Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers
What the pay figures show
- Rhode Island pays this job the most, at $103,810. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $77,192 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Rhode Island leads for telecommunications line installers and repairers at $103,810 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $77,192 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$74,330
People doing it
97,720
Highest paid
$103,810
RI
Best off, really
$77,192
RI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$45,310
Highest tenth
$103,680
Lowest, really
$43,856
OR
States with data
51
National average
$73,940
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.41%
RI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $43,856 to $77,192.
- This is a small job: about 97,720 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $74,330 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in telecommunications line installers and repairers pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $43,856 to $77,192, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 97,720 workers, telecommunications line installers and repairers is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- 51 jurisdictions report telecommunications line installers and repairers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $45,310 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $74,330 |
| Top tenth earn over | $103,680 |
| This salary | $74,330 |
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 Line Installers and Repairers
The national median for this job
$74,330around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $45,310 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $74,330 |
| Top tenth | $103,680 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $48,770 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Rhode Island · $103,810 |
| Spread | $55,040 |
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 | $75,740 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $77,942 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| RI | $103,810 | $78,282 | $77,192 |
| WV | $89,690 | $68,708 | $76,536 |
| AK | $97,450 | $77,386 | $76,081 |
| MA | $103,410 | $76,728 | $70,889 |
| ME | $92,120 | $68,692 | $70,746 |
| DE | $93,850 | $69,890 | $70,416 |
| NJ | $102,090 | $76,337 | $70,109 |
| CT | $97,140 | $72,575 | $69,993 |
| NY | $100,960 | $74,939 | $69,629 |
| NH | $86,370 | $69,591 | $66,060 |
| MT | $75,720 | $59,182 | $65,580 |
| DC | $97,600 | $72,164 | $65,128 |
| PA | $81,020 | $63,340 | $64,964 |
| CA | $97,980 | $72,739 | $64,610 |
| TX | $75,740 | $62,113 | $63,919 |
| MI | $74,360 | $58,233 | $61,829 |
| NV | $72,230 | $59,644 | $61,501 |
| MD | $82,380 | $63,235 | $60,823 |
| VA | $79,090 | $60,683 | $60,232 |
| WY | $63,660 | $53,331 | $58,703 |
| MN | $73,710 | $57,196 | $58,116 |
| TN | $63,510 | $53,210 | $57,515 |
| WA | $76,070 | $62,345 | $57,428 |
| AR | $60,840 | $49,272 | $56,957 |
| KY | $64,010 | $51,489 | $56,914 |
| OH | $62,860 | $51,676 | $56,284 |
| ND | $59,280 | $49,811 | $56,238 |
| IL | $70,700 | $55,213 | $55,852 |
| IA | $60,890 | $49,403 | $55,655 |
| HI | $79,880 | $60,398 | $55,610 |
| KS | $63,560 | $49,992 | $55,569 |
| WI | $63,560 | $50,932 | $54,708 |
| AL | $60,890 | $48,482 | $53,887 |
| NM | $58,130 | $47,321 | $52,354 |
| CO | $66,020 | $53,031 | $52,308 |
| SC | $59,790 | $48,573 | $52,130 |
| MO | $59,080 | $47,811 | $52,104 |
| IN | $58,920 | $47,814 | $51,868 |
| VT | $61,970 | $49,993 | $51,734 |
| UT | $60,090 | $47,788 | $50,302 |
| FL | $61,740 | $51,788 | $50,060 |
| ID | $56,340 | $45,316 | $49,567 |
| NC | $56,680 | $45,970 | $48,832 |
| GA | $58,760 | $47,060 | $48,667 |
| SD | $49,560 | $42,001 | $47,677 |
| AZ | $58,600 | $48,203 | $47,676 |
| MS | $49,360 | $39,958 | $45,776 |
| LA | $48,770 | $40,290 | $45,605 |
| NE | $50,070 | $40,837 | $45,185 |
| OK | $48,900 | $39,771 | $45,048 |
| OR | $60,330 | $45,926 | $43,856 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $74,330, 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 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 Rhode Island, at $78,282.
- Levelling out prices for this job 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 — Oregon sits at the bottom on $43,856.
- These are distribution medians for telecommunications line installers and repairers, with a national value of $74,330. 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 telecommunications line installers and repairers 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 $78,282, which leads in Rhode Island.
- The price deflation applied to telecommunications line installers and repairers 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 Oregon at $43,856. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Oregon anchors the bottom at $43,856 — and the two source series are dated independently.