Prepress Technicians and Workers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. The District of Columbia pays prepress technicians and workers best, at $100,980. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $67,014 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for prepress technicians and workers is also the real leader: the District of Columbia at $100,980, holding through tax and through price deflation to $67,014. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$48,690
People doing it
23,840
Highest paid
$100,980
DC
Best off, really
$67,014
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,810
Highest tenth
$66,080
Lowest, really
$32,050
AL
States with data
45
National average
$50,800
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $32,050 to $67,014.
- Just 23,840 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 45 jurisdictions, averaging $48,690 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. The District of Columbia leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in prepress technicians and workers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $32,050 to $67,014 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 23,840 are employed nationally in prepress technicians and workers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- Coverage for prepress technicians and workers runs to 45 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: Prepress Technicians and Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,810 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $48,690 |
| Top tenth earn over | $66,080 |
| This salary | $48,690 |
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 Prepress Technicians and Workers
The national median for this job
$48,690around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,810 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $48,690 |
| Top tenth | $66,080 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Prepress Technicians and Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $35,020 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $100,980 |
| Spread | $65,960 |
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 | $38,410 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $39,527 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $100,980 | $74,255 | $67,014 |
| AR | $52,800 | $43,110 | $49,833 |
| NV | $55,680 | $46,919 | $48,380 |
| VT | $55,880 | $45,464 | $47,047 |
| MT | $51,910 | $42,207 | $46,769 |
| MD | $60,770 | $48,486 | $46,637 |
| SD | $46,370 | $39,438 | $44,768 |
| IA | $47,770 | $39,360 | $44,340 |
| TN | $47,790 | $40,579 | $43,862 |
| IN | $49,050 | $40,174 | $43,580 |
| OH | $47,810 | $39,997 | $43,564 |
| NC | $49,760 | $40,685 | $43,218 |
| NJ | $56,840 | $46,258 | $42,484 |
| WI | $48,410 | $39,544 | $42,477 |
| OK | $45,730 | $37,367 | $42,325 |
| MA | $57,250 | $45,638 | $42,164 |
| ID | $47,220 | $38,472 | $42,080 |
| GA | $50,280 | $40,670 | $42,058 |
| WA | $53,770 | $45,384 | $41,805 |
| CO | $51,730 | $42,177 | $41,602 |
| KY | $45,830 | $37,518 | $41,471 |
| MO | $45,860 | $37,810 | $41,205 |
| PA | $49,100 | $40,124 | $41,153 |
| SC | $45,900 | $38,333 | $41,140 |
| MI | $46,960 | $38,167 | $40,524 |
| MN | $49,130 | $39,839 | $40,479 |
| KS | $45,290 | $36,332 | $40,384 |
| IL | $49,450 | $39,610 | $40,069 |
| OR | $54,360 | $41,652 | $39,774 |
| ME | $47,350 | $38,350 | $39,496 |
| VA | $49,100 | $39,569 | $39,275 |
| NH | $48,580 | $41,214 | $39,123 |
| CA | $53,860 | $44,032 | $39,112 |
| NY | $52,420 | $42,066 | $39,085 |
| CT | $48,780 | $39,430 | $38,027 |
| UT | $44,230 | $35,751 | $37,631 |
| FL | $45,660 | $38,868 | $37,571 |
| NE | $40,930 | $33,908 | $37,519 |
| RI | $45,930 | $37,782 | $37,256 |
| NM | $39,830 | $33,438 | $36,995 |
| LA | $38,060 | $32,006 | $36,228 |
| TX | $38,410 | $33,042 | $34,003 |
| WV | $35,320 | $29,664 | $33,044 |
| AZ | $38,830 | $32,812 | $32,453 |
| AL | $35,020 | $28,835 | $32,050 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for prepress technicians and workers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $48,690, 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 prepress technicians and 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 the District of Columbia, at $74,255.
- Levelling out prices for prepress technicians and workers is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Alabama sits at the bottom on $32,050.
- These are distribution medians for prepress technicians and workers, with a national value of $48,690. 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 prepress technicians and 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 $74,255, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to prepress technicians and workers uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Alabama at $32,050. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Alabama anchors the bottom at $32,050 — and the two source series are dated independently.