Maintenance and Repair Workers, General
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. The District of Columbia pays this job best, at $60,310. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $49,754 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for maintenance and repair workers, general is also the real leader: the District of Columbia at $60,310, holding through tax and through price deflation to $49,754. 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
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
$49,590
People doing it
1,529,700
Highest paid
$60,310
DC
Best off, really
$49,754
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,350
Highest tenth
$77,180
Lowest, really
$36,114
WV
States with data
51
National average
$53,780
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $36,114 and $49,754. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 1,529,700 people in the country do this job. Very few jobs are this big. That is part of why its geography is worth setting out with care.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $49,590, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for maintenance and repair workers, general cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $36,114 to $49,754. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- 1,529,700 workers are employed nationally in maintenance and repair workers, general. At this scale the occupation's wage geography is a macroeconomic fact as much as a career one, and small per-worker differentials aggregate into substantial regional flows.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for maintenance and repair workers, general, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Maintenance and Repair Workers, General
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,350 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $49,590 |
| Top tenth earn over | $77,180 |
| This salary | $49,590 |
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 Maintenance and Repair Workers, General
The national median for this job
$49,590around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,350 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $49,590 |
| Top tenth | $77,180 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Maintenance and Repair Workers, General, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $38,890 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $60,310 |
| Spread | $21,420 |
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 | $46,670 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $48,027 |
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 | $60,270 | $50,607 | $49,754 |
| WI | $55,810 | $45,126 | $48,472 |
| OH | $53,420 | $44,350 | $48,306 |
| IA | $52,160 | $42,720 | $48,126 |
| MN | $59,200 | $47,245 | $48,005 |
| ND | $49,840 | $42,226 | $47,675 |
| VT | $55,510 | $45,179 | $46,752 |
| SD | $48,100 | $40,828 | $46,346 |
| WA | $59,160 | $49,715 | $45,794 |
| NE | $50,700 | $41,314 | $45,714 |
| NV | $52,360 | $44,251 | $45,629 |
| IL | $56,720 | $45,092 | $45,614 |
| WY | $47,900 | $40,668 | $44,764 |
| CT | $57,620 | $46,059 | $44,420 |
| IN | $49,890 | $40,824 | $44,286 |
| DC | $60,310 | $48,165 | $43,469 |
| TN | $47,240 | $40,137 | $43,385 |
| MO | $48,370 | $39,709 | $43,274 |
| MA | $58,320 | $46,444 | $42,909 |
| ID | $48,190 | $39,200 | $42,877 |
| NY | $57,790 | $46,091 | $42,825 |
| SC | $47,880 | $39,793 | $42,707 |
| UT | $50,450 | $40,472 | $42,601 |
| MT | $46,870 | $38,394 | $42,544 |
| NH | $52,830 | $44,629 | $42,365 |
| KY | $46,810 | $38,271 | $42,303 |
| HI | $57,960 | $45,789 | $42,160 |
| NM | $45,760 | $37,948 | $41,984 |
| KS | $47,210 | $37,767 | $41,980 |
| NC | $47,910 | $39,273 | $41,718 |
| AR | $43,400 | $35,905 | $41,504 |
| MS | $44,350 | $36,133 | $41,394 |
| LA | $43,960 | $36,569 | $41,394 |
| PA | $49,290 | $40,271 | $41,304 |
| CO | $51,280 | $41,836 | $41,265 |
| CA | $57,000 | $46,367 | $41,185 |
| NJ | $54,810 | $44,739 | $41,089 |
| ME | $49,430 | $39,881 | $41,073 |
| MI | $47,580 | $38,639 | $41,025 |
| RI | $50,900 | $41,589 | $41,010 |
| TX | $46,670 | $39,679 | $40,833 |
| DE | $50,150 | $40,259 | $40,562 |
| GA | $47,680 | $38,710 | $40,032 |
| MD | $51,490 | $41,470 | $39,888 |
| OR | $54,350 | $41,645 | $39,767 |
| OK | $42,750 | $35,106 | $39,764 |
| VA | $49,470 | $39,845 | $39,549 |
| AL | $43,630 | $35,373 | $39,316 |
| AZ | $47,620 | $39,655 | $39,221 |
| FL | $46,060 | $39,189 | $37,882 |
| WV | $38,890 | $32,420 | $36,114 |
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 $49,590 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. 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 $50,607.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $36,114. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for maintenance and repair workers, general are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $49,590. 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.
- The household modeled for maintenance and repair workers, general 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, $50,607. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for maintenance and repair workers, general deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.