Food Batchmakers
What the pay figures show
- Vermont pays food batchmakers the most, $50,180. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Iowa wins, at $44,798. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For food batchmakers, Vermont leads both nominally at $50,180 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Iowa first at $44,798. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
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
$42,290
People doing it
174,520
Highest paid
$50,180
VT
Best off, really
$44,798
IA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$31,990
Highest tenth
$58,940
Lowest, really
$27,984
MA
States with data
50
National average
$43,750
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.77%
IA, 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 $27,984 to $44,798. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 174,520 people hold this job nationally, earning $42,290 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $42,290 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Vermont tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in food batchmakers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $27,984 through $44,798. 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.
- 174,520 are employed nationally in food batchmakers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for food batchmakers. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Food Batchmakers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $31,990 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $42,290 |
| Top tenth earn over | $58,940 |
| This salary | $42,290 |
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 Food Batchmakers
The national median for this job
$42,290around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $31,990 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $42,290 |
| Top tenth | $58,940 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Food Batchmakers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $34,620 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Vermont · $50,180 |
| Spread | $15,560 |
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 | $37,500 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $38,590 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IA | $48,300 | $39,765 | $44,798 |
| ID | $49,570 | $40,236 | $44,009 |
| VT | $50,180 | $41,075 | $42,505 |
| WI | $48,360 | $39,507 | $42,436 |
| KY | $46,900 | $38,340 | $42,380 |
| MO | $45,690 | $37,682 | $41,065 |
| OH | $44,590 | $37,498 | $40,842 |
| ND | $40,840 | $34,995 | $39,510 |
| TN | $42,610 | $36,417 | $39,363 |
| GA | $46,490 | $37,814 | $39,104 |
| IL | $48,130 | $38,615 | $39,062 |
| KS | $42,850 | $34,508 | $38,357 |
| SD | $39,200 | $33,677 | $38,228 |
| NE | $41,210 | $34,121 | $37,754 |
| AR | $38,990 | $32,524 | $37,597 |
| CO | $44,900 | $36,990 | $36,486 |
| MT | $39,630 | $32,917 | $36,475 |
| WY | $38,430 | $33,059 | $36,389 |
| NV | $41,120 | $35,220 | $36,317 |
| MN | $42,940 | $35,204 | $35,770 |
| IN | $39,700 | $32,937 | $35,730 |
| ME | $42,260 | $34,595 | $35,630 |
| UT | $41,390 | $33,595 | $35,362 |
| MI | $40,160 | $32,993 | $35,030 |
| NM | $37,390 | $31,582 | $34,942 |
| MS | $36,530 | $30,163 | $34,554 |
| OK | $36,320 | $30,229 | $34,240 |
| PA | $39,920 | $33,030 | $33,877 |
| SC | $37,070 | $31,527 | $33,835 |
| AZ | $40,550 | $34,151 | $33,777 |
| AL | $36,980 | $30,322 | $33,703 |
| WA | $42,710 | $36,497 | $33,619 |
| VA | $41,080 | $33,586 | $33,337 |
| TX | $37,500 | $32,311 | $33,251 |
| LA | $34,620 | $29,345 | $33,216 |
| AK | $39,030 | $33,541 | $32,975 |
| NC | $36,590 | $30,629 | $32,536 |
| WV | $34,660 | $29,155 | $32,476 |
| RI | $39,250 | $32,665 | $32,211 |
| MD | $40,240 | $32,965 | $31,708 |
| CT | $39,110 | $32,320 | $31,170 |
| CA | $41,670 | $34,859 | $30,964 |
| DE | $37,220 | $30,587 | $30,818 |
| NH | $37,470 | $32,287 | $30,649 |
| OR | $39,850 | $31,263 | $29,853 |
| FL | $35,500 | $30,704 | $29,680 |
| NJ | $38,250 | $32,293 | $29,658 |
| NY | $38,470 | $31,610 | $29,370 |
| HI | $37,490 | $30,826 | $28,382 |
| MA | $36,880 | $30,289 | $27,984 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of food batchmakers 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 $42,290.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for food batchmakers, 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 Vermont, at $41,075.
- Levelling out prices for food batchmakers 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 — Massachusetts sits at the bottom on $27,984.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for food batchmakers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $42,290, 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 food batchmakers 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 $41,075, which leads in Vermont.
- The price deflation applied to food batchmakers 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 Massachusetts at $27,984. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Massachusetts anchors the bottom at $27,984 — and the two source series are dated independently.