Machinists
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Hawaii pays machinists best, at $84,410. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $62,401 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for machinists is also the real leader: Hawaii at $84,410, holding through tax and through price deflation to $62,401. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$58,750
People doing it
287,050
Highest paid
$84,410
HI
Best off, really
$62,401
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$39,200
Highest tenth
$80,010
Lowest, really
$41,311
CA
States with data
51
National average
$59,320
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, 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 $41,311 and $62,401. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 287,050 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $58,750. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $58,750, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for machinists is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $41,311 to $62,401. 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.
- With 287,050 workers, machinists 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.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for machinists, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Machinists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $39,200 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,750 |
| Top tenth earn over | $80,010 |
| This salary | $58,750 |
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 Machinists
The national median for this job
$58,750around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $39,200 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,750 |
| Top tenth | $80,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Machinists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $47,350 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $84,410 |
| Spread | $37,060 |
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 | $59,180 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $60,900 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $77,670 | $63,471 | $62,401 |
| ND | $61,820 | $51,852 | $58,543 |
| HI | $84,410 | $63,240 | $58,228 |
| WY | $63,070 | $52,857 | $58,182 |
| LA | $61,110 | $49,835 | $56,409 |
| MT | $60,920 | $49,023 | $54,322 |
| NM | $59,440 | $48,312 | $53,451 |
| IA | $57,540 | $46,839 | $52,766 |
| KY | $58,660 | $47,378 | $52,370 |
| VT | $62,680 | $50,517 | $52,276 |
| OH | $57,940 | $47,858 | $52,126 |
| MO | $58,710 | $47,531 | $51,799 |
| ID | $58,810 | $47,170 | $51,594 |
| DC | $72,900 | $56,823 | $51,283 |
| UT | $61,280 | $48,692 | $51,253 |
| MS | $55,550 | $44,684 | $51,190 |
| TX | $59,180 | $49,731 | $51,177 |
| WI | $59,110 | $47,615 | $51,145 |
| WA | $66,160 | $55,340 | $50,975 |
| IN | $57,800 | $46,947 | $50,927 |
| SC | $57,970 | $47,231 | $50,689 |
| NE | $55,860 | $45,225 | $50,041 |
| DE | $62,650 | $49,609 | $49,982 |
| AZ | $61,080 | $50,133 | $49,585 |
| MN | $61,140 | $48,672 | $49,455 |
| AL | $55,560 | $44,434 | $49,387 |
| MA | $67,270 | $53,111 | $49,069 |
| NH | $61,500 | $51,595 | $48,977 |
| SD | $50,890 | $43,070 | $48,891 |
| ME | $59,160 | $47,042 | $48,448 |
| AR | $51,140 | $41,837 | $48,362 |
| VA | $61,290 | $48,663 | $48,301 |
| PA | $57,810 | $46,856 | $48,057 |
| CO | $60,200 | $48,610 | $47,948 |
| CT | $62,130 | $49,434 | $47,676 |
| NC | $55,230 | $44,862 | $47,655 |
| IL | $58,520 | $46,449 | $46,987 |
| OK | $51,120 | $41,455 | $46,955 |
| NJ | $63,190 | $51,010 | $46,848 |
| FL | $57,140 | $48,092 | $46,487 |
| OR | $63,820 | $48,425 | $46,242 |
| NV | $53,050 | $44,806 | $46,201 |
| RI | $57,760 | $46,844 | $46,192 |
| MD | $59,810 | $47,760 | $45,939 |
| TN | $49,600 | $42,034 | $45,434 |
| KS | $51,220 | $40,766 | $45,313 |
| NY | $60,920 | $48,437 | $45,004 |
| MI | $52,360 | $42,277 | $44,887 |
| GA | $52,610 | $42,426 | $43,874 |
| WV | $47,350 | $38,893 | $43,325 |
| CA | $57,190 | $46,508 | $41,311 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of machinists 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 $58,750.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for machinists. 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, Alaska keeps the most at $63,471.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for machinists. 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 California, on $41,311.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for machinists, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $58,750, 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 machinists 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 Alaska retains the most, $63,471. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for machinists 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; California anchors the distribution at $41,311. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.