Mobile Heavy Equipment Mechanics, Except Engines
What the pay figures show
- Alaska pays this job the most, $82,670. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and North Dakota wins, at $70,105. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines, Alaska leads both nominally at $82,670 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts North Dakota first at $70,105. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$65,510
People doing it
176,600
Highest paid
$82,670
AK
Best off, really
$70,105
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$46,820
Highest tenth
$94,460
Lowest, really
$48,758
NY
States with data
51
National average
$69,240
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 $48,758 and $70,105. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 176,600 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $65,510. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $65,510. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $48,758 to $70,105. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines is 176,600 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Mobile Heavy Equipment Mechanics, Except Engines
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $46,820 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $65,510 |
| Top tenth earn over | $94,460 |
| This salary | $65,510 |
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 Mobile Heavy Equipment Mechanics, Except Engines
The national median for this job
$65,510around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $46,820 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $65,510 |
| Top tenth | $94,460 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Mobile Heavy Equipment Mechanics, Except Engines, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $56,810 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $82,670 |
| Spread | $25,860 |
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 | $61,940 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $63,741 |
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 | $76,030 | $62,094 | $70,105 |
| NV | $79,860 | $65,012 | $67,036 |
| WY | $73,200 | $60,326 | $66,403 |
| AK | $82,670 | $66,988 | $65,859 |
| MT | $72,560 | $57,137 | $63,314 |
| SD | $66,730 | $55,775 | $63,312 |
| MN | $79,370 | $60,793 | $61,771 |
| WA | $78,620 | $64,139 | $59,081 |
| IA | $64,290 | $52,006 | $58,587 |
| CT | $78,190 | $60,286 | $58,141 |
| NE | $65,150 | $52,267 | $57,833 |
| LA | $62,260 | $50,724 | $57,416 |
| NM | $63,630 | $51,482 | $56,958 |
| AR | $60,530 | $49,035 | $56,682 |
| OH | $63,200 | $51,940 | $56,572 |
| ID | $64,830 | $51,688 | $56,536 |
| MI | $66,680 | $53,156 | $56,439 |
| AL | $63,850 | $50,730 | $56,386 |
| IN | $64,200 | $51,900 | $56,301 |
| IL | $71,370 | $55,651 | $56,295 |
| WI | $65,450 | $52,338 | $56,219 |
| CO | $71,830 | $56,910 | $56,135 |
| TN | $61,880 | $51,901 | $56,100 |
| NJ | $78,180 | $61,040 | $56,060 |
| MO | $63,390 | $51,072 | $55,657 |
| HI | $79,170 | $59,952 | $55,200 |
| NC | $64,080 | $51,620 | $54,834 |
| MA | $76,070 | $58,862 | $54,382 |
| NH | $68,570 | $57,069 | $54,173 |
| CA | $78,550 | $60,877 | $54,074 |
| RI | $68,130 | $54,625 | $53,864 |
| MS | $58,180 | $46,692 | $53,490 |
| TX | $61,940 | $51,949 | $53,459 |
| KS | $60,890 | $47,996 | $53,350 |
| VT | $64,020 | $51,505 | $53,299 |
| DE | $67,010 | $52,780 | $53,177 |
| UT | $63,580 | $50,437 | $53,091 |
| OK | $58,130 | $46,772 | $52,978 |
| OR | $74,740 | $55,420 | $52,922 |
| PA | $63,870 | $51,539 | $52,860 |
| KY | $59,220 | $47,808 | $52,845 |
| AZ | $64,980 | $53,169 | $52,588 |
| MD | $68,250 | $53,966 | $51,907 |
| SC | $59,180 | $48,123 | $51,647 |
| FL | $63,550 | $53,242 | $51,466 |
| WV | $56,810 | $46,095 | $51,347 |
| VA | $63,950 | $50,647 | $50,271 |
| GA | $60,560 | $48,417 | $50,070 |
| DC | $70,780 | $55,470 | $50,061 |
| ME | $61,280 | $48,602 | $50,055 |
| NY | $66,310 | $52,476 | $48,758 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $65,510, 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.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Alaska, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $66,988.
- 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 — New York anchors the bottom at $48,758. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines, with a national value of $65,510. 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.
- Take-home calculations for mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $66,988, in Alaska. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for mobile heavy equipment mechanics, except engines 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.