Maintenance Workers, Machinery
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Wyoming pays maintenance workers, machinery best, at $84,620. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $75,247 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for maintenance workers, machinery is also the real leader: Wyoming at $84,620, holding through tax and through price deflation to $75,247. 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
$60,850
People doing it
60,020
Highest paid
$84,620
WY
Best off, really
$75,247
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$42,000
Highest tenth
$88,550
Lowest, really
$33,974
NM
States with data
46
National average
$64,610
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, 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 $33,974 to $75,247.
- Just 60,020 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 46 jurisdictions have a figure, with $60,850 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Wyoming tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in maintenance workers, machinery 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 $33,974 to $75,247 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 60,020 are employed nationally in maintenance workers, machinery — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 46 jurisdictions carry a published median for maintenance workers, machinery. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Maintenance Workers, Machinery
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $42,000 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $60,850 |
| Top tenth earn over | $88,550 |
| This salary | $60,850 |
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 Workers, Machinery
The national median for this job
$60,850around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $42,000 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $60,850 |
| Top tenth | $88,550 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Maintenance Workers, Machinery, state by state
The national median for this job
46states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $36,240 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Wyoming · $84,620 |
| Spread | $48,380 |
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 | $59,280 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,003 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WY | $84,620 | $68,360 | $75,247 |
| KY | $76,710 | $60,228 | $66,574 |
| NV | $75,500 | $61,944 | $63,873 |
| NH | $77,070 | $63,049 | $59,850 |
| IA | $64,760 | $52,366 | $58,992 |
| TN | $64,790 | $54,239 | $58,627 |
| LA | $62,640 | $51,018 | $57,749 |
| RI | $72,040 | $57,229 | $56,432 |
| SC | $64,910 | $52,347 | $56,180 |
| MO | $63,720 | $51,322 | $55,929 |
| WI | $64,310 | $51,490 | $55,308 |
| NE | $61,190 | $49,266 | $54,512 |
| WV | $60,020 | $48,539 | $54,069 |
| OK | $58,970 | $47,409 | $53,700 |
| AL | $60,560 | $48,231 | $53,608 |
| OH | $59,280 | $48,898 | $53,258 |
| KS | $60,160 | $47,450 | $52,743 |
| NC | $60,580 | $48,948 | $51,995 |
| VA | $65,500 | $51,804 | $51,418 |
| TX | $59,280 | $49,811 | $51,260 |
| UT | $60,850 | $48,365 | $50,910 |
| MN | $63,020 | $50,055 | $50,860 |
| CO | $64,010 | $51,504 | $50,802 |
| MI | $59,590 | $47,779 | $50,729 |
| PA | $61,080 | $49,383 | $50,649 |
| AK | $61,290 | $51,427 | $50,559 |
| AR | $53,250 | $43,455 | $50,232 |
| MS | $54,380 | $43,791 | $50,166 |
| NY | $67,610 | $53,340 | $49,560 |
| ID | $56,250 | $45,249 | $49,493 |
| WA | $62,970 | $52,776 | $48,614 |
| CT | $63,250 | $50,273 | $48,484 |
| CA | $67,840 | $54,201 | $48,144 |
| GA | $57,730 | $46,284 | $47,864 |
| IL | $59,300 | $47,037 | $47,582 |
| AZ | $56,130 | $46,280 | $45,774 |
| MD | $59,570 | $47,579 | $45,764 |
| DC | $62,520 | $49,798 | $44,942 |
| SD | $45,240 | $38,530 | $43,737 |
| IN | $48,760 | $39,950 | $43,337 |
| ME | $52,300 | $41,993 | $43,248 |
| NJ | $57,920 | $47,066 | $43,227 |
| FL | $51,900 | $43,882 | $42,417 |
| OR | $57,440 | $43,857 | $41,880 |
| MA | $55,000 | $43,943 | $40,598 |
| NM | $36,240 | $30,708 | $33,974 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for maintenance workers, machinery, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $60,850 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 maintenance workers, machinery, 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 Wyoming, at $68,360.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for maintenance workers, machinery. 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 New Mexico, on $33,974.
- All wage figures for maintenance workers, machinery are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $60,850. 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 maintenance workers, machinery 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 $68,360, which leads in Wyoming.
- Real-terms results for maintenance workers, machinery 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; New Mexico anchors the distribution at $33,974. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.