Highway Maintenance Workers
What the pay figures show
- Oregon pays highway maintenance workers the most on paper: $65,330. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Washington in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and North Dakota wins at $57,463. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For highway maintenance workers, Oregon's $65,330 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Washington; regional price parity then promotes North Dakota, whose $57,463 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
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
$50,260
People doing it
154,960
Highest paid
$65,330
OR
Best off, really
$57,463
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$36,230
Highest tenth
$71,970
Lowest, really
$32,145
GA
States with data
49
National average
$53,080
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $32,145 and $57,463. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 154,960 people hold this job nationally, earning $50,260 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- This job is not published everywhere — 49 jurisdictions have a figure, with $50,260 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Oregon tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation for highway maintenance workers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $32,145 to $57,463. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 154,960 are employed nationally in highway maintenance workers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 49 jurisdictions carry a published median for highway maintenance workers. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Highway Maintenance Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $36,230 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $50,260 |
| Top tenth earn over | $71,970 |
| This salary | $50,260 |
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 Highway Maintenance Workers
The national median for this job
$50,260around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $36,230 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $50,260 |
| Top tenth | $71,970 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Highway Maintenance Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $35,120 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Oregon · $65,330 |
| Spread | $30,210 |
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 | $45,540 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $46,864 |
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 | $60,630 | $50,896 | $57,463 |
| MT | $60,960 | $49,053 | $54,356 |
| IA | $58,490 | $47,566 | $53,585 |
| MN | $63,150 | $50,150 | $50,957 |
| WA | $65,300 | $54,649 | $50,339 |
| WI | $58,000 | $46,777 | $50,246 |
| CT | $64,870 | $51,485 | $49,653 |
| IL | $61,700 | $48,847 | $49,412 |
| VT | $58,460 | $47,405 | $49,055 |
| OR | $65,330 | $49,506 | $47,275 |
| UT | $55,970 | $44,661 | $47,011 |
| SD | $48,610 | $41,238 | $46,811 |
| RI | $57,950 | $46,990 | $46,335 |
| ID | $52,050 | $42,097 | $46,045 |
| MI | $53,750 | $43,334 | $46,010 |
| MA | $61,500 | $48,840 | $45,123 |
| WY | $48,190 | $40,901 | $45,021 |
| AK | $54,090 | $45,641 | $44,872 |
| OH | $48,880 | $40,827 | $44,468 |
| NE | $48,650 | $39,760 | $43,994 |
| NM | $47,740 | $39,454 | $43,650 |
| NV | $49,320 | $41,809 | $43,111 |
| IN | $48,480 | $39,733 | $43,102 |
| SC | $48,130 | $39,977 | $42,905 |
| CA | $59,580 | $48,285 | $42,889 |
| MO | $47,470 | $39,028 | $42,532 |
| TN | $46,070 | $39,197 | $42,369 |
| LA | $44,790 | $37,211 | $42,120 |
| CO | $52,350 | $42,648 | $42,067 |
| AZ | $50,850 | $42,169 | $41,708 |
| NC | $47,880 | $39,250 | $41,694 |
| WV | $45,260 | $37,302 | $41,552 |
| NY | $55,210 | $44,157 | $41,028 |
| KS | $46,050 | $36,900 | $41,016 |
| NH | $51,050 | $43,199 | $41,007 |
| ME | $49,030 | $39,586 | $40,770 |
| VA | $50,800 | $40,837 | $40,534 |
| PA | $47,690 | $39,035 | $40,036 |
| TX | $45,540 | $38,771 | $39,899 |
| NJ | $51,720 | $42,427 | $38,966 |
| MD | $49,030 | $39,610 | $38,100 |
| DE | $45,450 | $36,743 | $37,020 |
| KY | $40,400 | $33,345 | $36,858 |
| OK | $38,840 | $32,141 | $36,405 |
| FL | $42,210 | $36,096 | $34,891 |
| AR | $35,740 | $30,033 | $34,717 |
| AL | $37,430 | $30,664 | $34,083 |
| MS | $35,120 | $29,086 | $33,320 |
| GA | $37,560 | $31,084 | $32,145 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of highway maintenance workers 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 $50,260.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for highway maintenance workers. 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, Washington keeps the most at $54,649.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for highway maintenance workers. 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 Georgia, on $32,145.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for highway maintenance workers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $50,260, 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 highway maintenance workers 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 Washington retains the most, $54,649. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for highway maintenance 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; Georgia anchors the distribution at $32,145. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.