Carpenters
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for carpenters is Hawaii, at $85,280. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and Illinois comes out ahead, worth $61,343. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for carpenters: Hawaii leads at $85,280 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting Illinois to $61,343 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
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
$60,580
People doing it
670,090
Highest paid
$85,280
HI
Best off, really
$61,343
IL, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$40,410
Highest tenth
$99,910
Lowest, really
$40,841
FL
States with data
51
National average
$65,630
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
98.86%
IL, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $40,841 to $61,343. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- 670,090 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $60,580. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $60,580 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in carpenters is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $40,841 through $61,343. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- National employment in carpenters is 670,090 — 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report carpenters, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Carpenters
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $40,410 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $60,580 |
| Top tenth earn over | $99,910 |
| This salary | $60,580 |
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 Carpenters
The national median for this job
$60,580around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $40,410 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $60,580 |
| Top tenth | $99,910 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Carpenters, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $46,910 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $85,280 |
| Spread | $38,370 |
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 | $48,900 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,322 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IL | $79,000 | $60,641 | $61,343 |
| AK | $73,860 | $60,791 | $59,766 |
| HI | $85,280 | $63,786 | $58,730 |
| WA | $74,190 | $61,023 | $56,210 |
| IN | $62,870 | $50,871 | $55,184 |
| ND | $57,890 | $48,695 | $54,977 |
| OH | $60,810 | $50,085 | $54,552 |
| NV | $62,380 | $52,302 | $53,931 |
| MA | $75,200 | $58,293 | $53,857 |
| NM | $59,720 | $48,524 | $53,685 |
| MO | $60,840 | $49,143 | $53,555 |
| WI | $61,660 | $49,518 | $53,190 |
| IA | $57,710 | $46,969 | $52,912 |
| WY | $56,850 | $47,859 | $52,680 |
| CA | $75,920 | $59,239 | $52,619 |
| MT | $58,820 | $47,434 | $52,562 |
| MI | $61,680 | $49,369 | $52,418 |
| NY | $72,330 | $56,405 | $52,409 |
| MN | $64,930 | $51,459 | $52,287 |
| VT | $62,400 | $50,310 | $52,062 |
| ME | $62,160 | $49,250 | $50,722 |
| KS | $56,960 | $45,058 | $50,083 |
| CO | $62,830 | $50,608 | $49,918 |
| PA | $59,370 | $48,061 | $49,293 |
| CT | $64,060 | $50,879 | $49,069 |
| NH | $61,200 | $51,354 | $48,749 |
| RI | $60,840 | $49,203 | $48,518 |
| MD | $62,960 | $50,141 | $48,229 |
| AZ | $58,580 | $48,187 | $47,660 |
| NJ | $64,010 | $51,623 | $47,412 |
| DE | $59,200 | $47,028 | $47,382 |
| KY | $52,680 | $42,782 | $47,290 |
| LA | $49,920 | $41,179 | $46,612 |
| TN | $50,830 | $43,022 | $46,503 |
| SD | $48,140 | $40,860 | $46,382 |
| ID | $52,000 | $42,059 | $46,004 |
| OR | $62,870 | $47,745 | $45,593 |
| NE | $50,320 | $41,026 | $45,395 |
| AR | $47,760 | $39,247 | $45,368 |
| MS | $48,650 | $39,416 | $45,155 |
| SC | $50,670 | $41,849 | $44,914 |
| WV | $48,710 | $39,929 | $44,478 |
| DC | $61,710 | $49,199 | $44,402 |
| VA | $55,690 | $44,485 | $44,155 |
| UT | $52,360 | $41,921 | $44,127 |
| OK | $46,910 | $38,262 | $43,338 |
| AL | $48,220 | $38,859 | $43,191 |
| NC | $49,100 | $40,181 | $42,683 |
| TX | $48,900 | $41,471 | $42,677 |
| GA | $49,350 | $39,969 | $41,333 |
| FL | $49,870 | $42,251 | $40,841 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for carpenters, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $60,580 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 carpenters. 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, Hawaii keeps the most at $63,786.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for carpenters. 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 Florida, on $40,841.
- All wage figures for carpenters are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $60,580. 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 carpenters 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 Hawaii retains the most, $63,786. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for 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; Florida anchors the distribution at $40,841. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.