Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers, Except Line Installers
What the pay figures show
- Alaska pays this job the most, $95,850. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and North Dakota wins, at $81,581. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers, Alaska leads both nominally at $95,850 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts North Dakota first at $81,581. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$63,890
People doing it
140,920
Highest paid
$95,850
AK
Best off, really
$81,581
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,240
Highest tenth
$96,730
Lowest, really
$46,294
OK
States with data
51
National average
$68,500
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, 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 $46,294 up to $81,581.
- Roughly 140,920 people hold this job nationally, earning $63,890 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $63,890 in the middle.
- The nominal spread for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $46,294 to $81,581, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- 140,920 are employed nationally in telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 51 jurisdictions report telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers, Except Line Installers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,240 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $63,890 |
| Top tenth earn over | $96,730 |
| This salary | $63,890 |
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 Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers, Except Line Installers
The national median for this job
$63,890around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,240 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $63,890 |
| Top tenth | $96,730 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Telecommunications Equipment Installers and Repairers, Except Line Installers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $49,740 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $95,850 |
| Spread | $46,110 |
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 | $59,370 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,096 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $90,890 | $72,258 | $81,581 |
| AK | $95,850 | $76,260 | $74,975 |
| LA | $80,210 | $63,238 | $71,580 |
| NH | $85,240 | $68,796 | $65,306 |
| VT | $81,800 | $63,088 | $65,285 |
| MT | $73,970 | $58,049 | $64,325 |
| IA | $65,710 | $53,093 | $59,811 |
| CO | $76,410 | $59,931 | $59,114 |
| MN | $75,150 | $58,111 | $59,046 |
| SD | $62,000 | $51,997 | $59,024 |
| WA | $77,610 | $63,429 | $58,426 |
| AZ | $72,710 | $58,566 | $57,926 |
| WV | $63,560 | $51,229 | $57,065 |
| NM | $63,600 | $51,459 | $56,933 |
| CT | $75,200 | $58,347 | $56,271 |
| MS | $61,250 | $49,036 | $56,175 |
| NJ | $78,000 | $60,924 | $55,954 |
| WY | $60,250 | $50,591 | $55,687 |
| TN | $61,220 | $51,370 | $55,526 |
| OH | $61,680 | $50,760 | $55,287 |
| HI | $79,250 | $60,003 | $55,246 |
| NC | $63,970 | $51,536 | $54,745 |
| UT | $65,650 | $52,008 | $54,744 |
| MA | $76,500 | $59,143 | $54,641 |
| ID | $62,440 | $49,895 | $54,574 |
| NV | $62,800 | $52,640 | $54,279 |
| NE | $60,520 | $48,758 | $53,950 |
| PA | $64,960 | $52,381 | $53,724 |
| IN | $61,030 | $49,447 | $53,639 |
| SC | $61,480 | $49,819 | $53,467 |
| GA | $64,900 | $51,687 | $53,452 |
| KY | $59,700 | $48,177 | $53,253 |
| OR | $75,270 | $55,747 | $53,233 |
| RI | $66,960 | $53,845 | $53,096 |
| CA | $76,630 | $59,681 | $53,012 |
| DE | $66,670 | $52,563 | $52,959 |
| AL | $59,770 | $47,631 | $52,941 |
| WI | $60,770 | $48,856 | $52,478 |
| MI | $61,700 | $49,384 | $52,434 |
| IL | $64,630 | $51,056 | $51,647 |
| KS | $58,690 | $46,351 | $51,521 |
| DC | $73,130 | $56,970 | $51,415 |
| TX | $59,370 | $49,884 | $51,334 |
| MO | $57,610 | $46,699 | $50,892 |
| ME | $61,720 | $48,926 | $50,389 |
| NY | $67,710 | $53,405 | $49,621 |
| FL | $61,030 | $51,218 | $49,509 |
| VA | $61,340 | $48,700 | $48,338 |
| MD | $63,050 | $50,209 | $48,295 |
| AR | $49,740 | $40,764 | $47,122 |
| OK | $50,350 | $40,871 | $46,294 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $63,890 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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 Alaska, at $76,260.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Oklahoma, on $46,294.
- All wage figures for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $63,890. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers 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 $76,260, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers, except line installers 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; Oklahoma anchors the distribution at $46,294. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.