Packers and Packagers, Hand
What the pay figures show
- Where are packers and packagers, hand paid best? Kansas, at $44,460. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and New Jersey is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Kansas wins — the money there behaves like $39,695. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for packers and packagers, hand is Kansas at $44,460, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to New Jersey; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Kansas at $39,695 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$36,280
People doing it
559,820
Highest paid
$44,460
KS
Best off, really
$39,695
KS, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,890
Highest tenth
$47,100
Lowest, really
$24,068
FL
States with data
51
National average
$37,540
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
89.97%
KS, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $24,068 to $39,695. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- 559,820 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $36,280. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $36,280. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in packers and packagers, hand is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $24,068 through $39,695. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- National employment in packers and packagers, hand is 559,820 — 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 packers and packagers, hand is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Packers and Packagers, Hand
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,890 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $36,280 |
| Top tenth earn over | $47,100 |
| This salary | $36,280 |
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 Packers and Packagers, Hand
The national median for this job
$36,280around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,890 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $36,280 |
| Top tenth | $47,100 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Packers and Packagers, Hand, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $27,710 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Kansas · $44,460 |
| Spread | $16,750 |
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 | $33,090 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $34,052 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| KS | $44,460 | $35,711 | $39,695 |
| NE | $38,880 | $32,355 | $35,800 |
| IA | $37,470 | $31,475 | $35,458 |
| AK | $41,670 | $35,662 | $35,061 |
| MO | $37,670 | $31,615 | $34,453 |
| OH | $37,000 | $31,608 | $34,427 |
| VT | $39,440 | $32,805 | $33,947 |
| KY | $36,850 | $30,617 | $33,843 |
| IN | $37,420 | $31,173 | $33,816 |
| MN | $40,310 | $33,231 | $33,766 |
| ID | $36,920 | $30,742 | $33,625 |
| TN | $35,980 | $31,090 | $33,605 |
| NJ | $43,840 | $36,531 | $33,551 |
| CO | $40,730 | $33,823 | $33,362 |
| NV | $37,400 | $32,231 | $33,235 |
| AR | $33,930 | $28,646 | $33,114 |
| OK | $34,520 | $28,864 | $32,694 |
| MT | $34,960 | $29,384 | $32,561 |
| WI | $36,010 | $30,192 | $32,431 |
| MS | $33,240 | $27,651 | $31,676 |
| PA | $36,960 | $30,743 | $31,531 |
| MI | $35,340 | $29,324 | $31,135 |
| UT | $36,060 | $29,550 | $31,104 |
| AZ | $37,060 | $31,434 | $31,090 |
| ME | $36,330 | $30,175 | $31,077 |
| WA | $39,220 | $33,693 | $31,036 |
| ND | $31,440 | $27,442 | $30,983 |
| DE | $37,290 | $30,640 | $30,870 |
| WY | $32,110 | $27,980 | $30,799 |
| NC | $34,360 | $28,926 | $30,727 |
| DC | $40,910 | $33,763 | $30,471 |
| RI | $36,730 | $30,735 | $30,307 |
| IL | $36,090 | $29,537 | $29,879 |
| SC | $32,180 | $27,695 | $29,723 |
| TX | $33,090 | $28,768 | $29,604 |
| AL | $31,770 | $26,375 | $29,316 |
| CT | $35,890 | $30,058 | $28,988 |
| VA | $35,000 | $29,051 | $28,835 |
| GA | $33,260 | $27,844 | $28,794 |
| SD | $28,760 | $25,289 | $28,706 |
| NY | $37,260 | $30,703 | $28,528 |
| MD | $35,860 | $29,654 | $28,523 |
| CA | $37,260 | $31,492 | $27,973 |
| WV | $28,740 | $24,585 | $27,386 |
| OR | $36,190 | $28,642 | $27,351 |
| HI | $35,930 | $29,679 | $27,326 |
| LA | $27,710 | $23,984 | $27,148 |
| NM | $28,070 | $24,436 | $27,035 |
| MA | $34,200 | $28,270 | $26,118 |
| NH | $30,700 | $26,847 | $25,485 |
| FL | $28,280 | $24,899 | $24,068 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for packers and packagers, hand, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $36,280 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for packers and packagers, hand, 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 Jersey, at $36,531.
- The price adjustment for packers and packagers, hand 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 — Florida anchors the bottom at $24,068. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for packers and packagers, hand are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $36,280. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for packers and packagers, hand 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 $36,531, which leads in New Jersey.
- Real-terms figures for packers and packagers, hand 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.