Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: the District of Columbia, at $49,240. Tax does not change that. Best off: Vermont, at $38,680 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- The District of Columbia's $49,240 median for mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Vermont takes the top position at $38,680. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$39,280
People doing it
55,230
Highest paid
$49,240
DC
Best off, really
$38,680
VT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,780
Highest tenth
$54,820
Lowest, really
$28,911
HI
States with data
50
National average
$41,650
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.64%
VT, 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 $28,911 and $38,680. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- This is a small job: about 55,230 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $39,280. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, The District of Columbia pays most.
- Interstate variation for mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $28,911 to $38,680. 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 55,230 workers, mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service in 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $39,280 |
| Top tenth earn over | $54,820 |
| This salary | $39,280 |
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 Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service
The national median for this job
$39,280around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $39,280 |
| Top tenth | $54,820 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Wyoming · $32,940 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $49,240 |
| Spread | $16,300 |
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 | $38,470 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $39,588 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| VT | $45,380 | $37,379 | $38,680 |
| UT | $45,150 | $36,449 | $38,366 |
| ME | $44,780 | $36,458 | $37,548 |
| MN | $44,840 | $36,629 | $37,218 |
| NM | $40,080 | $33,628 | $37,205 |
| ND | $38,120 | $32,809 | $37,043 |
| NE | $40,080 | $33,264 | $36,806 |
| SD | $37,580 | $32,376 | $36,751 |
| AR | $37,940 | $31,720 | $36,667 |
| WA | $46,380 | $39,446 | $36,335 |
| MA | $48,860 | $39,316 | $36,324 |
| ID | $39,890 | $32,971 | $36,063 |
| DC | $49,240 | $39,956 | $36,060 |
| MT | $38,880 | $32,349 | $35,847 |
| NV | $40,520 | $34,738 | $35,820 |
| OH | $38,470 | $32,749 | $35,670 |
| CO | $43,430 | $35,873 | $35,384 |
| MO | $38,110 | $31,948 | $34,816 |
| KY | $37,890 | $31,416 | $34,726 |
| IN | $38,490 | $32,001 | $34,714 |
| CT | $43,970 | $35,826 | $34,552 |
| OK | $36,680 | $30,502 | $34,549 |
| TX | $38,470 | $33,091 | $34,053 |
| IA | $35,610 | $30,051 | $33,854 |
| WI | $37,730 | $31,489 | $33,824 |
| SC | $36,780 | $31,299 | $33,591 |
| NC | $37,830 | $31,576 | $33,542 |
| NJ | $43,700 | $36,426 | $33,455 |
| LA | $34,860 | $29,530 | $33,426 |
| NH | $41,060 | $35,172 | $33,387 |
| TN | $35,610 | $30,793 | $33,284 |
| AL | $36,190 | $29,722 | $33,036 |
| WV | $35,140 | $29,525 | $32,889 |
| CA | $44,410 | $36,951 | $32,822 |
| KS | $36,020 | $29,401 | $32,680 |
| MS | $34,350 | $28,498 | $32,647 |
| FL | $39,300 | $33,758 | $32,631 |
| MI | $36,900 | $30,512 | $32,396 |
| PA | $37,980 | $31,531 | $32,339 |
| OR | $43,450 | $33,840 | $32,315 |
| AZ | $38,260 | $32,368 | $32,014 |
| NY | $42,020 | $34,271 | $31,843 |
| MD | $40,280 | $32,995 | $31,737 |
| WY | $32,940 | $28,647 | $31,533 |
| RI | $38,330 | $31,961 | $31,516 |
| IL | $38,190 | $31,120 | $31,480 |
| GA | $36,110 | $29,991 | $31,015 |
| DE | $36,450 | $30,011 | $30,237 |
| VA | $36,780 | $30,379 | $30,153 |
| HI | $38,270 | $31,400 | $28,911 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $39,280, 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 the District of Columbia, at $39,956.
- 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 Hawaii, on $28,911.
- These are distribution medians for mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service, with a national value of $39,280. 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 mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service 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 $39,956, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms results for mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service 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; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $28,911. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.