Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: the District of Columbia, at $66,750. Tax does not change that. Best off: South Dakota, at $58,632 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- The District of Columbia's $66,750 median for postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: South Dakota takes the top position at $58,632. 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
$58,470
People doing it
105,200
Highest paid
$66,750
DC
Best off, really
$58,632
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$45,530
Highest tenth
$75,280
Lowest, really
$42,188
OR
States with data
51
National average
$59,430
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, 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 $42,188 to $58,632. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- About 105,200 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $58,470. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $58,470. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $42,188 through $58,632. 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.
- With 105,200 workers, postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine 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.
- Coverage for postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $45,530 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,470 |
| Top tenth earn over | $75,280 |
| This salary | $58,470 |
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 Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators
The national median for this job
$58,470around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $45,530 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,470 |
| Top tenth | $75,280 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Indiana · $48,880 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $66,750 |
| Spread | $17,870 |
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 | $56,390 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $58,029 |
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 | $61,570 | $51,651 | $58,632 |
| ND | $59,840 | $50,261 | $56,746 |
| WY | $60,530 | $50,816 | $55,935 |
| IA | $60,530 | $49,128 | $55,344 |
| AR | $58,470 | $47,456 | $54,857 |
| LA | $58,470 | $47,793 | $54,098 |
| OK | $58,470 | $47,030 | $53,270 |
| MS | $57,800 | $46,402 | $53,158 |
| NE | $59,490 | $47,977 | $53,086 |
| WV | $58,470 | $47,359 | $52,755 |
| NM | $58,470 | $47,578 | $52,639 |
| OH | $58,470 | $48,269 | $52,574 |
| MT | $57,430 | $46,382 | $51,397 |
| TN | $56,390 | $47,489 | $51,332 |
| KY | $57,430 | $46,433 | $51,325 |
| SC | $58,390 | $47,541 | $51,022 |
| AL | $57,430 | $45,854 | $50,966 |
| MO | $57,430 | $46,563 | $50,743 |
| NV | $58,470 | $49,161 | $50,692 |
| MI | $59,490 | $47,703 | $50,648 |
| WI | $58,470 | $47,132 | $50,627 |
| ID | $57,430 | $46,135 | $50,462 |
| VT | $59,490 | $48,164 | $49,841 |
| TX | $56,390 | $47,489 | $48,870 |
| ME | $59,490 | $47,285 | $48,698 |
| MN | $59,740 | $47,642 | $48,408 |
| UT | $57,430 | $45,769 | $48,177 |
| KS | $54,540 | $43,248 | $48,072 |
| PA | $57,430 | $46,562 | $47,756 |
| NC | $55,350 | $44,954 | $47,753 |
| DC | $66,750 | $52,896 | $47,739 |
| RI | $59,490 | $48,169 | $47,499 |
| DE | $58,470 | $46,482 | $46,832 |
| IL | $58,300 | $46,283 | $46,819 |
| FL | $57,430 | $48,325 | $46,712 |
| CO | $58,470 | $47,296 | $46,652 |
| NH | $58,300 | $49,024 | $46,537 |
| VA | $58,300 | $46,432 | $46,087 |
| WA | $59,490 | $49,980 | $46,038 |
| AK | $55,350 | $46,654 | $45,867 |
| AZ | $55,350 | $45,672 | $45,173 |
| CT | $58,470 | $46,695 | $45,034 |
| NJ | $60,530 | $49,019 | $45,020 |
| MD | $58,470 | $46,747 | $44,964 |
| GA | $53,290 | $42,938 | $44,404 |
| IN | $48,880 | $40,043 | $43,438 |
| NY | $58,470 | $46,600 | $43,298 |
| HI | $59,490 | $46,902 | $43,184 |
| MA | $58,470 | $46,557 | $43,014 |
| CA | $59,490 | $48,218 | $42,830 |
| OR | $57,890 | $44,179 | $42,188 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $58,470, 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 this job, 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 the District of Columbia, at $52,896.
- The price adjustment for this job 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 — Oregon anchors the bottom at $42,188. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators, with a national value of $58,470. 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 postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators 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 $52,896, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms figures for postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators 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.