First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
What the pay figures show
- Wyoming comes first for this job on every measure. $90,390 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $79,715 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For first-line supervisors of production and operating workers, Wyoming's $90,390 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $79,715. 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
$74,450
People doing it
673,430
Highest paid
$90,390
WY
Best off, really
$79,715
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$47,130
Highest tenth
$108,750
Lowest, really
$51,052
HI
States with data
51
National average
$76,600
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 $51,052 to $79,715. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- About 673,430 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $74,450. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $74,450. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in first-line supervisors of production and operating workers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $51,052 through $79,715. 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.
- With 673,430 workers, first-line supervisors of production and operating workers sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for first-line supervisors of production and operating workers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $47,130 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $74,450 |
| Top tenth earn over | $108,750 |
| This salary | $74,450 |
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 First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
The national median for this job
$74,450around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $47,130 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $74,450 |
| Top tenth | $108,750 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $63,090 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Wyoming · $90,390 |
| Spread | $27,300 |
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 | $70,140 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $72,179 |
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 | $90,390 | $72,419 | $79,715 |
| ND | $76,350 | $62,313 | $70,352 |
| LA | $77,520 | $61,426 | $69,530 |
| SD | $73,040 | $60,214 | $68,351 |
| IA | $74,750 | $59,188 | $66,678 |
| SC | $77,500 | $60,529 | $64,961 |
| KS | $74,480 | $57,359 | $63,757 |
| IN | $73,950 | $58,702 | $63,679 |
| OH | $72,160 | $58,327 | $63,528 |
| AL | $73,060 | $57,102 | $63,468 |
| KY | $72,490 | $57,407 | $63,456 |
| NE | $72,200 | $57,041 | $63,115 |
| MO | $73,210 | $57,830 | $63,021 |
| WI | $74,840 | $58,492 | $62,829 |
| OK | $70,000 | $55,426 | $62,779 |
| RI | $81,650 | $63,629 | $62,743 |
| AK | $77,960 | $63,675 | $62,601 |
| MS | $68,720 | $54,518 | $62,454 |
| ME | $78,970 | $60,375 | $62,180 |
| WV | $68,990 | $55,094 | $61,371 |
| NH | $79,310 | $64,625 | $61,346 |
| CT | $83,150 | $63,503 | $61,243 |
| MN | $78,550 | $60,272 | $61,241 |
| VT | $75,540 | $59,097 | $61,155 |
| ID | $70,890 | $55,797 | $61,031 |
| DE | $79,100 | $60,487 | $60,942 |
| PA | $74,990 | $59,283 | $60,803 |
| CO | $78,890 | $61,566 | $60,727 |
| MT | $68,760 | $54,679 | $60,590 |
| MI | $72,170 | $56,785 | $60,292 |
| TX | $70,140 | $58,173 | $59,865 |
| AZ | $75,330 | $60,344 | $59,684 |
| WA | $79,310 | $64,625 | $59,528 |
| TN | $65,310 | $54,657 | $59,079 |
| NC | $69,640 | $55,552 | $59,010 |
| AR | $63,090 | $50,997 | $58,951 |
| IL | $75,200 | $58,156 | $58,829 |
| UT | $71,220 | $55,764 | $58,698 |
| NV | $68,270 | $56,858 | $58,629 |
| MD | $78,520 | $60,703 | $58,388 |
| NM | $64,640 | $52,246 | $57,803 |
| NJ | $81,110 | $62,914 | $57,781 |
| VA | $74,150 | $57,492 | $57,064 |
| MA | $79,920 | $61,378 | $56,706 |
| GA | $69,170 | $54,638 | $56,503 |
| NY | $78,580 | $60,465 | $56,180 |
| DC | $80,030 | $61,297 | $55,320 |
| CA | $76,840 | $59,812 | $53,128 |
| OR | $73,580 | $54,705 | $52,239 |
| FL | $63,950 | $53,564 | $51,776 |
| HI | $71,990 | $55,447 | $51,052 |
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 $74,450 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 Wyoming, at $72,419.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 $51,052.
- All wage figures for first-line supervisors of production and operating workers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $74,450. 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 first-line supervisors of production and operating workers 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 $72,419, which leads in Wyoming.
- Real-terms results for first-line supervisors of production and operating workers 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 $51,052. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.