Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is Alaska, at $50,450. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and West Virginia comes out ahead, worth $44,266. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals: Alaska leads at $50,450 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting West Virginia to $44,266 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
$36,670
People doing it
32,810
Highest paid
$50,450
AK
Best off, really
$44,266
WV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,360
Highest tenth
$54,080
Lowest, really
$25,012
GA
States with data
49
National average
$39,260
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
89.77%
WV, 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 $25,012 and $44,266. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- This is a small job: about 32,810 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $36,670. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Alaska pays most.
- Wages for farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $25,012 to $44,266. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 32,810 workers, farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals 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.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals 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: Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,360 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $36,670 |
| Top tenth earn over | $54,080 |
| This salary | $36,670 |
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, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals
The national median for this job
$36,670around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,360 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $36,670 |
| Top tenth | $54,080 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Georgia · $28,410 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $50,450 |
| Spread | $22,040 |
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 | $33,920 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $34,906 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WV | $48,460 | $39,739 | $44,266 |
| AK | $50,450 | $42,717 | $41,996 |
| ND | $40,320 | $34,577 | $39,038 |
| MN | $46,020 | $37,514 | $38,117 |
| SD | $38,000 | $32,713 | $37,134 |
| WY | $38,920 | $33,452 | $36,822 |
| ID | $40,580 | $33,489 | $36,630 |
| WA | $45,370 | $38,635 | $35,588 |
| ME | $42,170 | $34,528 | $35,561 |
| MS | $37,430 | $30,850 | $35,341 |
| VT | $40,730 | $33,798 | $34,975 |
| KY | $38,030 | $31,524 | $34,845 |
| HI | $47,050 | $37,831 | $34,832 |
| IA | $36,480 | $30,717 | $34,604 |
| NE | $37,220 | $31,096 | $34,408 |
| NC | $38,750 | $32,278 | $34,288 |
| MT | $37,010 | $30,935 | $34,279 |
| NM | $36,400 | $30,830 | $34,109 |
| IN | $37,530 | $31,258 | $33,908 |
| KS | $37,060 | $30,178 | $33,545 |
| AL | $36,620 | $30,049 | $33,399 |
| MD | $41,760 | $34,114 | $32,813 |
| CO | $39,740 | $33,071 | $32,620 |
| NH | $39,520 | $33,934 | $32,213 |
| SC | $35,090 | $29,975 | $32,170 |
| OK | $33,670 | $28,219 | $31,963 |
| TN | $33,720 | $29,274 | $31,642 |
| VA | $38,670 | $31,788 | $31,552 |
| LA | $31,940 | $27,272 | $30,870 |
| FL | $36,790 | $31,741 | $30,682 |
| DE | $36,940 | $30,378 | $30,607 |
| MO | $32,950 | $28,044 | $30,562 |
| TX | $33,920 | $29,435 | $30,290 |
| PA | $35,360 | $29,506 | $30,263 |
| NJ | $38,960 | $32,838 | $30,159 |
| WI | $32,970 | $27,899 | $29,968 |
| AZ | $35,160 | $29,955 | $29,627 |
| OH | $31,200 | $27,108 | $29,525 |
| AR | $29,340 | $25,128 | $29,047 |
| MI | $32,660 | $27,285 | $28,970 |
| MA | $38,280 | $31,344 | $28,958 |
| CA | $38,640 | $32,546 | $28,909 |
| UT | $32,970 | $27,204 | $28,635 |
| NV | $31,700 | $27,651 | $28,512 |
| CT | $35,140 | $29,489 | $28,440 |
| IL | $33,840 | $27,840 | $28,163 |
| OR | $35,480 | $28,134 | $26,866 |
| NY | $34,860 | $28,905 | $26,856 |
| GA | $28,410 | $24,187 | $25,012 |
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 $36,670.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Alaska keeps the most at $42,717.
- 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 $25,012. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $36,670, 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.
- The household modeled for farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Alaska retains the most, $42,717. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for farmworkers, farm, ranch, and aquacultural animals 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.