Painters, Construction and Maintenance
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for painters, construction and maintenance. Best paid: Hawaii, at $68,220. Tax does not change that. Best off: North Dakota, at $52,238 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Hawaii's $68,220 median for painters, construction and maintenance survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: North Dakota takes the top position at $52,238. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$49,400
People doing it
225,190
Highest paid
$68,220
HI
Best off, really
$52,238
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,440
Highest tenth
$78,810
Lowest, really
$33,978
RI
States with data
51
National average
$55,420
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $33,978 and $52,238. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 225,190 people hold this job nationally, earning $49,400 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $49,400. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for painters, construction and maintenance is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $33,978 to $52,238. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 225,190 are employed nationally in painters, construction and maintenance, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for painters, construction and maintenance is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Painters, Construction and Maintenance
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,440 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $49,400 |
| Top tenth earn over | $78,810 |
| This salary | $49,400 |
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 Painters, Construction and Maintenance
The national median for this job
$49,400around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,440 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $49,400 |
| Top tenth | $78,810 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Painters, Construction and Maintenance, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $40,090 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $68,220 |
| Spread | $28,130 |
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 | $45,460 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $46,782 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $54,870 | $46,268 | $52,238 |
| MT | $58,290 | $47,033 | $52,118 |
| MO | $57,510 | $46,624 | $50,809 |
| AK | $60,980 | $51,177 | $50,315 |
| IL | $61,260 | $48,515 | $49,077 |
| NV | $56,390 | $47,489 | $48,968 |
| HI | $68,220 | $53,081 | $48,874 |
| ME | $59,270 | $47,123 | $48,532 |
| DE | $58,530 | $46,527 | $46,877 |
| MN | $57,270 | $45,825 | $46,563 |
| SD | $48,160 | $40,877 | $46,401 |
| WA | $59,650 | $50,109 | $46,157 |
| IA | $49,710 | $40,845 | $46,013 |
| CT | $58,480 | $46,702 | $45,041 |
| OH | $49,450 | $41,270 | $44,950 |
| VT | $53,120 | $43,339 | $44,848 |
| IN | $50,260 | $41,111 | $44,596 |
| WY | $47,220 | $40,121 | $44,163 |
| NJ | $59,250 | $48,062 | $44,141 |
| NY | $59,570 | $47,425 | $44,064 |
| WI | $50,090 | $40,811 | $43,838 |
| PA | $52,120 | $42,458 | $43,547 |
| LA | $46,410 | $38,464 | $43,539 |
| MI | $50,650 | $40,975 | $43,506 |
| KY | $48,110 | $39,270 | $43,408 |
| DC | $59,520 | $47,582 | $42,943 |
| NE | $47,280 | $38,722 | $42,845 |
| CO | $52,970 | $43,119 | $42,531 |
| CA | $59,020 | $47,869 | $42,519 |
| NM | $46,240 | $38,313 | $42,388 |
| MA | $57,510 | $45,834 | $42,345 |
| MS | $44,800 | $36,477 | $41,787 |
| OK | $44,900 | $36,737 | $41,612 |
| WV | $44,230 | $36,518 | $40,679 |
| KS | $45,510 | $36,496 | $40,567 |
| GA | $48,340 | $39,208 | $40,546 |
| ID | $44,880 | $36,716 | $40,159 |
| NH | $49,670 | $42,090 | $39,954 |
| TN | $43,230 | $36,915 | $39,902 |
| TX | $45,460 | $38,707 | $39,832 |
| AZ | $48,250 | $40,145 | $39,706 |
| AL | $43,930 | $35,601 | $39,570 |
| UT | $46,050 | $37,132 | $39,085 |
| FL | $47,530 | $40,370 | $39,023 |
| NC | $44,110 | $36,371 | $38,636 |
| AR | $40,090 | $33,368 | $38,572 |
| MD | $49,120 | $39,678 | $38,165 |
| VA | $47,470 | $38,353 | $38,068 |
| SC | $40,840 | $34,476 | $37,001 |
| OR | $48,900 | $37,743 | $36,041 |
| RI | $41,590 | $34,458 | $33,978 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of painters, construction and maintenance 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 $49,400.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for painters, construction and maintenance, 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 Hawaii, at $53,081.
- The price adjustment for painters, construction and maintenance 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 — Rhode Island anchors the bottom at $33,978. 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 painters, construction and maintenance, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $49,400, 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 painters, construction and maintenance 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 $53,081, which leads in Hawaii.
- Real-terms figures for painters, construction and maintenance 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.