Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders
What the pay figures show
- Wyoming pays this job the most, at $101,590. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $88,388 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Wyoming leads for chemical equipment operators and tenders at $101,590 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $88,388 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
$58,040
People doing it
139,630
Highest paid
$101,590
WY
Best off, really
$88,388
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,440
Highest tenth
$92,250
Lowest, really
$33,469
UT
States with data
47
National average
$60,710
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, 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 $33,469 to $88,388.
- About 139,630 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $58,040. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 47 jurisdictions, averaging $58,040 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Wyoming leads the published set.
- Interstate variation in chemical equipment operators and tenders 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 $33,469 to $88,388, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 139,630 workers, chemical equipment operators and tenders sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for chemical equipment operators and tenders runs to 47 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,440 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,040 |
| Top tenth earn over | $92,250 |
| This salary | $58,040 |
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 Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders
The national median for this job
$58,040around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,440 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,040 |
| Top tenth | $92,250 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Chemical Equipment Operators and Tenders, state by state
The national median for this job
47states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Utah · $39,020 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Wyoming · $101,590 |
| Spread | $62,570 |
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 | $60,150 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,899 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WY | $101,590 | $80,299 | $88,388 |
| LA | $78,580 | $62,140 | $70,338 |
| AL | $80,330 | $61,933 | $68,837 |
| MT | $79,570 | $61,673 | $68,340 |
| ID | $77,100 | $59,837 | $65,449 |
| AR | $64,440 | $52,032 | $60,147 |
| WV | $66,060 | $53,123 | $59,175 |
| MS | $64,360 | $51,411 | $58,895 |
| TN | $60,960 | $51,161 | $55,301 |
| RI | $69,630 | $55,624 | $54,849 |
| NM | $60,910 | $49,424 | $54,681 |
| OH | $60,550 | $49,883 | $54,332 |
| NE | $59,750 | $48,174 | $53,304 |
| IA | $57,550 | $46,846 | $52,774 |
| TX | $60,150 | $50,511 | $51,979 |
| WA | $67,300 | $56,176 | $51,745 |
| KY | $57,530 | $46,509 | $51,410 |
| NV | $58,520 | $49,201 | $50,733 |
| DE | $63,200 | $50,020 | $50,397 |
| IN | $56,800 | $46,173 | $50,088 |
| IL | $61,940 | $49,028 | $49,595 |
| SC | $56,240 | $45,956 | $49,321 |
| KS | $54,890 | $43,510 | $48,363 |
| VA | $59,970 | $47,678 | $47,324 |
| PA | $56,630 | $45,944 | $47,122 |
| SD | $48,830 | $41,415 | $47,012 |
| ME | $57,240 | $45,629 | $46,993 |
| OK | $50,160 | $40,727 | $46,131 |
| MD | $59,850 | $47,790 | $45,968 |
| MO | $50,640 | $41,426 | $45,146 |
| CT | $58,490 | $46,710 | $45,048 |
| WI | $50,870 | $41,400 | $44,469 |
| MN | $53,340 | $42,935 | $43,626 |
| NC | $49,650 | $40,601 | $43,129 |
| MI | $50,060 | $40,526 | $43,029 |
| NJ | $56,500 | $46,004 | $42,251 |
| CA | $58,300 | $47,334 | $42,044 |
| MA | $56,920 | $45,389 | $41,935 |
| GA | $49,660 | $40,203 | $41,575 |
| OR | $56,510 | $43,191 | $41,244 |
| CO | $50,370 | $41,144 | $40,584 |
| NH | $49,440 | $41,905 | $39,779 |
| AZ | $45,790 | $38,230 | $37,812 |
| NY | $49,640 | $39,982 | $37,149 |
| FL | $44,360 | $37,823 | $36,561 |
| HI | $47,840 | $38,409 | $35,364 |
| UT | $39,020 | $31,796 | $33,469 |
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 $58,040 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, Wyoming keeps the most at $80,299.
- 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 Utah, on $33,469.
- All wage figures for chemical equipment operators and tenders are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $58,040. 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 chemical equipment operators and tenders 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 Wyoming retains the most, $80,299. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for chemical equipment operators and tenders 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; Utah anchors the distribution at $33,469. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.