Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is the District of Columbia, at $42,710. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $36,290. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for cleaners of vehicles and equipment: the District of Columbia leads at $42,710 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $36,290 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$35,830
People doing it
380,430
Highest paid
$42,710
DC
Best off, really
$36,290
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,380
Highest tenth
$47,610
Lowest, really
$26,594
TX
States with data
51
National average
$36,980
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, 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 $26,594 and $36,290. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 380,430 people hold this job nationally, earning $35,830 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $35,830. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for cleaners of vehicles and equipment is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $26,594 to $36,290. 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.
- 380,430 are employed nationally in cleaners of vehicles and equipment, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for cleaners of vehicles and equipment is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,380 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,830 |
| Top tenth earn over | $47,610 |
| This salary | $35,830 |
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 Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment
The national median for this job
$35,830around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,380 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,830 |
| Top tenth | $47,610 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cleaners of Vehicles and Equipment, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $27,600 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $42,710 |
| Spread | $15,110 |
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 | $29,450 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $30,306 |
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 | $37,290 | $32,143 | $36,290 |
| SD | $35,050 | $30,343 | $34,443 |
| NE | $37,160 | $31,051 | $34,357 |
| IA | $35,920 | $30,289 | $34,121 |
| AR | $34,970 | $29,443 | $34,035 |
| VT | $39,530 | $32,874 | $34,019 |
| AK | $40,210 | $34,489 | $33,907 |
| MT | $36,510 | $30,557 | $33,860 |
| KS | $37,370 | $30,410 | $33,802 |
| OH | $35,230 | $30,235 | $32,931 |
| TN | $34,950 | $30,262 | $32,711 |
| ID | $35,640 | $29,781 | $32,574 |
| CO | $39,610 | $32,972 | $32,523 |
| WY | $33,890 | $29,411 | $32,373 |
| MO | $34,670 | $29,345 | $31,980 |
| ME | $37,440 | $31,002 | $31,929 |
| WI | $35,280 | $29,641 | $31,839 |
| KY | $34,470 | $28,788 | $31,821 |
| IN | $34,940 | $29,253 | $31,733 |
| MN | $37,580 | $31,184 | $31,685 |
| DC | $42,710 | $35,101 | $31,678 |
| WA | $40,070 | $34,376 | $31,665 |
| SC | $34,230 | $29,301 | $31,447 |
| DE | $37,440 | $30,752 | $30,983 |
| RI | $37,340 | $31,202 | $30,768 |
| NH | $37,420 | $32,247 | $30,611 |
| NV | $34,230 | $29,684 | $30,608 |
| UT | $34,900 | $28,669 | $30,177 |
| NY | $39,390 | $32,300 | $30,011 |
| NC | $33,470 | $28,246 | $30,005 |
| MI | $33,890 | $28,221 | $29,964 |
| AZ | $35,410 | $30,149 | $29,820 |
| IL | $35,930 | $29,416 | $29,757 |
| PA | $34,650 | $28,958 | $29,700 |
| OK | $30,880 | $26,103 | $29,566 |
| MA | $38,630 | $31,608 | $29,202 |
| CT | $35,870 | $30,042 | $28,974 |
| NM | $30,310 | $26,173 | $28,957 |
| MD | $36,390 | $30,054 | $28,908 |
| NJ | $37,090 | $31,401 | $28,839 |
| OR | $38,070 | $29,988 | $28,636 |
| HI | $37,560 | $30,877 | $28,430 |
| VA | $34,450 | $28,640 | $28,427 |
| CA | $37,920 | $31,996 | $28,421 |
| FL | $33,380 | $29,001 | $28,033 |
| WV | $29,390 | $25,087 | $27,945 |
| MS | $28,640 | $24,139 | $27,653 |
| AL | $29,360 | $24,551 | $27,288 |
| LA | $27,600 | $23,897 | $27,049 |
| GA | $30,610 | $25,846 | $26,729 |
| TX | $29,450 | $25,843 | $26,594 |
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 $35,830 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 the District of Columbia, at $35,101.
- Levelling out prices for this job 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 — Texas sits at the bottom on $26,594.
- All wage figures for cleaners of vehicles and equipment are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $35,830. 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 cleaners of vehicles and equipment 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 $35,101, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to cleaners of vehicles and equipment 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 Texas at $26,594. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Texas anchors the bottom at $26,594 — and the two source series are dated independently.