Mechanical Engineers
What the pay figures show
- New Mexico pays mechanical engineers the most, at $157,710. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $124,648 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- New Mexico leads for mechanical engineers at $157,710 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $124,648 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
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
$104,110
People doing it
296,810
Highest paid
$157,710
NM
Best off, really
$124,648
NM, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$73,990
Highest tenth
$164,340
Lowest, really
$66,507
HI
States with data
51
National average
$113,610
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.39%
NM, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $66,507 up to $124,648.
- About 296,810 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $104,110. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $104,110. Nothing is missing.
- The nominal spread for mechanical engineers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $66,507 to $124,648, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 296,810 workers, mechanical engineers 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.
- Coverage for mechanical engineers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Mechanical Engineers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $73,990 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $104,110 |
| Top tenth earn over | $164,340 |
| This salary | $104,110 |
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 Mechanical Engineers
The national median for this job
$104,110around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $73,990 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $104,110 |
| Top tenth | $164,340 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Mechanical Engineers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $80,180 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Mexico · $157,710 |
| Spread | $77,530 |
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 | $112,410 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $115,678 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | $157,710 | $112,664 | $124,648 |
| LA | $119,540 | $89,726 | $101,564 |
| WY | $117,750 | $91,667 | $100,902 |
| AK | $124,340 | $96,252 | $94,629 |
| TX | $112,410 | $87,910 | $90,466 |
| DE | $125,130 | $89,765 | $90,440 |
| CO | $124,430 | $91,547 | $90,299 |
| OK | $101,850 | $76,399 | $86,535 |
| MD | $122,870 | $89,654 | $86,235 |
| TN | $99,550 | $78,863 | $85,244 |
| RI | $116,230 | $86,429 | $85,226 |
| DC | $133,300 | $94,015 | $84,848 |
| MS | $98,000 | $73,945 | $84,710 |
| KY | $101,050 | $76,500 | $84,560 |
| IA | $97,700 | $74,461 | $83,884 |
| SC | $104,580 | $77,919 | $83,625 |
| NV | $102,680 | $81,065 | $83,590 |
| AL | $100,230 | $75,156 | $83,535 |
| OH | $99,100 | $76,538 | $83,364 |
| MI | $104,890 | $78,413 | $83,255 |
| IN | $99,590 | $75,983 | $82,426 |
| CA | $130,900 | $92,654 | $82,300 |
| WV | $97,390 | $73,773 | $82,178 |
| VT | $107,330 | $79,363 | $82,127 |
| MO | $99,330 | $74,977 | $81,709 |
| NC | $100,720 | $76,177 | $80,919 |
| SD | $88,380 | $71,005 | $80,601 |
| MA | $119,300 | $87,113 | $80,482 |
| UT | $102,500 | $76,378 | $80,396 |
| WA | $110,430 | $86,518 | $79,694 |
| MT | $94,190 | $71,132 | $78,822 |
| ND | $86,330 | $69,139 | $78,060 |
| GA | $100,620 | $75,194 | $77,761 |
| NH | $103,660 | $81,755 | $77,607 |
| ME | $102,430 | $75,208 | $77,457 |
| WI | $95,870 | $72,038 | $77,379 |
| IL | $102,680 | $76,128 | $77,009 |
| ID | $93,190 | $70,303 | $76,897 |
| PA | $97,920 | $74,711 | $76,626 |
| FL | $99,980 | $79,166 | $76,524 |
| AZ | $100,270 | $77,266 | $76,421 |
| VA | $104,180 | $76,891 | $76,319 |
| NJ | $112,300 | $82,869 | $76,109 |
| CT | $105,090 | $77,705 | $74,941 |
| NE | $88,060 | $67,477 | $74,663 |
| MN | $99,140 | $73,357 | $74,537 |
| AR | $80,180 | $62,729 | $72,512 |
| KS | $86,260 | $64,989 | $72,238 |
| NY | $102,440 | $75,893 | $70,515 |
| OR | $103,470 | $73,118 | $69,821 |
| HI | $98,740 | $72,233 | $66,507 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for mechanical engineers, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $104,110 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 mechanical engineers. 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, New Mexico keeps the most at $112,664.
- The price adjustment for mechanical engineers 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 — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $66,507. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for mechanical engineers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $104,110. 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 mechanical engineers 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 New Mexico retains the most, $112,664. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for mechanical engineers 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.