Miscellaneous Assemblers and Fabricators
What the pay figures show
- A job board will not tell you this about this job. The best headline number is the District of Columbia, at $50,330. State taxes differ, so Alaska leaves you more. Prices differ too, so Iowa leaves you better off again — $45,332 once levelled out. Moving for the biggest salary can leave you worse off.
- Wage data for miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators places the District of Columbia first at $50,330. That position is not robust: state income tax alone reorders it to Alaska, and regional price parity reorders it again to Iowa at $45,332. Because published comparisons almost universally stop at the nominal median, the state that appears best for this occupation is routinely not the state where a worker's income goes furthest.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$44,650
People doing it
1,405,030
Highest paid
$50,330
DC
Best off, really
$45,332
IA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$33,280
Highest tenth
$64,880
Lowest, really
$29,213
NJ
States with data
51
National average
$46,660
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.77%
IA, 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 $29,213 and $45,332. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Set the geography aside for a moment. The striking thing about this job is how many people do it: 1,405,030. When the numbers on this page move, they move for a great many households at once.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $44,650 in the middle.
- Wages for miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $29,213 to $45,332. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators is 1,405,030, placing it among the largest occupations by headcount. Policy changes touching this occupation's effective tax or its regional wage structure therefore have unusually broad incidence.
- 51 jurisdictions report miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Miscellaneous Assemblers and Fabricators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $33,280 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $44,650 |
| Top tenth earn over | $64,880 |
| This salary | $44,650 |
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 Miscellaneous Assemblers and Fabricators
The national median for this job
$44,650around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $33,280 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $44,650 |
| Top tenth | $64,880 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Miscellaneous Assemblers and Fabricators, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $36,990 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $50,330 |
| Spread | $13,340 |
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 | $38,320 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $39,434 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IA | $48,920 | $40,240 | $45,332 |
| ND | $47,250 | $40,145 | $45,325 |
| KY | $47,950 | $39,147 | $43,272 |
| NV | $49,050 | $41,592 | $42,887 |
| LA | $45,070 | $37,428 | $42,366 |
| SD | $43,240 | $36,923 | $41,913 |
| OH | $45,720 | $38,375 | $41,797 |
| MO | $46,480 | $38,279 | $41,716 |
| NE | $45,470 | $37,350 | $41,327 |
| AK | $49,390 | $41,865 | $41,159 |
| TN | $44,630 | $38,040 | $41,118 |
| MT | $44,940 | $36,934 | $40,927 |
| SC | $45,500 | $38,038 | $40,823 |
| IN | $45,550 | $37,465 | $40,642 |
| KS | $45,220 | $36,280 | $40,326 |
| WI | $45,670 | $37,478 | $40,257 |
| ID | $44,210 | $36,213 | $39,609 |
| MN | $46,920 | $38,189 | $38,803 |
| MI | $44,690 | $36,440 | $38,690 |
| AL | $42,700 | $34,667 | $38,531 |
| ME | $45,970 | $37,334 | $38,450 |
| WY | $40,720 | $34,899 | $38,414 |
| OK | $40,600 | $33,476 | $37,917 |
| NH | $46,940 | $39,896 | $37,872 |
| WA | $48,260 | $40,957 | $37,727 |
| VT | $43,980 | $36,301 | $37,565 |
| UT | $44,040 | $35,606 | $37,480 |
| CO | $46,150 | $37,939 | $37,422 |
| AZ | $45,080 | $37,677 | $37,265 |
| PA | $44,160 | $36,307 | $37,238 |
| WV | $39,850 | $33,161 | $36,939 |
| DC | $50,330 | $40,766 | $36,791 |
| MS | $39,070 | $32,102 | $36,775 |
| NM | $39,340 | $33,065 | $36,582 |
| HI | $49,630 | $39,718 | $36,570 |
| VA | $44,900 | $36,436 | $36,165 |
| IL | $44,140 | $35,606 | $36,019 |
| AR | $36,990 | $30,991 | $35,825 |
| DE | $43,770 | $35,487 | $35,754 |
| NC | $40,330 | $33,485 | $35,569 |
| MD | $45,450 | $36,904 | $35,496 |
| CT | $45,170 | $36,691 | $35,386 |
| CA | $47,720 | $39,467 | $35,057 |
| MA | $46,720 | $37,704 | $34,834 |
| OR | $46,910 | $36,318 | $34,680 |
| TX | $38,320 | $32,970 | $33,929 |
| NY | $44,580 | $36,190 | $33,625 |
| RI | $40,590 | $33,692 | $33,223 |
| GA | $38,310 | $31,649 | $32,730 |
| FL | $38,410 | $33,042 | $31,940 |
| NJ | $37,620 | $31,808 | $29,213 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $44,650, 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 Alaska, at $41,865.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — New Jersey sits at the bottom on $29,213.
- These are distribution medians for miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators, with a national value of $44,650. 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 miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators 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 $41,865, which leads in Alaska.
- The price deflation applied to miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is New Jersey at $29,213. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New Jersey anchors the bottom at $29,213 — and the two source series are dated independently.