Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Hawaii pays this job best, at $115,860. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $76,398 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for operating engineers and other construction equipment operators is also the real leader: Hawaii at $115,860, holding through tax and through price deflation to $76,398. 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$59,850
People doing it
478,090
Highest paid
$115,860
HI
Best off, really
$76,398
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$42,190
Highest tenth
$101,090
Lowest, really
$40,188
GA
States with data
51
National average
$66,290
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.61%
HI, 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 $40,188 up to $76,398.
- About 478,090 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $59,850. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $59,850, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- The nominal spread for operating engineers and other construction equipment operators approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $40,188 to $76,398, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 478,090 workers, operating engineers and other construction equipment operators sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for operating engineers and other construction equipment operators, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $42,190 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $59,850 |
| Top tenth earn over | $101,090 |
| This salary | $59,850 |
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 Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators
The national median for this job
$59,850around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $42,190 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $59,850 |
| Top tenth | $101,090 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $44,520 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $115,860 |
| Spread | $71,340 |
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 | $50,460 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $51,927 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HI | $115,860 | $82,975 | $76,398 |
| IL | $97,740 | $72,897 | $73,741 |
| IN | $79,580 | $62,496 | $67,795 |
| WI | $75,280 | $58,775 | $63,133 |
| NJ | $89,660 | $68,384 | $62,805 |
| AK | $77,810 | $63,569 | $62,497 |
| MN | $79,130 | $60,641 | $61,616 |
| WA | $81,700 | $66,306 | $61,077 |
| NV | $71,410 | $59,067 | $60,906 |
| ND | $62,150 | $52,118 | $58,842 |
| CA | $87,160 | $66,133 | $58,743 |
| CT | $78,750 | $60,649 | $58,492 |
| WY | $62,960 | $52,768 | $58,084 |
| OH | $64,940 | $53,290 | $58,042 |
| NY | $80,980 | $62,024 | $57,629 |
| SD | $59,500 | $49,988 | $56,744 |
| IA | $60,330 | $48,974 | $55,172 |
| MT | $61,580 | $49,522 | $54,876 |
| MA | $76,820 | $59,352 | $54,835 |
| ID | $61,680 | $49,324 | $53,950 |
| MO | $60,540 | $48,916 | $53,307 |
| MI | $62,690 | $50,138 | $53,234 |
| DC | $74,610 | $57,915 | $52,268 |
| OR | $73,430 | $54,613 | $52,151 |
| NE | $58,360 | $47,120 | $52,138 |
| KY | $57,780 | $46,702 | $51,622 |
| UT | $60,740 | $48,282 | $50,822 |
| RI | $63,610 | $51,325 | $50,611 |
| PA | $60,530 | $48,958 | $50,213 |
| CO | $62,620 | $50,448 | $49,761 |
| NH | $62,200 | $52,158 | $49,511 |
| VT | $58,870 | $47,707 | $49,368 |
| AZ | $60,620 | $49,775 | $49,231 |
| LA | $51,700 | $42,556 | $48,170 |
| TN | $52,000 | $43,962 | $47,519 |
| NM | $52,000 | $42,684 | $47,224 |
| MD | $61,410 | $48,970 | $47,102 |
| WV | $51,300 | $41,901 | $46,674 |
| DE | $58,020 | $46,146 | $46,493 |
| ME | $56,140 | $44,819 | $46,159 |
| KS | $51,620 | $41,065 | $45,645 |
| VA | $57,160 | $45,582 | $45,243 |
| OK | $47,970 | $39,066 | $44,249 |
| MS | $47,410 | $38,470 | $44,070 |
| TX | $50,460 | $42,725 | $43,967 |
| SC | $48,940 | $40,574 | $43,546 |
| NC | $49,310 | $40,342 | $42,853 |
| AL | $47,520 | $38,327 | $42,600 |
| AR | $44,520 | $36,763 | $42,497 |
| FL | $49,400 | $41,873 | $40,476 |
| GA | $47,880 | $38,861 | $40,188 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $59,850, 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, Hawaii keeps the most at $82,975.
- 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 — Georgia sits at the bottom on $40,188.
- These are distribution medians for operating engineers and other construction equipment operators, with a national value of $59,850. 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 operating engineers and other construction equipment operators 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 Hawaii retains the most, $82,975. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to operating engineers and other construction equipment operators 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 Georgia at $40,188. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Georgia anchors the bottom at $40,188 — and the two source series are dated independently.