Postal Service Mail Carriers
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays postal service mail carriers the most on paper: $64,250. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Nevada in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and South Dakota wins at $57,893. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For postal service mail carriers, the District of Columbia's $64,250 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Nevada; regional price parity then promotes South Dakota, whose $57,893 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
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
$60,550
People doing it
328,820
Highest paid
$64,250
DC
Best off, really
$57,893
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$42,390
Highest tenth
$81,040
Lowest, really
$43,220
OR
States with data
51
National average
$62,540
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, 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 $43,220 and $57,893. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 328,820 people hold this job nationally, earning $60,550 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $60,550, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for postal service mail carriers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $43,220 to $57,893. 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.
- 328,820 are employed nationally in postal service mail carriers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for postal service mail carriers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Postal Service Mail Carriers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $42,390 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $60,550 |
| Top tenth earn over | $81,040 |
| This salary | $60,550 |
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 Postal Service Mail Carriers
The national median for this job
$60,550around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $42,390 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $60,550 |
| Top tenth | $81,040 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Postal Service Mail Carriers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $57,470 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $64,250 |
| Spread | $6,780 |
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 | $60,550 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $62,310 |
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 | $60,760 | $51,001 | $57,893 |
| ND | $59,010 | $49,595 | $55,993 |
| AR | $59,700 | $48,399 | $55,947 |
| WY | $59,880 | $50,294 | $55,360 |
| OH | $61,130 | $50,333 | $54,822 |
| IA | $59,880 | $48,630 | $54,784 |
| LA | $58,910 | $48,133 | $54,483 |
| OK | $59,880 | $48,099 | $54,481 |
| NM | $59,880 | $48,645 | $53,819 |
| NV | $62,070 | $52,053 | $53,674 |
| NE | $59,880 | $48,273 | $53,413 |
| TN | $58,570 | $49,241 | $53,225 |
| MS | $57,470 | $46,150 | $52,869 |
| MO | $59,880 | $48,417 | $52,763 |
| MT | $59,010 | $47,578 | $52,721 |
| IN | $59,880 | $48,557 | $52,674 |
| KY | $58,910 | $47,570 | $52,582 |
| TX | $60,550 | $50,832 | $52,310 |
| WV | $57,700 | $46,773 | $52,102 |
| WI | $59,880 | $48,193 | $51,767 |
| NC | $59,990 | $48,497 | $51,516 |
| KS | $58,540 | $46,239 | $51,397 |
| AL | $57,700 | $46,059 | $51,194 |
| MI | $59,880 | $47,999 | $50,963 |
| ID | $57,820 | $46,427 | $50,782 |
| RI | $63,610 | $51,325 | $50,611 |
| AZ | $62,390 | $51,153 | $50,594 |
| SC | $57,700 | $47,032 | $50,476 |
| UT | $59,880 | $47,629 | $50,135 |
| PA | $59,880 | $48,455 | $49,698 |
| IL | $62,070 | $49,126 | $49,695 |
| FL | $61,130 | $51,298 | $49,586 |
| VT | $59,010 | $47,810 | $49,475 |
| AK | $59,880 | $50,294 | $49,446 |
| VA | $62,070 | $49,245 | $48,879 |
| MN | $59,990 | $47,826 | $48,595 |
| ME | $59,010 | $46,931 | $48,335 |
| DE | $59,880 | $47,537 | $47,895 |
| GA | $57,700 | $46,262 | $47,841 |
| NH | $59,990 | $50,382 | $47,826 |
| CO | $59,880 | $48,367 | $47,708 |
| MD | $62,070 | $49,469 | $47,582 |
| CT | $61,130 | $48,686 | $46,954 |
| WA | $59,990 | $50,382 | $46,408 |
| DC | $64,250 | $51,075 | $46,095 |
| NY | $62,070 | $49,298 | $45,805 |
| MA | $62,070 | $49,270 | $45,520 |
| NJ | $61,130 | $49,468 | $45,433 |
| CA | $62,090 | $50,151 | $44,547 |
| HI | $59,880 | $47,186 | $43,446 |
| OR | $59,400 | $45,261 | $43,220 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for postal service mail carriers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $60,550, 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.
- Take-home figures for postal service mail carriers assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Nevada, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $52,053.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for postal service mail carriers. 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 Oregon, on $43,220.
- These are distribution medians for postal service mail carriers, with a national value of $60,550. 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.
- Take-home calculations for postal service mail carriers assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $52,053, in Nevada. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for postal service mail carriers 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; Oregon anchors the distribution at $43,220. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.