Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? Nebraska, at $66,890. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and New Hampshire is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Nebraska wins — the money there behaves like $59,249. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners is Nebraska at $66,890, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to New Hampshire; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Nebraska at $59,249 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$49,880
People doing it
30,650
Highest paid
$66,890
NE
Best off, really
$59,249
NE, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,040
Highest tenth
$73,490
Lowest, really
$33,801
WV
States with data
49
National average
$53,500
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.38%
NE, 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 $33,801 and $59,249. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Just 30,650 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $49,880 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Nebraska leads the published set.
- Interstate variation for septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $33,801 to $59,249. 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.
- 30,650 are employed nationally in septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- Coverage for septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners runs to 49 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: Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,040 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $49,880 |
| Top tenth earn over | $73,490 |
| This salary | $49,880 |
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 Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners
The national median for this job
$49,880around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,040 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $49,880 |
| Top tenth | $73,490 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $36,200 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Nebraska · $66,890 |
| Spread | $30,690 |
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 | $43,860 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $45,135 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NE | $66,890 | $53,547 | $59,249 |
| IA | $57,980 | $47,175 | $53,145 |
| NV | $60,180 | $50,535 | $52,108 |
| NH | $64,590 | $54,078 | $51,334 |
| MT | $56,860 | $45,951 | $50,919 |
| MN | $62,190 | $49,444 | $50,239 |
| WI | $57,340 | $46,280 | $49,711 |
| WA | $63,090 | $52,873 | $48,703 |
| NJ | $64,650 | $52,102 | $47,851 |
| AK | $57,720 | $48,558 | $47,739 |
| CT | $60,700 | $48,364 | $46,643 |
| OH | $50,750 | $42,278 | $46,049 |
| MO | $51,560 | $42,122 | $45,904 |
| LA | $48,900 | $40,390 | $45,719 |
| ND | $46,340 | $39,414 | $44,500 |
| WY | $47,520 | $40,362 | $44,428 |
| PA | $52,070 | $42,420 | $43,507 |
| MD | $56,410 | $45,190 | $43,466 |
| GA | $51,880 | $41,876 | $43,305 |
| IN | $48,380 | $39,656 | $43,018 |
| MI | $50,040 | $40,511 | $43,013 |
| IL | $53,190 | $42,430 | $42,921 |
| AL | $47,370 | $38,214 | $42,474 |
| OR | $57,920 | $44,201 | $42,208 |
| UT | $49,770 | $39,955 | $42,057 |
| ID | $46,860 | $38,202 | $41,785 |
| KS | $46,960 | $37,581 | $41,772 |
| SC | $46,660 | $38,894 | $41,742 |
| CO | $51,700 | $42,155 | $41,580 |
| NC | $47,280 | $38,792 | $41,207 |
| NY | $55,220 | $44,164 | $41,035 |
| ME | $48,530 | $39,218 | $40,391 |
| CA | $55,220 | $45,044 | $40,010 |
| KY | $43,980 | $36,096 | $39,899 |
| HI | $54,530 | $43,294 | $39,862 |
| VT | $46,140 | $37,964 | $39,286 |
| DE | $48,440 | $38,980 | $39,273 |
| MA | $53,080 | $42,496 | $39,261 |
| AZ | $47,670 | $39,694 | $39,260 |
| SD | $40,040 | $34,352 | $38,994 |
| TX | $43,860 | $37,422 | $38,509 |
| OK | $40,960 | $33,749 | $38,227 |
| FL | $46,150 | $39,262 | $37,951 |
| VA | $47,150 | $38,115 | $37,831 |
| NM | $40,230 | $33,742 | $37,331 |
| AR | $38,330 | $32,019 | $37,012 |
| TN | $39,480 | $33,902 | $36,645 |
| MS | $38,870 | $31,949 | $36,600 |
| WV | $36,200 | $30,343 | $33,801 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $49,880, 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 New Hampshire, at $54,078.
- 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 — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $33,801. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners, with a national value of $49,880. 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 septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners 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 $54,078, which leads in New Hampshire.
- Real-terms figures for septic tank servicers and sewer pipe cleaners 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.