Brickmasons and Blockmasons
What the pay figures show
- Where are brickmasons and blockmasons paid best? Minnesota, at $95,220. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Massachusetts is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and North Dakota wins — the money there behaves like $73,125. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for brickmasons and blockmasons is Minnesota at $95,220, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Massachusetts; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to North Dakota at $73,125 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
$62,120
People doing it
52,550
Highest paid
$95,220
MN
Best off, really
$73,125
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,820
Highest tenth
$100,010
Lowest, really
$35,975
ME
States with data
50
National average
$68,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $35,975 to $73,125.
- Just 52,550 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $62,120 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Minnesota tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in brickmasons and blockmasons is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $35,975 to $73,125 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 52,550 are employed nationally in brickmasons and blockmasons — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for brickmasons and blockmasons. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Brickmasons and Blockmasons
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,820 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,120 |
| Top tenth earn over | $100,010 |
| This salary | $62,120 |
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 Brickmasons and Blockmasons
The national median for this job
$62,120around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,820 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,120 |
| Top tenth | $100,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Brickmasons and Blockmasons, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Maine · $42,710 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Minnesota · $95,220 |
| Spread | $52,510 |
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 | $56,410 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $58,050 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $79,940 | $64,768 | $73,125 |
| MN | $95,220 | $70,866 | $72,006 |
| IL | $89,980 | $67,822 | $68,607 |
| WI | $80,120 | $61,893 | $66,482 |
| MA | $94,950 | $71,200 | $65,781 |
| IN | $73,110 | $58,136 | $63,065 |
| IA | $69,440 | $55,654 | $62,697 |
| OH | $70,950 | $57,509 | $62,637 |
| MO | $72,370 | $57,278 | $62,420 |
| WA | $83,190 | $67,354 | $62,042 |
| RI | $79,280 | $62,050 | $61,187 |
| NY | $84,410 | $64,251 | $59,699 |
| TN | $63,850 | $53,483 | $57,811 |
| SD | $60,380 | $50,695 | $57,546 |
| PA | $69,560 | $55,630 | $57,056 |
| OR | $79,450 | $58,321 | $55,692 |
| WY | $60,040 | $50,422 | $55,502 |
| NJ | $77,010 | $60,291 | $55,372 |
| HI | $79,250 | $60,003 | $55,246 |
| ID | $62,510 | $49,947 | $54,632 |
| NE | $61,200 | $49,273 | $54,520 |
| MI | $63,500 | $50,754 | $53,888 |
| KY | $59,820 | $48,269 | $53,355 |
| LA | $57,440 | $46,996 | $53,196 |
| NH | $66,890 | $55,887 | $53,052 |
| DE | $66,550 | $52,487 | $52,882 |
| NV | $60,670 | $50,928 | $52,514 |
| KS | $59,220 | $46,747 | $51,962 |
| AR | $55,100 | $44,873 | $51,871 |
| CT | $67,960 | $53,652 | $51,743 |
| CO | $65,260 | $52,453 | $51,738 |
| UT | $60,450 | $48,062 | $50,590 |
| MT | $56,030 | $45,323 | $50,223 |
| VT | $59,590 | $48,238 | $49,918 |
| TX | $56,410 | $47,505 | $48,886 |
| CA | $69,050 | $54,955 | $48,814 |
| AZ | $59,260 | $48,716 | $48,184 |
| OK | $50,620 | $41,076 | $46,526 |
| DC | $64,450 | $51,223 | $46,228 |
| MD | $59,030 | $47,170 | $45,371 |
| MS | $48,820 | $39,546 | $45,303 |
| AL | $49,710 | $39,991 | $44,449 |
| SC | $49,010 | $40,626 | $43,601 |
| VA | $54,680 | $43,732 | $43,407 |
| NC | $49,940 | $40,823 | $43,365 |
| FL | $52,760 | $44,573 | $43,085 |
| WV | $46,600 | $38,322 | $42,689 |
| GA | $50,650 | $40,949 | $42,346 |
| NM | $44,980 | $37,355 | $41,328 |
| ME | $42,710 | $34,931 | $35,975 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of brickmasons and blockmasons earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $62,120.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for brickmasons and blockmasons, 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 Massachusetts, at $71,200.
- Levelling out prices for brickmasons and blockmasons 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 — Maine sits at the bottom on $35,975.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for brickmasons and blockmasons, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $62,120, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for brickmasons and blockmasons 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 $71,200, which leads in Massachusetts.
- The price deflation applied to brickmasons and blockmasons 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 Maine at $35,975. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Maine anchors the bottom at $35,975 — and the two source series are dated independently.