Museum Technicians and Conservators
What the pay figures show
- Maryland comes first for this job on every measure. $76,900 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $57,365 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For museum technicians and conservators, Maryland's $76,900 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $57,365. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$51,440
People doing it
12,310
Highest paid
$76,900
MD
Best off, really
$57,365
MD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$33,780
Highest tenth
$87,530
Lowest, really
$30,197
HI
States with data
45
National average
$57,410
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
103.97%
MD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $30,197 to $57,365.
- This is a small job: about 12,310 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 45 jurisdictions, averaging $51,440 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Maryland leads the published set.
- Interstate variation in museum technicians and conservators pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $30,197 to $57,365, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 12,310 workers, museum technicians and conservators is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- Coverage for museum technicians and conservators runs to 45 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Museum Technicians and Conservators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $33,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $51,440 |
| Top tenth earn over | $87,530 |
| This salary | $51,440 |
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 Museum Technicians and Conservators
The national median for this job
$51,440around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $33,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $51,440 |
| Top tenth | $87,530 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Museum Technicians and Conservators, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $32,350 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Maryland · $76,900 |
| Spread | $44,550 |
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 | $45,880 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $47,214 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MD | $76,900 | $59,640 | $57,365 |
| NY | $74,550 | $57,847 | $53,748 |
| DC | $76,110 | $58,873 | $53,132 |
| WY | $56,420 | $47,513 | $52,300 |
| NM | $56,670 | $46,217 | $51,132 |
| AK | $60,840 | $51,065 | $50,204 |
| NV | $56,470 | $47,554 | $49,034 |
| IA | $51,740 | $42,399 | $47,764 |
| CT | $62,030 | $49,359 | $47,603 |
| WA | $59,610 | $50,077 | $46,127 |
| IL | $56,720 | $45,092 | $45,614 |
| KY | $49,940 | $40,676 | $44,962 |
| RI | $55,470 | $45,090 | $44,462 |
| OK | $48,090 | $39,157 | $44,352 |
| CA | $61,550 | $49,750 | $44,190 |
| MO | $49,170 | $40,314 | $43,934 |
| FL | $53,460 | $45,135 | $43,629 |
| OH | $47,570 | $39,811 | $43,361 |
| MA | $58,530 | $46,602 | $43,055 |
| CO | $51,990 | $42,375 | $41,797 |
| VA | $52,190 | $41,874 | $41,563 |
| IN | $46,490 | $38,193 | $41,431 |
| GA | $49,270 | $39,909 | $41,271 |
| KS | $46,320 | $37,102 | $41,241 |
| MN | $50,140 | $40,581 | $41,234 |
| TN | $44,710 | $38,104 | $41,187 |
| ME | $48,460 | $39,167 | $40,338 |
| TX | $45,880 | $39,045 | $40,180 |
| AR | $41,280 | $34,280 | $39,626 |
| PA | $47,150 | $38,618 | $39,608 |
| ID | $43,520 | $35,695 | $39,043 |
| MT | $42,390 | $35,005 | $38,789 |
| AZ | $46,650 | $38,900 | $38,474 |
| NE | $41,960 | $34,689 | $38,383 |
| SC | $38,290 | $32,483 | $34,861 |
| AL | $38,350 | $31,363 | $34,859 |
| NC | $39,290 | $32,691 | $34,726 |
| WI | $38,840 | $32,327 | $34,723 |
| MI | $39,000 | $32,110 | $34,093 |
| OR | $45,820 | $35,537 | $33,935 |
| NJ | $43,780 | $36,486 | $33,509 |
| DE | $38,080 | $31,231 | $31,466 |
| LA | $32,350 | $27,589 | $31,229 |
| UT | $35,430 | $29,071 | $30,601 |
| HI | $40,170 | $32,797 | $30,197 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $51,440, 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.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. 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, Maryland keeps the most at $59,640.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Hawaii, on $30,197.
- These are distribution medians for museum technicians and conservators, with a national value of $51,440. 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.
- The household modeled for museum technicians and conservators 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 Maryland retains the most, $59,640. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for museum technicians and conservators rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $30,197. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.