Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse
What the pay figures show
- Wyoming comes first for this job on every measure. $55,180 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $51,203 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse, Wyoming's $55,180 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $51,203. 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
$35,660
People doing it
265,500
Highest paid
$55,180
WY
Best off, really
$51,203
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$32,900
Highest tenth
$45,690
Lowest, really
$25,901
OR
States with data
50
National average
$37,630
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 is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $25,901 to $51,203. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 265,500 people hold this job nationally, earning $35,660 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $35,660. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Wyoming pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $25,901 through $51,203. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 265,500 are employed nationally in farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse in 50 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: Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $32,900 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,660 |
| Top tenth earn over | $45,690 |
| This salary | $35,660 |
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 Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse
The national median for this job
$35,660around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $32,900 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,660 |
| Top tenth | $45,690 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $30,250 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Wyoming · $55,180 |
| Spread | $24,930 |
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 | $32,840 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $33,795 |
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 | $55,180 | $46,517 | $51,203 |
| SD | $42,260 | $36,136 | $41,019 |
| MT | $41,390 | $34,248 | $37,951 |
| NE | $39,530 | $32,847 | $36,345 |
| IA | $37,590 | $31,567 | $35,562 |
| OH | $37,470 | $31,973 | $34,825 |
| MI | $38,680 | $31,866 | $33,834 |
| IL | $41,050 | $33,276 | $33,662 |
| KS | $37,020 | $30,148 | $33,511 |
| IN | $36,980 | $30,832 | $33,446 |
| MO | $36,280 | $30,563 | $33,307 |
| ME | $39,060 | $32,210 | $33,173 |
| AR | $32,970 | $27,910 | $32,263 |
| SC | $35,110 | $29,991 | $32,187 |
| MN | $38,080 | $31,559 | $32,066 |
| LA | $33,260 | $28,293 | $32,025 |
| WI | $35,360 | $29,702 | $31,904 |
| ID | $34,470 | $28,903 | $31,614 |
| PA | $37,010 | $30,781 | $31,571 |
| OK | $33,090 | $27,779 | $31,465 |
| CO | $38,170 | $31,879 | $31,444 |
| AK | $36,780 | $31,733 | $31,198 |
| NY | $40,930 | $33,454 | $31,084 |
| AL | $33,870 | $27,965 | $31,083 |
| WA | $39,170 | $33,653 | $30,999 |
| RI | $37,540 | $31,356 | $30,919 |
| ND | $31,080 | $27,153 | $30,656 |
| KY | $33,050 | $27,697 | $30,615 |
| VT | $35,170 | $29,517 | $30,545 |
| MD | $38,420 | $31,589 | $30,384 |
| NC | $33,870 | $28,552 | $30,329 |
| NV | $33,280 | $28,920 | $29,821 |
| CT | $36,950 | $30,817 | $29,720 |
| NM | $31,150 | $26,821 | $29,674 |
| AZ | $35,080 | $29,892 | $29,566 |
| NH | $35,920 | $31,042 | $29,467 |
| TX | $32,840 | $28,567 | $29,397 |
| WV | $31,050 | $26,368 | $29,372 |
| TN | $31,020 | $27,105 | $29,297 |
| NJ | $37,710 | $31,878 | $29,277 |
| VA | $35,580 | $29,483 | $29,264 |
| MS | $30,250 | $25,368 | $29,061 |
| UT | $33,490 | $27,599 | $29,051 |
| MA | $38,220 | $31,299 | $28,917 |
| HI | $36,990 | $30,458 | $28,044 |
| DE | $33,090 | $27,498 | $27,705 |
| CA | $35,580 | $30,210 | $26,834 |
| GA | $30,300 | $25,613 | $26,487 |
| FL | $30,640 | $26,799 | $25,905 |
| OR | $34,070 | $27,124 | $25,901 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job 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 $35,660.
- 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 Wyoming, at $46,517.
- 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 — Oregon sits at the bottom on $25,901.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $35,660, 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 farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse 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 $46,517, which leads in Wyoming.
- The price deflation applied to farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse 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 Oregon at $25,901. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Oregon anchors the bottom at $25,901 — and the two source series are dated independently.