Pest Control Workers
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for pest control workers is Washington, at $51,300. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and South Dakota comes out ahead, worth $48,006. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for pest control workers: Washington leads at $51,300 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting South Dakota to $48,006 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
$45,250
People doing it
102,620
Highest paid
$51,300
WA
Best off, really
$48,006
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,680
Highest tenth
$61,890
Lowest, really
$32,379
GA
States with data
50
National average
$46,400
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, 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 $32,379 and $48,006. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 102,620 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $45,250. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $45,250 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Washington leads the published set.
- Wages for pest control workers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $32,379 to $48,006. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in pest control workers is 102,620 — 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 pest control workers runs to 50 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: Pest Control Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,680 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $45,250 |
| Top tenth earn over | $61,890 |
| This salary | $45,250 |
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 Pest Control Workers
The national median for this job
$45,250around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,680 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $45,250 |
| Top tenth | $61,890 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Pest Control Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $37,070 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $51,300 |
| Spread | $14,230 |
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 | $37,660 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $38,755 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $49,920 | $42,291 | $48,006 |
| ND | $48,020 | $40,764 | $46,024 |
| NV | $49,240 | $41,744 | $43,044 |
| IA | $45,290 | $37,461 | $42,202 |
| LA | $44,570 | $37,041 | $41,928 |
| WY | $44,500 | $37,936 | $41,757 |
| ME | $48,340 | $39,078 | $40,247 |
| WI | $45,350 | $37,236 | $39,997 |
| WA | $51,300 | $43,400 | $39,977 |
| VT | $46,320 | $38,103 | $39,429 |
| CO | $48,650 | $39,838 | $39,295 |
| AK | $46,900 | $39,864 | $39,192 |
| NC | $44,740 | $36,852 | $39,147 |
| SC | $43,130 | $36,258 | $38,913 |
| NH | $48,000 | $40,748 | $38,681 |
| MO | $42,690 | $35,412 | $38,591 |
| MI | $44,470 | $36,272 | $38,512 |
| KY | $42,310 | $34,813 | $38,481 |
| PA | $45,720 | $37,512 | $38,474 |
| MT | $41,730 | $34,505 | $38,236 |
| CT | $49,010 | $39,604 | $38,195 |
| UT | $44,740 | $36,138 | $38,039 |
| IL | $46,450 | $37,348 | $37,781 |
| OH | $40,110 | $34,022 | $37,056 |
| NJ | $48,780 | $40,227 | $36,946 |
| VA | $45,950 | $37,219 | $36,943 |
| DE | $45,300 | $36,631 | $36,907 |
| MD | $47,360 | $38,348 | $36,885 |
| TN | $39,690 | $34,071 | $36,827 |
| AZ | $44,430 | $37,171 | $36,765 |
| OK | $39,050 | $32,300 | $36,586 |
| RI | $45,030 | $37,093 | $36,577 |
| FL | $44,320 | $37,791 | $36,530 |
| AR | $37,710 | $31,543 | $36,463 |
| NY | $48,530 | $39,150 | $36,376 |
| ID | $40,220 | $33,218 | $36,334 |
| NE | $38,960 | $32,415 | $35,867 |
| HI | $48,570 | $38,943 | $35,856 |
| MS | $37,200 | $30,674 | $35,140 |
| WV | $37,510 | $31,355 | $34,927 |
| AL | $38,410 | $31,408 | $34,910 |
| KS | $38,690 | $31,397 | $34,899 |
| IN | $38,600 | $32,086 | $34,806 |
| MN | $41,640 | $34,229 | $34,779 |
| CA | $47,190 | $39,073 | $34,707 |
| NM | $37,070 | $31,339 | $34,672 |
| OR | $46,570 | $36,074 | $34,448 |
| MA | $45,560 | $36,829 | $34,026 |
| TX | $37,660 | $32,440 | $33,383 |
| GA | $37,860 | $31,310 | $32,379 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for pest control workers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $45,250, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for pest control workers, 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 Washington, at $43,400.
- The price adjustment for pest control workers 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 — Georgia anchors the bottom at $32,379. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for pest control workers, with a national value of $45,250. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for pest control workers 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 $43,400, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for pest control workers 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.