Surveying and Mapping Technicians
What the pay figures show
- California comes first for surveying and mapping technicians on every measure. $78,110 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $61,917 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For surveying and mapping technicians, California's $78,110 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $61,917. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$54,240
People doing it
58,010
Highest paid
$78,110
CA
Best off, really
$61,917
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,520
Highest tenth
$81,630
Lowest, really
$39,419
FL
States with data
50
National average
$58,000
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, 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 $39,419 to $61,917. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Only 58,010 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 $54,240 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in surveying and mapping technicians is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $39,419 through $61,917. 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.
- National employment in surveying and mapping technicians is 58,010. ⚠️ 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 surveying and mapping technicians. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Surveying and Mapping Technicians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,520 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $54,240 |
| Top tenth earn over | $81,630 |
| This salary | $54,240 |
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 Surveying and Mapping Technicians
The national median for this job
$54,240around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,520 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $54,240 |
| Top tenth | $81,630 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Surveying and Mapping Technicians, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | South Carolina · $43,740 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $78,110 |
| Spread | $34,370 |
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 | $47,680 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $49,066 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $76,970 | $62,978 | $61,917 |
| MN | $73,190 | $56,866 | $57,780 |
| ND | $60,870 | $51,089 | $57,681 |
| OH | $60,330 | $49,712 | $54,146 |
| IA | $58,950 | $47,918 | $53,982 |
| WY | $58,220 | $48,960 | $53,892 |
| CA | $78,110 | $60,604 | $53,831 |
| MT | $60,330 | $48,576 | $53,828 |
| WI | $59,080 | $47,592 | $51,121 |
| NV | $58,790 | $49,418 | $50,957 |
| NM | $56,210 | $45,869 | $50,747 |
| UT | $59,600 | $47,416 | $49,911 |
| IN | $56,440 | $45,894 | $49,785 |
| WA | $62,720 | $52,576 | $48,429 |
| PA | $58,270 | $47,211 | $48,422 |
| RI | $60,320 | $48,805 | $48,126 |
| SD | $50,050 | $42,395 | $48,124 |
| VT | $56,460 | $45,910 | $47,509 |
| MD | $61,600 | $49,113 | $47,240 |
| ID | $52,630 | $42,532 | $46,521 |
| ME | $56,470 | $45,062 | $46,409 |
| CO | $57,890 | $46,856 | $46,217 |
| LA | $49,440 | $40,808 | $46,192 |
| IL | $57,470 | $45,657 | $46,186 |
| TN | $50,370 | $42,652 | $46,103 |
| MO | $51,700 | $42,228 | $46,019 |
| NC | $53,160 | $43,282 | $45,976 |
| DE | $57,130 | $45,480 | $45,822 |
| NH | $57,290 | $48,213 | $45,766 |
| CT | $58,900 | $47,017 | $45,344 |
| NJ | $60,720 | $49,161 | $45,151 |
| KS | $50,900 | $40,526 | $45,047 |
| VA | $56,760 | $45,284 | $44,947 |
| WV | $48,530 | $39,792 | $44,325 |
| AZ | $54,080 | $44,684 | $44,195 |
| AR | $46,370 | $38,181 | $44,136 |
| MS | $47,320 | $38,401 | $43,991 |
| NE | $48,080 | $39,328 | $43,516 |
| MI | $50,340 | $40,739 | $43,255 |
| OK | $46,760 | $38,148 | $43,210 |
| MA | $58,730 | $46,753 | $43,195 |
| NY | $57,360 | $45,768 | $42,525 |
| AL | $46,450 | $37,515 | $41,697 |
| TX | $47,680 | $40,491 | $41,668 |
| KY | $46,050 | $37,687 | $41,658 |
| GA | $48,810 | $39,562 | $40,913 |
| OR | $55,790 | $42,676 | $40,752 |
| HI | $55,580 | $44,058 | $40,565 |
| SC | $43,740 | $36,733 | $39,423 |
| FL | $48,040 | $40,780 | $39,419 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of surveying and mapping technicians earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $54,240.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for surveying and mapping technicians, 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 Alaska, at $62,978.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for surveying and mapping technicians. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Florida, on $39,419.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for surveying and mapping technicians, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $54,240, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for surveying and mapping technicians 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 $62,978, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for surveying and mapping technicians rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Florida anchors the distribution at $39,419. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.