Structural Iron and Steel Workers
What the pay figures show
- Massachusetts comes first for structural iron and steel workers on every measure. $120,840 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $81,412 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For structural iron and steel workers, Massachusetts's $120,840 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $81,412. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,780
People doing it
68,380
Highest paid
$120,840
MA
Best off, really
$81,412
MA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,580
Highest tenth
$108,260
Lowest, really
$40,351
GA
States with data
50
National average
$70,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.24%
MA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $40,351 up to $81,412.
- Only 68,380 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $62,780 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Massachusetts tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for structural iron and steel workers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $40,351 to $81,412, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in structural iron and steel workers is 68,380. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for structural iron and steel workers. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Structural Iron and Steel Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,580 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,780 |
| Top tenth earn over | $108,260 |
| This salary | $62,780 |
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 Structural Iron and Steel Workers
The national median for this job
$62,780around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,580 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,780 |
| Top tenth | $108,260 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Structural Iron and Steel Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $45,510 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Massachusetts · $120,840 |
| Spread | $75,330 |
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 | $52,240 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $53,759 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MA | $120,840 | $88,119 | $81,412 |
| WA | $107,660 | $84,569 | $77,899 |
| NJ | $113,220 | $83,458 | $76,649 |
| IL | $101,850 | $75,585 | $76,460 |
| WI | $92,820 | $70,073 | $75,269 |
| ND | $82,120 | $66,259 | $74,808 |
| RI | $98,320 | $74,680 | $73,641 |
| MN | $95,320 | $70,929 | $72,070 |
| IA | $77,400 | $60,952 | $68,665 |
| HI | $99,860 | $72,935 | $67,154 |
| PA | $82,970 | $64,652 | $66,310 |
| MO | $77,410 | $60,587 | $66,026 |
| OR | $96,050 | $68,547 | $65,457 |
| OH | $74,710 | $60,050 | $65,406 |
| NY | $92,610 | $69,557 | $64,629 |
| WV | $71,850 | $56,975 | $63,466 |
| LA | $68,830 | $55,573 | $62,905 |
| ID | $72,750 | $57,007 | $62,354 |
| AK | $76,970 | $62,978 | $61,917 |
| IN | $70,130 | $56,127 | $60,886 |
| MT | $67,390 | $53,792 | $59,608 |
| NE | $65,470 | $52,510 | $58,101 |
| KY | $64,060 | $51,528 | $56,957 |
| SD | $57,050 | $48,020 | $54,509 |
| MD | $71,730 | $56,249 | $54,103 |
| NV | $62,510 | $52,407 | $54,039 |
| MI | $62,830 | $50,244 | $53,347 |
| CA | $76,370 | $59,519 | $52,868 |
| TN | $56,750 | $47,779 | $51,644 |
| KS | $58,560 | $46,254 | $51,413 |
| ME | $61,750 | $48,948 | $50,411 |
| AL | $56,640 | $45,254 | $50,299 |
| UT | $58,250 | $46,392 | $48,832 |
| AZ | $59,390 | $48,818 | $48,284 |
| CT | $62,400 | $49,636 | $47,870 |
| DE | $59,820 | $47,492 | $47,850 |
| NH | $59,920 | $50,326 | $47,772 |
| VA | $60,260 | $47,895 | $47,539 |
| MS | $50,690 | $40,974 | $46,939 |
| CO | $58,830 | $47,570 | $46,921 |
| VT | $55,640 | $45,279 | $46,856 |
| TX | $52,240 | $44,155 | $45,438 |
| FL | $55,700 | $46,935 | $45,369 |
| SC | $50,750 | $41,908 | $44,977 |
| WY | $47,480 | $40,330 | $44,393 |
| DC | $61,240 | $48,852 | $44,089 |
| OK | $47,660 | $38,831 | $43,983 |
| AR | $45,510 | $37,522 | $43,374 |
| NC | $48,740 | $39,907 | $42,391 |
| GA | $48,090 | $39,019 | $40,351 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for structural iron and steel workers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $62,780, 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 structural iron and steel 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 Massachusetts, at $88,119.
- The price adjustment for structural iron and steel workers 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 — Georgia anchors the bottom at $40,351. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for structural iron and steel workers, with a national value of $62,780. 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 structural iron and steel 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 $88,119, which leads in Massachusetts.
- Real-terms figures for structural iron and steel workers 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.