Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? Delaware, at $60,090. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and New Hampshire is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Vermont wins — the money there behaves like $48,414. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters is Delaware at $60,090, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to New Hampshire; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Vermont at $48,414 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
$46,680
People doing it
77,170
Highest paid
$60,090
DE
Best off, really
$48,414
VT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,650
Highest tenth
$63,720
Lowest, really
$33,945
TX
States with data
49
National average
$48,290
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.64%
VT, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $33,945 and $48,414. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- This is a small job: about 77,170 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- This job is not published everywhere — 49 jurisdictions have a figure, with $46,680 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Delaware tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $33,945 to $48,414. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- With 77,170 workers, cabinetmakers and bench carpenters is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- 49 jurisdictions carry a published median for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,650 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $46,680 |
| Top tenth earn over | $63,720 |
| This salary | $46,680 |
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 Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters
The national median for this job
$46,680around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,650 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $46,680 |
| Top tenth | $63,720 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $36,630 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Delaware · $60,090 |
| Spread | $23,460 |
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 | $38,340 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $39,455 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| VT | $57,620 | $46,785 | $48,414 |
| DE | $60,090 | $47,694 | $48,053 |
| AR | $50,070 | $41,017 | $47,414 |
| NH | $57,980 | $48,767 | $46,293 |
| ND | $47,140 | $40,057 | $45,225 |
| CT | $58,100 | $46,418 | $44,766 |
| SD | $45,950 | $39,101 | $44,385 |
| NE | $48,600 | $39,722 | $43,952 |
| IA | $47,110 | $38,855 | $43,771 |
| NY | $58,680 | $46,758 | $43,445 |
| MT | $47,920 | $39,188 | $43,425 |
| WY | $46,380 | $39,446 | $43,420 |
| OH | $47,430 | $39,702 | $43,243 |
| NM | $47,210 | $39,051 | $43,204 |
| MA | $58,040 | $46,233 | $42,714 |
| TN | $46,440 | $39,495 | $42,690 |
| SC | $47,680 | $39,645 | $42,548 |
| RI | $52,800 | $43,045 | $42,445 |
| NV | $47,780 | $40,571 | $41,835 |
| MI | $48,550 | $39,377 | $41,809 |
| MO | $45,980 | $37,901 | $41,304 |
| WI | $46,790 | $38,323 | $41,164 |
| IN | $45,550 | $37,465 | $40,642 |
| IL | $50,160 | $40,145 | $40,610 |
| MN | $48,740 | $39,552 | $40,188 |
| NC | $46,010 | $37,822 | $40,177 |
| ID | $44,870 | $36,708 | $40,151 |
| ME | $48,150 | $38,938 | $40,103 |
| CO | $49,610 | $40,567 | $40,014 |
| PA | $47,610 | $38,973 | $39,972 |
| UT | $46,390 | $37,390 | $39,357 |
| WV | $42,400 | $35,125 | $39,127 |
| NJ | $51,760 | $42,457 | $38,993 |
| MD | $49,180 | $39,724 | $38,209 |
| FL | $46,360 | $39,430 | $38,115 |
| WA | $48,710 | $41,318 | $38,060 |
| AZ | $45,580 | $38,067 | $37,650 |
| LA | $39,280 | $32,949 | $37,296 |
| KS | $41,350 | $33,386 | $37,110 |
| VA | $45,910 | $37,189 | $36,913 |
| KY | $40,440 | $33,376 | $36,892 |
| MS | $38,800 | $31,896 | $36,539 |
| HI | $49,050 | $39,294 | $36,179 |
| CA | $49,030 | $40,441 | $35,922 |
| GA | $42,280 | $34,641 | $35,824 |
| AL | $38,550 | $31,515 | $35,028 |
| OR | $46,910 | $36,318 | $34,680 |
| OK | $36,630 | $30,464 | $34,506 |
| TX | $38,340 | $32,986 | $33,945 |
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 $46,680 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, 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 Hampshire, at $48,767.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Texas, on $33,945.
- All wage figures for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $46,680. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters 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 $48,767, which leads in New Hampshire.
- Real-terms results for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Texas anchors the distribution at $33,945. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.