Baggage Porters and Bellhops
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. New York pays baggage porters and bellhops best, at $48,610. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $36,432 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for baggage porters and bellhops is also the real leader: New York at $48,610, holding through tax and through price deflation to $36,432. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$37,080
People doing it
28,510
Highest paid
$48,610
NY
Best off, really
$36,432
NY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,040
Highest tenth
$51,600
Lowest, really
$22,199
MS
States with data
48
National average
$38,570
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
107.63%
NY, 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 $22,199 up to $36,432.
- Only 28,510 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 48 jurisdictions have a figure, with $37,080 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. New York tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for baggage porters and bellhops approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $22,199 to $36,432, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in baggage porters and bellhops is 28,510. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 48 jurisdictions carry a published median for baggage porters and bellhops. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Baggage Porters and Bellhops
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,040 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $37,080 |
| Top tenth earn over | $51,600 |
| This salary | $37,080 |
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 Baggage Porters and Bellhops
The national median for this job
$37,080around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,040 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $37,080 |
| Top tenth | $51,600 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Baggage Porters and Bellhops, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $22,560 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $48,610 |
| Spread | $26,050 |
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 | $31,080 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $31,984 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NY | $48,610 | $39,210 | $36,432 |
| KY | $37,940 | $31,454 | $34,769 |
| WY | $36,260 | $31,315 | $34,470 |
| IL | $40,390 | $32,779 | $33,159 |
| NV | $36,880 | $31,813 | $32,804 |
| WA | $41,010 | $35,132 | $32,361 |
| CO | $39,160 | $32,630 | $32,186 |
| NJ | $41,080 | $34,466 | $31,654 |
| VT | $36,490 | $30,534 | $31,597 |
| HI | $42,240 | $34,312 | $31,592 |
| ME | $36,870 | $30,577 | $31,491 |
| NE | $33,640 | $28,383 | $31,405 |
| MA | $41,040 | $33,424 | $30,880 |
| AZ | $36,740 | $31,185 | $30,844 |
| ID | $33,510 | $28,183 | $30,826 |
| AR | $31,200 | $26,553 | $30,695 |
| OR | $40,660 | $31,843 | $30,407 |
| TN | $32,060 | $27,940 | $30,201 |
| CT | $37,420 | $31,128 | $30,021 |
| IA | $31,150 | $26,637 | $30,008 |
| VA | $36,530 | $30,192 | $29,968 |
| CA | $40,040 | $33,615 | $29,858 |
| NC | $32,940 | $27,842 | $29,575 |
| PA | $34,270 | $28,664 | $29,399 |
| MT | $30,830 | $26,260 | $29,098 |
| MD | $36,310 | $29,994 | $28,850 |
| MO | $30,800 | $26,418 | $28,789 |
| DC | $38,170 | $31,725 | $28,632 |
| NM | $29,890 | $25,849 | $28,598 |
| WI | $31,200 | $26,564 | $28,534 |
| RI | $34,300 | $28,874 | $28,472 |
| TX | $31,080 | $27,153 | $27,942 |
| MI | $30,930 | $25,968 | $27,572 |
| AK | $32,150 | $28,013 | $27,540 |
| SD | $27,490 | $24,248 | $27,525 |
| OH | $28,200 | $24,774 | $26,983 |
| UT | $30,730 | $25,504 | $26,846 |
| FL | $30,890 | $27,000 | $26,099 |
| LA | $26,320 | $22,881 | $25,900 |
| KS | $27,870 | $23,294 | $25,893 |
| IN | $27,910 | $23,800 | $25,818 |
| OK | $26,260 | $22,554 | $25,546 |
| GA | $29,070 | $24,686 | $25,529 |
| SC | $25,850 | $22,682 | $24,342 |
| AL | $25,150 | $21,299 | $23,673 |
| WV | $24,090 | $20,897 | $23,278 |
| NH | $27,600 | $24,339 | $23,104 |
| MS | $22,560 | $19,378 | $22,199 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for baggage porters and bellhops as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $37,080, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for baggage porters and bellhops, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is New York, at $39,210.
- The price adjustment for baggage porters and bellhops 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 — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $22,199. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for baggage porters and bellhops, with a national value of $37,080. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for baggage porters and bellhops model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $39,210, which leads in New York.
- Real-terms figures for baggage porters and bellhops 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.