Cost Estimators
What the pay figures show
- Where are cost estimators paid best? Massachusetts, at $100,840. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Alaska is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Wyoming wins — the money there behaves like $80,025. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for cost estimators is Massachusetts at $100,840, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Alaska; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Wyoming at $80,025 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
$78,740
People doing it
224,220
Highest paid
$100,840
MA
Best off, really
$80,025
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,530
Highest tenth
$130,820
Lowest, really
$55,888
HI
States with data
51
National average
$85,390
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, 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 $55,888 and $80,025. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 224,220 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $78,740. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $78,740. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for cost estimators is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $55,888 to $80,025. 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.
- National employment in cost estimators is 224,220 — 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.
- Coverage for cost estimators is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Cost Estimators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,530 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $78,740 |
| Top tenth earn over | $130,820 |
| This salary | $78,740 |
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 Cost Estimators
The national median for this job
$78,740around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,530 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $78,740 |
| Top tenth | $130,820 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cost Estimators, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $61,470 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Massachusetts · $100,840 |
| Spread | $39,370 |
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 | $76,980 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $79,218 |
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 | $90,790 | $72,701 | $80,025 |
| AK | $97,020 | $77,084 | $75,784 |
| SD | $74,950 | $61,557 | $69,876 |
| MA | $100,840 | $75,049 | $69,337 |
| LA | $77,030 | $61,096 | $69,156 |
| NV | $82,200 | $66,658 | $68,733 |
| ND | $73,280 | $60,213 | $67,982 |
| IA | $76,040 | $60,046 | $67,645 |
| OH | $77,730 | $62,092 | $67,629 |
| WV | $77,480 | $60,678 | $67,591 |
| ID | $79,700 | $61,528 | $67,299 |
| TN | $75,650 | $62,050 | $67,070 |
| MT | $77,320 | $60,217 | $66,727 |
| CO | $86,940 | $66,875 | $65,964 |
| KY | $74,880 | $59,005 | $65,222 |
| KS | $76,250 | $58,506 | $65,032 |
| MO | $76,020 | $59,674 | $65,032 |
| VT | $81,390 | $62,827 | $65,014 |
| AL | $74,990 | $58,384 | $64,893 |
| TX | $76,980 | $62,985 | $64,816 |
| UT | $79,610 | $61,293 | $64,518 |
| MI | $77,990 | $60,632 | $64,376 |
| MS | $71,230 | $56,183 | $64,362 |
| WA | $86,070 | $69,380 | $63,908 |
| IL | $82,750 | $63,093 | $63,824 |
| WI | $76,270 | $59,413 | $63,818 |
| NE | $73,100 | $57,633 | $63,771 |
| IN | $73,430 | $58,351 | $63,299 |
| PA | $78,480 | $61,631 | $63,212 |
| RI | $81,990 | $63,855 | $62,966 |
| MN | $80,810 | $61,708 | $62,701 |
| NC | $74,730 | $58,930 | $62,598 |
| GA | $76,800 | $59,625 | $61,661 |
| NH | $79,560 | $64,800 | $61,513 |
| VA | $80,530 | $61,613 | $61,155 |
| OK | $67,800 | $53,977 | $61,139 |
| DE | $79,290 | $60,608 | $61,065 |
| AZ | $77,010 | $61,484 | $60,812 |
| NM | $67,590 | $54,369 | $60,151 |
| MD | $81,190 | $62,454 | $60,072 |
| SC | $70,260 | $55,915 | $60,009 |
| CT | $81,030 | $62,128 | $59,918 |
| FL | $74,990 | $61,585 | $59,530 |
| ME | $74,080 | $57,265 | $58,977 |
| CA | $85,460 | $65,095 | $57,821 |
| AR | $61,470 | $49,755 | $57,515 |
| NJ | $80,570 | $62,569 | $57,464 |
| NY | $80,430 | $61,666 | $57,297 |
| DC | $82,730 | $62,967 | $56,827 |
| OR | $80,460 | $58,944 | $56,286 |
| HI | $80,360 | $60,699 | $55,888 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of cost estimators earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $78,740.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for cost estimators, 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 Alaska, at $77,084.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for cost estimators. 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 Hawaii, on $55,888.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for cost estimators, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $78,740, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for cost estimators 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 $77,084, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for cost estimators 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; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $55,888. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.