Motorcycle Mechanics
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for motorcycle mechanics is New Hampshire, at $62,890. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and Nevada comes out ahead, worth $52,332. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for motorcycle mechanics: New Hampshire leads at $62,890 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting Nevada to $52,332 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$48,580
People doing it
13,510
Highest paid
$62,890
NH
Best off, really
$52,332
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,770
Highest tenth
$74,400
Lowest, really
$34,104
IL
States with data
45
National average
$52,370
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, 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 $34,104 and $52,332. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Only 13,510 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 45 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $48,580. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, New Hampshire pays most.
- Wages for motorcycle mechanics cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $34,104 to $52,332. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in motorcycle mechanics is 13,510. ⚠️ 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.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for motorcycle mechanics in 45 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: Motorcycle Mechanics
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,770 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $48,580 |
| Top tenth earn over | $74,400 |
| This salary | $48,580 |
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 Motorcycle Mechanics
The national median for this job
$48,580around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,770 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $48,580 |
| Top tenth | $74,400 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Motorcycle Mechanics, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $37,450 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Hampshire · $62,890 |
| Spread | $25,440 |
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 | $53,330 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $54,880 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $60,450 | $50,752 | $52,332 |
| NH | $62,890 | $52,712 | $50,038 |
| ND | $50,170 | $42,492 | $47,974 |
| MN | $58,280 | $46,568 | $47,317 |
| TX | $53,330 | $45,031 | $46,340 |
| SC | $52,160 | $42,948 | $46,093 |
| CO | $56,850 | $46,066 | $45,438 |
| NE | $50,170 | $40,912 | $45,269 |
| AR | $47,350 | $38,932 | $45,004 |
| SD | $46,490 | $39,535 | $44,877 |
| MD | $57,640 | $46,119 | $44,361 |
| NJ | $59,430 | $48,196 | $44,264 |
| KY | $48,220 | $39,355 | $43,501 |
| TN | $47,300 | $40,186 | $43,437 |
| MT | $47,130 | $38,591 | $42,762 |
| NM | $46,610 | $38,594 | $42,699 |
| MS | $45,710 | $37,172 | $42,583 |
| NC | $48,670 | $39,853 | $42,334 |
| WI | $48,190 | $39,378 | $42,298 |
| OR | $58,040 | $44,287 | $42,290 |
| PA | $50,050 | $40,859 | $41,906 |
| IA | $44,840 | $37,117 | $41,814 |
| VT | $48,970 | $40,143 | $41,541 |
| OK | $44,740 | $36,616 | $41,474 |
| CA | $57,040 | $46,397 | $41,212 |
| NY | $54,770 | $43,827 | $40,722 |
| OH | $44,280 | $37,258 | $40,580 |
| IN | $45,470 | $37,403 | $40,575 |
| WA | $51,970 | $43,938 | $40,473 |
| CT | $51,970 | $41,830 | $40,341 |
| ME | $48,380 | $39,108 | $40,277 |
| FL | $48,700 | $41,310 | $39,932 |
| VA | $49,400 | $39,793 | $39,497 |
| ID | $43,470 | $35,658 | $39,002 |
| AL | $42,670 | $34,644 | $38,506 |
| AK | $45,500 | $38,739 | $38,086 |
| WY | $39,520 | $33,934 | $37,353 |
| UT | $43,820 | $35,439 | $37,304 |
| AZ | $44,190 | $36,984 | $36,580 |
| GA | $43,050 | $35,221 | $36,424 |
| MA | $48,940 | $39,376 | $36,379 |
| MI | $40,100 | $32,947 | $34,981 |
| WV | $37,450 | $31,308 | $34,875 |
| HI | $46,390 | $37,348 | $34,387 |
| IL | $41,630 | $33,714 | $34,104 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of motorcycle mechanics 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 $48,580.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for motorcycle mechanics, 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 New Hampshire, at $52,712.
- The price adjustment for motorcycle mechanics 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 — Illinois anchors the bottom at $34,104. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for motorcycle mechanics, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $48,580, 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.
- Retained-pay figures for motorcycle mechanics 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 $52,712, which leads in New Hampshire.
- Real-terms figures for motorcycle mechanics 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.