 | $58,410 | $60,403 |
| CO | $76,370 | $59,904 | $59,088 |
| WV | $65,640 | $52,805 | $58,821 |
| WY | $63,730 | $53,387 | $58,765 |
| IA | $64,220 | $51,952 | $58,526 |
| AR | $62,420 | $50,484 | $58,357 |
| MT | $65,750 | $52,656 | $58,349 |
| NV | $67,000 | $55,965 | $57,707 |
| DE | $73,040 | $56,624 | $57,050 |
| CT | $76,290 | $59,054 | $56,953 |
| OK | $62,140 | $49,814 | $56,423 |
| LA | $61,010 | $49,757 | $56,322 |
| MD | $75,180 | $58,512 | $56,280 |
| RI | $71,700 | $57,002 | $56,209 |
| MN | $70,680 | $55,271 | $56,160 |
| SC | $64,680 | $52,177 | $55,998 |
| WA | $73,000 | $60,186 | $55,439 |
| OH | $61,450 | $50,582 | $55,093 |
| MS | $59,920 | $48,021 | $55,012 |
| MA | $76,990 | $59,463 | $54,937 |
| NE | $61,550 | $49,538 | $54,814 |
| NY | $76,260 | $58,958 | $54,780 |
| TX | $63,320 | $53,058 | $54,600 |
| MO | $61,940 | $49,975 | $54,461 |
| KS | $62,220 | $48,990 | $54,455 |
| WI | $62,930 | $50,463 | $54,205 |
| ID | $61,840 | $49,444 | $54,082 |
| ME | $66,200 | $52,223 | $53,785 |
| NC | $62,750 | $50,605 | $53,755 |
| UT | $64,290 | $50,976 | $53,658 |
| KY | $60,120 | $48,500 | $53,610 |
| PA | $64,800 | $52,257 | $53,597 |
| CA | $76,520 | $59,613 | $52,951 |
| IN | $60,000 | $48,650 | $52,774 |
| OR | $74,000 | $54,964 | $52,486 |
| AZ | $64,750 | $52,990 | $52,411 |
| NH | $65,300 | $54,649 | $51,876 |
| VT | $61,000 | $49,278 | $50,994 |
| FL | $62,640 | $52,511 | $50,759 |
| AL | $57,100 | $45,603 | $50,687 |
| SD | $52,470 | $44,340 | $50,332 |
| VA | $63,450 | $50,274 | $49,901 |
| MI | $58,330 | $46,820 | $49,711 |
| IL | $58,240 | $46,238 | $46,773 |
| NJ | $62,960 | $50,838 | $46,690 |
| HI | $63,510 | $49,827 | $45,877 |
| NM | $50,230 | $41,345 | $45,742 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $66,150 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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, the District of Columbia keeps the most at $72,337.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — New Mexico sits at the bottom on $45,742.
- All wage figures for architectural and civil drafters are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $66,150. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- The household modeled for architectural and civil drafters 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 the District of Columbia retains the most, $72,337. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to architectural and civil drafters uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is New Mexico at $45,742. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New Mexico anchors the bottom at $45,742 — and the two source series are dated independently.