Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers
What the pay figures show
- Connecticut pays this job the most, $69,800. 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 North Dakota wins, at $54,188. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For jewelers and precious stone and metal workers, Connecticut leads both nominally at $69,800 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 North Dakota first at $54,188. 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$52,540
People doing it
22,440
Highest paid
$69,800
CT
Best off, really
$54,188
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,580
Highest tenth
$87,540
Lowest, really
$33,040
OR
States with data
47
National average
$57,960
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 $33,040 to $54,188.
- Just 22,440 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 47 jurisdictions have a figure, with $52,540 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Connecticut tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in jewelers and precious stone and metal 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 $33,040 to $54,188 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 22,440 are employed nationally in jewelers and precious stone and metal workers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 47 jurisdictions carry a published median for jewelers and precious stone and metal 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: Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,580 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $52,540 |
| Top tenth earn over | $87,540 |
| This salary | $52,540 |
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 Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers
The national median for this job
$52,540around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,580 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $52,540 |
| Top tenth | $87,540 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
47states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $35,950 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Connecticut · $69,800 |
| Spread | $33,850 |
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 | $47,590 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $48,974 |
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 | $57,020 | $47,996 | $54,188 |
| CT | $69,800 | $54,845 | $52,894 |
| SC | $60,380 | $49,008 | $52,597 |
| KS | $57,730 | $45,633 | $50,723 |
| MS | $55,010 | $44,272 | $50,717 |
| MO | $56,140 | $45,587 | $49,680 |
| VT | $58,570 | $47,486 | $49,139 |
| VA | $61,940 | $49,148 | $48,782 |
| WI | $55,830 | $45,141 | $48,488 |
| MI | $56,610 | $45,511 | $48,321 |
| LA | $51,420 | $42,340 | $47,925 |
| NC | $55,420 | $45,007 | $47,810 |
| WA | $60,380 | $50,695 | $46,697 |
| IA | $50,280 | $41,281 | $46,505 |
| PA | $54,880 | $44,591 | $45,735 |
| CO | $57,120 | $46,271 | $45,640 |
| NY | $61,720 | $49,036 | $45,562 |
| MN | $54,310 | $43,648 | $44,350 |
| NJ | $59,480 | $48,234 | $44,299 |
| IL | $54,990 | $43,787 | $44,294 |
| TN | $48,240 | $40,941 | $44,253 |
| OH | $48,190 | $40,292 | $43,885 |
| AL | $48,890 | $39,368 | $43,757 |
| CA | $60,790 | $49,185 | $43,688 |
| SD | $45,110 | $38,426 | $43,619 |
| NE | $46,920 | $38,449 | $42,543 |
| KY | $47,090 | $38,486 | $42,541 |
| WV | $46,370 | $38,147 | $42,494 |
| IN | $47,620 | $39,067 | $42,380 |
| NM | $46,200 | $38,282 | $42,354 |
| FL | $51,470 | $43,536 | $42,083 |
| ID | $47,090 | $38,374 | $41,974 |
| TX | $47,590 | $40,419 | $41,594 |
| GA | $47,810 | $38,808 | $40,133 |
| ME | $48,080 | $38,887 | $40,050 |
| RI | $48,800 | $39,981 | $39,424 |
| OK | $41,720 | $34,325 | $38,879 |
| MA | $51,060 | $40,974 | $37,855 |
| NV | $40,510 | $34,730 | $35,811 |
| HI | $48,450 | $38,855 | $35,775 |
| MD | $45,430 | $36,889 | $35,482 |
| NH | $43,520 | $37,148 | $35,263 |
| AZ | $42,240 | $35,466 | $35,079 |
| AR | $35,950 | $30,194 | $34,903 |
| MT | $37,580 | $31,366 | $34,757 |
| UT | $39,860 | $32,434 | $34,140 |
| OR | $44,510 | $34,599 | $33,040 |
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 $52,540 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 Connecticut, at $54,845.
- 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 Oregon, on $33,040.
- All wage figures for jewelers and precious stone and metal workers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $52,540. 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 jewelers and precious stone and metal 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 $54,845, which leads in Connecticut.
- Real-terms results for jewelers and precious stone and metal 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; Oregon anchors the distribution at $33,040. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.