Technical Writers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. New Jersey pays technical writers best, at $122,320. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $81,987 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for technical writers is also the real leader: New Jersey at $122,320, holding through tax and through price deflation to $81,987. 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
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
$90,390
People doing it
45,500
Highest paid
$122,320
NJ
Best off, really
$81,987
NJ, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$57,440
Highest tenth
$145,270
Lowest, really
$57,258
AR
States with data
45
National average
$96,970
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.88%
NJ, 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 $57,258 up to $81,987.
- Only 45,500 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 45 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $90,390. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, New Jersey pays most.
- The nominal spread for technical writers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $57,258 to $81,987, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in technical writers is 45,500. ⚠️ 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.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for technical writers in 45 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: Technical Writers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $57,440 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $90,390 |
| Top tenth earn over | $145,270 |
| This salary | $90,390 |
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 Technical Writers
The national median for this job
$90,390around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $57,440 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $90,390 |
| Top tenth | $145,270 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Technical Writers, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $61,180 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Jersey · $122,320 |
| Spread | $61,140 |
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 | $82,750 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $85,156 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NJ | $122,320 | $89,270 | $81,987 |
| NM | $94,970 | $72,319 | $80,011 |
| DC | $117,810 | $84,664 | $76,409 |
| RI | $102,360 | $77,331 | $76,254 |
| WA | $104,070 | $82,043 | $75,573 |
| CO | $100,610 | $75,891 | $74,856 |
| MA | $109,200 | $80,512 | $74,384 |
| NV | $88,750 | $71,266 | $73,485 |
| CT | $101,870 | $75,633 | $72,942 |
| AL | $85,840 | $65,594 | $72,907 |
| NH | $96,300 | $76,577 | $72,692 |
| MD | $100,990 | $75,367 | $72,493 |
| NC | $86,320 | $66,621 | $70,768 |
| TN | $79,550 | $64,793 | $70,036 |
| KY | $81,070 | $63,143 | $69,796 |
| VA | $93,600 | $70,056 | $69,535 |
| PA | $87,620 | $67,781 | $69,519 |
| MI | $85,270 | $65,444 | $69,485 |
| VT | $87,860 | $66,951 | $69,283 |
| TX | $82,750 | $67,045 | $68,994 |
| MO | $80,840 | $62,839 | $68,480 |
| SC | $82,540 | $63,740 | $68,407 |
| DE | $90,370 | $67,672 | $68,181 |
| NY | $98,310 | $73,231 | $68,042 |
| CA | $104,000 | $76,414 | $67,875 |
| IL | $88,700 | $66,985 | $67,760 |
| ND | $72,990 | $60,014 | $67,758 |
| FL | $86,240 | $69,500 | $67,181 |
| OH | $76,480 | $61,247 | $66,709 |
| WI | $80,030 | $61,835 | $66,420 |
| AK | $83,200 | $67,361 | $66,225 |
| MT | $75,070 | $58,761 | $65,114 |
| UT | $80,270 | $61,728 | $64,975 |
| IN | $75,510 | $59,753 | $64,820 |
| MN | $83,270 | $63,271 | $64,289 |
| KS | $73,550 | $56,757 | $63,088 |
| AZ | $79,780 | $63,363 | $62,671 |
| OK | $69,760 | $55,267 | $62,600 |
| IA | $66,520 | $53,711 | $60,508 |
| SD | $63,350 | $53,082 | $60,255 |
| MS | $65,220 | $52,067 | $59,647 |
| GA | $73,070 | $57,187 | $59,140 |
| LA | $63,790 | $51,908 | $58,756 |
| OR | $84,000 | $61,124 | $58,369 |
| AR | $61,180 | $49,533 | $57,258 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for technical writers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $90,390, 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 technical writers. 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, New Jersey keeps the most at $89,270.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for technical writers. 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 Arkansas, on $57,258.
- These are distribution medians for technical writers, with a national value of $90,390. 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 technical writers 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 New Jersey retains the most, $89,270. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for technical writers 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; Arkansas anchors the distribution at $57,258. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.