Hazardous Materials Removal Workers
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is New York, at $73,090. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $57,037. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for hazardous materials removal workers: New York leads at $73,090 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $57,037 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
$49,450
People doing it
51,710
Highest paid
$73,090
NY
Best off, really
$57,037
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,460
Highest tenth
$82,410
Lowest, really
$35,000
FL
States with data
51
National average
$56,430
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $35,000 to $57,037.
- Just 51,710 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $49,450 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in hazardous materials removal workers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $35,000 to $57,037 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 51,710 are employed nationally in hazardous materials removal workers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 51 jurisdictions report hazardous materials removal workers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Hazardous Materials Removal Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,460 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $49,450 |
| Top tenth earn over | $82,410 |
| This salary | $49,450 |
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 Hazardous Materials Removal Workers
The national median for this job
$49,450around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,460 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $49,450 |
| Top tenth | $82,410 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Hazardous Materials Removal Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $36,630 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $73,090 |
| Spread | $36,460 |
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 | $44,390 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $45,680 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $60,160 | $50,519 | $57,037 |
| TN | $60,090 | $50,462 | $54,545 |
| NY | $73,090 | $56,899 | $52,867 |
| MO | $59,120 | $47,842 | $52,137 |
| AK | $60,320 | $50,647 | $49,793 |
| SD | $51,420 | $43,496 | $49,374 |
| IL | $61,330 | $48,568 | $49,130 |
| MT | $54,540 | $44,196 | $48,974 |
| NM | $53,440 | $43,773 | $48,429 |
| MN | $59,100 | $47,171 | $47,930 |
| CO | $59,920 | $48,398 | $47,738 |
| WA | $60,160 | $50,519 | $46,534 |
| IA | $49,870 | $40,967 | $46,151 |
| WY | $48,570 | $41,206 | $45,357 |
| NH | $55,310 | $46,622 | $44,256 |
| ID | $49,710 | $40,341 | $44,124 |
| NE | $48,540 | $39,677 | $43,902 |
| SC | $49,170 | $40,744 | $43,727 |
| DC | $60,240 | $48,114 | $43,422 |
| KY | $47,640 | $38,909 | $43,009 |
| OH | $46,620 | $39,073 | $42,558 |
| WV | $46,390 | $38,163 | $42,511 |
| HI | $58,440 | $46,138 | $42,481 |
| WI | $47,750 | $39,047 | $41,942 |
| NJ | $55,900 | $45,555 | $41,838 |
| UT | $49,240 | $39,553 | $41,634 |
| NV | $47,520 | $40,362 | $41,619 |
| IN | $46,680 | $38,340 | $41,591 |
| AZ | $50,530 | $41,920 | $41,462 |
| OK | $44,300 | $36,282 | $41,096 |
| GA | $48,960 | $39,675 | $41,029 |
| CA | $56,120 | $45,713 | $40,604 |
| KS | $45,530 | $36,511 | $40,584 |
| PA | $47,860 | $39,166 | $40,170 |
| MI | $46,380 | $37,726 | $40,056 |
| VT | $46,780 | $38,457 | $39,796 |
| ME | $47,280 | $38,298 | $39,443 |
| TX | $44,390 | $37,847 | $38,948 |
| NC | $43,180 | $35,661 | $37,881 |
| MD | $48,640 | $39,315 | $37,816 |
| RI | $46,670 | $38,349 | $37,815 |
| MS | $39,440 | $32,384 | $37,099 |
| MA | $49,620 | $39,889 | $36,853 |
| CT | $47,090 | $38,148 | $36,791 |
| OR | $49,720 | $38,330 | $36,602 |
| VA | $45,320 | $36,749 | $36,476 |
| LA | $38,000 | $31,959 | $36,176 |
| DE | $44,250 | $35,846 | $36,116 |
| AR | $36,630 | $30,715 | $35,506 |
| AL | $38,610 | $31,560 | $35,079 |
| FL | $42,350 | $36,208 | $35,000 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $49,450, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- 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 New York, at $56,899.
- 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 Florida, on $35,000.
- These are distribution medians for hazardous materials removal workers, with a national value of $49,450. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for hazardous materials removal 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 $56,899, which leads in New York.
- Real-terms results for hazardous materials removal 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; Florida anchors the distribution at $35,000. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.