Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians
What the pay figures show
- Oregon pays this job the most on paper: $85,390. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Washington in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and Iowa wins at $65,021. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For civil engineering technologists and technicians, Oregon's $85,390 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Washington; regional price parity then promotes Iowa, whose $65,021 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$64,950
People doing it
68,520
Highest paid
$85,390
OR
Best off, really
$65,021
IA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,220
Highest tenth
$98,980
Lowest, really
$42,120
GA
States with data
50
National average
$68,990
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.77%
IA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $42,120 and $65,021. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- This is a small job: about 68,520 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $64,950 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Oregon tops the ones that are.
- Wages for civil engineering technologists and technicians cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $42,120 to $65,021. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 68,520 workers, civil engineering technologists and technicians 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.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for civil engineering technologists and technicians. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,220 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $64,950 |
| Top tenth earn over | $98,980 |
| This salary | $64,950 |
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 Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians
The national median for this job
$64,950around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,220 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $64,950 |
| Top tenth | $98,980 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $46,430 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Oregon · $85,390 |
| Spread | $38,960 |
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 | $59,390 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,117 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IA | $72,540 | $57,717 | $65,021 |
| NV | $74,810 | $61,459 | $63,373 |
| LA | $68,030 | $55,034 | $62,295 |
| WI | $73,970 | $57,931 | $62,227 |
| IL | $79,190 | $60,765 | $61,469 |
| ND | $65,030 | $54,423 | $61,445 |
| MN | $78,690 | $60,361 | $61,332 |
| VT | $74,100 | $58,179 | $60,205 |
| WA | $79,580 | $64,815 | $59,703 |
| OR | $85,390 | $61,980 | $59,186 |
| NE | $66,590 | $53,350 | $59,031 |
| SD | $60,880 | $51,097 | $58,002 |
| OH | $64,730 | $53,127 | $57,865 |
| AK | $70,990 | $58,771 | $57,781 |
| CA | $83,490 | $63,893 | $56,753 |
| IN | $64,390 | $52,047 | $56,460 |
| NM | $62,440 | $50,582 | $55,962 |
| ID | $63,200 | $50,465 | $55,198 |
| CT | $73,430 | $57,199 | $55,164 |
| MT | $61,410 | $49,393 | $54,733 |
| ME | $67,540 | $53,105 | $54,693 |
| OK | $60,050 | $48,228 | $54,627 |
| MO | $61,350 | $49,529 | $53,975 |
| UT | $64,490 | $51,128 | $53,818 |
| NY | $73,790 | $57,354 | $53,290 |
| KY | $59,710 | $48,185 | $53,262 |
| PA | $63,650 | $51,369 | $52,686 |
| VA | $67,100 | $52,937 | $52,544 |
| KS | $59,440 | $46,912 | $52,145 |
| TN | $57,270 | $48,196 | $52,096 |
| WY | $56,150 | $47,297 | $52,061 |
| NJ | $70,650 | $56,177 | $51,594 |
| MA | $71,350 | $55,777 | $51,532 |
| AZ | $63,560 | $52,064 | $51,495 |
| FL | $63,410 | $53,130 | $51,357 |
| TX | $59,390 | $49,900 | $51,351 |
| NH | $64,480 | $53,990 | $51,250 |
| RI | $63,650 | $51,356 | $50,641 |
| NC | $58,700 | $47,512 | $50,470 |
| DE | $62,120 | $49,213 | $49,583 |
| MI | $57,990 | $46,561 | $49,436 |
| AR | $51,750 | $42,305 | $48,903 |
| WV | $53,340 | $43,454 | $48,404 |
| MD | $62,760 | $49,990 | $48,084 |
| SC | $53,710 | $44,091 | $47,319 |
| CO | $59,050 | $47,737 | $47,086 |
| AL | $52,750 | $42,300 | $47,015 |
| HI | $64,410 | $50,481 | $46,480 |
| MS | $46,430 | $37,721 | $43,213 |
| GA | $50,360 | $40,730 | $42,120 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $64,950, 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 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 Washington, at $64,815.
- The price adjustment for this job 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 — Georgia anchors the bottom at $42,120. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for civil engineering technologists and technicians, with a national value of $64,950. 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 civil engineering technologists and technicians 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 $64,815, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for civil engineering technologists and technicians 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.