Sewing Machine Operators
What the pay figures show
- Nevada pays sewing machine operators the most, at $45,750. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $40,153 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Nevada leads for sewing machine operators at $45,750 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $40,153 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
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
$36,670
People doing it
104,880
Highest paid
$45,750
NV
Best off, really
$40,153
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,860
Highest tenth
$47,840
Lowest, really
$27,565
KY
States with data
50
National average
$37,600
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, 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 $27,565 and $40,153. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 104,880 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $36,670. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $36,670. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Nevada pays most.
- Interstate variation for sewing machine operators is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $27,565 to $40,153. 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.
- National employment in sewing machine operators is 104,880 — 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.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for sewing machine operators in 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Sewing Machine Operators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,860 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $36,670 |
| Top tenth earn over | $47,840 |
| This salary | $36,670 |
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 Sewing Machine Operators
The national median for this job
$36,670around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,860 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $36,670 |
| Top tenth | $47,840 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Sewing Machine Operators, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $29,320 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Nevada · $45,750 |
| Spread | $16,430 |
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 | $31,000 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $31,901 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $45,750 | $38,940 | $40,153 |
| SD | $39,000 | $33,517 | $38,046 |
| AK | $43,850 | $37,413 | $36,783 |
| ME | $43,520 | $35,531 | $36,593 |
| WI | $40,370 | $33,480 | $35,963 |
| CO | $43,840 | $36,185 | $35,692 |
| MS | $37,600 | $30,980 | $35,490 |
| VT | $40,850 | $33,891 | $35,071 |
| ND | $35,700 | $30,865 | $34,847 |
| SC | $38,250 | $32,451 | $34,827 |
| WY | $36,510 | $31,516 | $34,691 |
| IN | $38,440 | $31,962 | $34,672 |
| AR | $35,630 | $29,949 | $34,620 |
| NE | $37,060 | $30,975 | $34,274 |
| WA | $43,360 | $37,020 | $34,100 |
| IA | $35,870 | $30,250 | $34,078 |
| MT | $36,740 | $30,731 | $34,053 |
| NH | $41,740 | $35,718 | $33,906 |
| ID | $37,160 | $30,922 | $33,822 |
| AZ | $40,210 | $33,886 | $33,516 |
| OH | $35,760 | $30,646 | $33,379 |
| MI | $37,490 | $30,961 | $32,872 |
| NM | $34,840 | $29,643 | $32,796 |
| MO | $35,610 | $30,056 | $32,755 |
| MN | $38,930 | $32,196 | $32,714 |
| MA | $42,910 | $34,833 | $32,182 |
| KS | $35,360 | $28,907 | $32,132 |
| TN | $34,220 | $29,676 | $32,077 |
| RI | $38,670 | $32,221 | $31,773 |
| OK | $33,340 | $27,969 | $31,680 |
| NC | $35,160 | $29,537 | $31,376 |
| DE | $37,690 | $30,939 | $31,172 |
| UT | $35,550 | $29,162 | $30,697 |
| PA | $35,640 | $29,723 | $30,485 |
| CT | $37,780 | $31,401 | $30,284 |
| GA | $34,790 | $28,997 | $29,986 |
| IL | $36,220 | $29,635 | $29,978 |
| OR | $39,780 | $31,213 | $29,806 |
| HI | $39,230 | $32,106 | $29,561 |
| VA | $35,790 | $29,640 | $29,420 |
| NY | $38,480 | $31,618 | $29,377 |
| LA | $29,600 | $25,462 | $28,821 |
| AL | $30,830 | $25,664 | $28,525 |
| MD | $35,860 | $29,654 | $28,523 |
| CA | $37,940 | $32,012 | $28,434 |
| NJ | $36,130 | $30,663 | $28,162 |
| FL | $33,270 | $28,912 | $27,948 |
| WV | $29,320 | $25,033 | $27,885 |
| TX | $31,000 | $27,089 | $27,876 |
| KY | $29,460 | $24,938 | $27,565 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for sewing machine operators as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $36,670, 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.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for sewing machine operators. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Nevada keeps the most at $38,940.
- Levelling out prices for sewing machine operators 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 — Kentucky sits at the bottom on $27,565.
- These are distribution medians for sewing machine operators, with a national value of $36,670. 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.
- The household modeled for sewing machine operators is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Nevada retains the most, $38,940. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to sewing machine operators 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 Kentucky at $27,565. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Kentucky anchors the bottom at $27,565 — and the two source series are dated independently.