Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: Colorado, at $50,390. Tax does not change that. Best off: North Dakota, at $45,325 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Colorado's $50,390 median for meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: North Dakota takes the top position at $45,325. 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
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
$38,300
People doing it
145,700
Highest paid
$50,390
CO
Best off, really
$45,325
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$29,980
Highest tenth
$48,150
Lowest, really
$26,309
FL
States with data
50
National average
$39,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, 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 $26,309 and $45,325. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Roughly 145,700 people hold this job nationally, earning $38,300 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $38,300. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Colorado pays most.
- Wages for meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $26,309 to $45,325. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- 145,700 are employed nationally in meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers 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: Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $29,980 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $38,300 |
| Top tenth earn over | $48,150 |
| This salary | $38,300 |
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 Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers
The national median for this job
$38,300around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $29,980 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $38,300 |
| Top tenth | $48,150 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $27,850 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Colorado · $50,390 |
| Spread | $22,540 |
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 | $35,890 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $36,933 |
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 | $47,250 | $40,145 | $45,325 |
| NE | $47,580 | $38,949 | $43,097 |
| SD | $44,290 | $37,767 | $42,871 |
| KS | $48,080 | $38,418 | $42,703 |
| CO | $50,390 | $41,160 | $40,599 |
| IA | $43,190 | $35,854 | $40,391 |
| AZ | $48,550 | $40,379 | $39,937 |
| MI | $44,430 | $36,242 | $38,480 |
| WI | $43,300 | $35,690 | $38,337 |
| NH | $47,260 | $40,153 | $38,116 |
| IN | $42,450 | $35,066 | $38,039 |
| MO | $41,890 | $34,807 | $37,932 |
| UT | $44,150 | $35,690 | $37,567 |
| AR | $37,980 | $31,750 | $36,702 |
| MN | $43,400 | $35,549 | $36,120 |
| KY | $39,150 | $32,384 | $35,796 |
| MS | $37,890 | $31,201 | $35,743 |
| ID | $39,200 | $32,453 | $35,497 |
| WY | $37,040 | $31,942 | $35,159 |
| TN | $37,590 | $32,384 | $35,004 |
| MT | $37,440 | $31,260 | $34,639 |
| NC | $39,170 | $32,599 | $34,629 |
| VT | $40,110 | $33,321 | $34,481 |
| OH | $37,020 | $31,624 | $34,444 |
| WV | $36,870 | $30,861 | $34,377 |
| OK | $36,300 | $30,214 | $34,223 |
| WA | $43,010 | $36,739 | $33,841 |
| NV | $37,920 | $32,649 | $33,665 |
| GA | $39,330 | $32,418 | $33,525 |
| IL | $40,690 | $33,005 | $33,387 |
| ME | $39,170 | $32,292 | $33,257 |
| TX | $35,890 | $31,018 | $31,919 |
| SC | $34,790 | $29,740 | $31,918 |
| AK | $37,180 | $32,054 | $31,514 |
| PA | $36,480 | $30,372 | $31,151 |
| RI | $37,740 | $31,509 | $31,070 |
| HI | $40,260 | $32,863 | $30,258 |
| NM | $31,240 | $26,890 | $29,751 |
| VA | $36,170 | $29,923 | $29,701 |
| DE | $35,500 | $29,301 | $29,521 |
| AL | $31,080 | $25,853 | $28,735 |
| NY | $37,330 | $30,756 | $28,577 |
| CT | $34,780 | $29,261 | $28,220 |
| MA | $36,570 | $30,055 | $27,768 |
| CA | $36,570 | $30,966 | $27,505 |
| NJ | $34,930 | $29,722 | $27,298 |
| LA | $27,850 | $24,095 | $27,274 |
| OR | $36,060 | $28,549 | $27,262 |
| MD | $32,950 | $27,454 | $26,407 |
| FL | $31,160 | $27,217 | $26,309 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $38,300, 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 Colorado, at $41,160.
- 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 — Florida anchors the bottom at $26,309. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers, with a national value of $38,300. 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 meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers 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 $41,160, which leads in Colorado.
- Real-terms figures for meat, poultry, and fish cutters and trimmers 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.