Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Alaska pays this job best, at $74,710. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $60,353 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for motor vehicle operators, all other is also the real leader: Alaska at $74,710, holding through tax and through price deflation to $60,353. 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
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
$37,180
People doing it
46,880
Highest paid
$74,710
AK
Best off, really
$60,353
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$26,540
Highest tenth
$66,500
Lowest, really
$22,714
KY
States with data
51
National average
$42,430
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, 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 $22,714 up to $60,353.
- Only 46,880 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $37,180. Nothing is missing.
- The nominal spread for motor vehicle operators, all other approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $22,714 to $60,353, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in motor vehicle operators, all other is 46,880. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- Coverage for motor vehicle operators, all other is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $26,540 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $37,180 |
| Top tenth earn over | $66,500 |
| This salary | $37,180 |
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 Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other
The national median for this job
$37,180around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $26,540 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $37,180 |
| Top tenth | $66,500 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Motor Vehicle Operators, All Other, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Kentucky · $23,870 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $74,710 |
| Spread | $50,840 |
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 | $36,340 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $37,396 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $74,710 | $61,388 | $60,353 |
| OK | $57,550 | $46,332 | $52,480 |
| SD | $53,790 | $45,400 | $51,536 |
| DC | $69,870 | $54,888 | $49,537 |
| NM | $54,270 | $44,401 | $49,124 |
| UT | $56,140 | $44,790 | $47,147 |
| AL | $52,100 | $41,806 | $46,467 |
| WA | $59,730 | $50,173 | $46,216 |
| AZ | $55,680 | $45,929 | $45,427 |
| WY | $48,530 | $41,174 | $45,322 |
| IA | $48,300 | $39,765 | $44,798 |
| HI | $61,110 | $48,081 | $44,270 |
| KS | $49,880 | $39,764 | $44,199 |
| MS | $46,500 | $37,775 | $43,274 |
| MT | $41,860 | $34,604 | $38,345 |
| NJ | $50,680 | $41,649 | $38,251 |
| ID | $41,190 | $33,946 | $37,130 |
| IL | $44,810 | $36,112 | $36,530 |
| LA | $37,730 | $31,750 | $35,939 |
| AR | $36,090 | $30,302 | $35,027 |
| RI | $42,530 | $35,178 | $34,688 |
| ND | $34,230 | $29,684 | $33,514 |
| CA | $45,050 | $37,440 | $33,256 |
| TX | $36,340 | $31,379 | $32,291 |
| CO | $39,190 | $32,653 | $32,208 |
| DE | $38,790 | $31,762 | $32,001 |
| TN | $33,550 | $29,137 | $31,495 |
| FL | $37,330 | $32,175 | $31,101 |
| NE | $33,280 | $28,106 | $31,099 |
| GA | $36,120 | $29,999 | $31,023 |
| WI | $33,970 | $28,653 | $30,778 |
| MO | $32,330 | $27,575 | $30,051 |
| MI | $33,990 | $28,297 | $30,045 |
| CT | $37,440 | $31,143 | $30,035 |
| WV | $31,790 | $26,939 | $30,009 |
| VA | $36,520 | $30,185 | $29,960 |
| NY | $38,950 | $31,970 | $29,705 |
| MN | $34,670 | $29,001 | $29,468 |
| OH | $31,040 | $26,983 | $29,390 |
| ME | $33,690 | $28,206 | $29,050 |
| PA | $32,790 | $27,520 | $28,226 |
| MD | $35,440 | $29,336 | $28,217 |
| MA | $36,540 | $30,033 | $27,747 |
| OR | $34,870 | $27,697 | $26,448 |
| NC | $29,000 | $24,833 | $26,379 |
| NH | $31,770 | $27,707 | $26,301 |
| SC | $27,840 | $24,281 | $26,059 |
| VT | $29,290 | $24,990 | $25,860 |
| IN | $26,920 | $23,014 | $24,965 |
| NV | $25,290 | $22,436 | $23,135 |
| KY | $23,870 | $20,549 | $22,714 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $37,180.
- 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 $61,388.
- 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 — Kentucky sits at the bottom on $22,714.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for motor vehicle operators, all other, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $37,180, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Take-home calculations for motor vehicle operators, all other 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 $61,388, 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.
- The price deflation applied to motor vehicle operators, all other 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 Kentucky at $22,714. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Kentucky anchors the bottom at $22,714 — and the two source series are dated independently.