Electrical Engineers
What the pay figures show
- New Mexico comes first for electrical engineers on every measure. $158,520 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $125,216 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For electrical engineers, New Mexico's $158,520 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $125,216. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$120,630
People doing it
198,750
Highest paid
$158,520
NM
Best off, really
$125,216
NM, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$76,550
Highest tenth
$184,300
Lowest, really
$70,904
HI
States with data
49
National average
$125,100
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.39%
NM, 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 $70,904 and $125,216. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 198,750 people hold this job nationally, earning $120,630 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $120,630. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, New Mexico pays most.
- Interstate variation for electrical engineers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $70,904 to $125,216. 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.
- 198,750 are employed nationally in electrical engineers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for electrical engineers in 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Electrical Engineers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $76,550 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $120,630 |
| Top tenth earn over | $184,300 |
| This salary | $120,630 |
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 Electrical Engineers
The national median for this job
$120,630around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $76,550 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $120,630 |
| Top tenth | $184,300 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Electrical Engineers, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Montana · $87,360 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Mexico · $158,520 |
| Spread | $71,160 |
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 | $129,450 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $133,213 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | $158,520 | $113,178 | $125,216 |
| LA | $123,710 | $92,497 | $104,699 |
| TX | $129,450 | $99,745 | $102,645 |
| ID | $129,340 | $93,668 | $102,454 |
| AL | $125,630 | $91,962 | $102,214 |
| NH | $135,710 | $104,024 | $98,746 |
| ND | $110,810 | $85,883 | $96,964 |
| WY | $111,740 | $87,439 | $96,248 |
| AK | $125,970 | $97,366 | $95,725 |
| MO | $118,670 | $87,674 | $95,545 |
| WA | $132,710 | $101,973 | $93,931 |
| WV | $113,420 | $84,315 | $93,922 |
| DE | $126,970 | $90,901 | $91,585 |
| OK | $107,760 | $80,290 | $90,944 |
| DC | $143,000 | $99,820 | $90,087 |
| MS | $104,990 | $78,583 | $90,023 |
| IA | $105,820 | $79,865 | $89,972 |
| CA | $144,040 | $100,414 | $89,192 |
| SD | $98,980 | $78,462 | $89,066 |
| TN | $104,450 | $82,311 | $88,970 |
| NE | $107,260 | $80,111 | $88,641 |
| CO | $120,760 | $89,180 | $87,964 |
| MD | $125,150 | $91,059 | $87,586 |
| NC | $110,130 | $82,421 | $87,552 |
| NV | $107,400 | $84,386 | $87,014 |
| VA | $119,030 | $86,484 | $85,841 |
| PA | $110,820 | $83,390 | $85,528 |
| MA | $127,720 | $92,497 | $85,457 |
| ME | $114,620 | $82,912 | $85,391 |
| AR | $96,860 | $73,846 | $85,363 |
| VT | $111,310 | $81,901 | $84,752 |
| IN | $102,670 | $78,059 | $84,677 |
| OH | $100,620 | $77,565 | $84,483 |
| MI | $106,070 | $79,193 | $84,083 |
| KS | $102,630 | $75,592 | $84,024 |
| NJ | $125,370 | $91,160 | $83,723 |
| KY | $98,550 | $74,828 | $82,712 |
| UT | $105,720 | $78,499 | $82,629 |
| OR | $125,160 | $86,412 | $82,516 |
| MN | $109,510 | $79,947 | $81,233 |
| IL | $107,860 | $79,515 | $80,436 |
| NY | $119,010 | $86,443 | $80,318 |
| WI | $99,700 | $74,505 | $80,029 |
| FL | $104,780 | $82,543 | $79,788 |
| SC | $98,440 | $73,920 | $79,333 |
| AZ | $100,550 | $77,456 | $76,609 |
| CT | $104,160 | $77,107 | $74,364 |
| MT | $87,360 | $66,713 | $73,925 |
| HI | $106,350 | $77,008 | $70,904 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of electrical engineers 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 $120,630.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for electrical engineers, 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 New Mexico, at $113,178.
- Levelling out prices for electrical engineers 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 — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $70,904.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for electrical engineers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $120,630, 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 electrical engineers 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 $113,178, which leads in New Mexico.
- The price deflation applied to electrical engineers 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 Hawaii at $70,904. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $70,904 — and the two source series are dated independently.