Tool and Die Makers
What the pay figures show
- Washington comes first for tool and die makers on every measure. $109,390 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $79,020 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For tool and die makers, Washington's $109,390 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $79,020. 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
$64,050
People doing it
56,930
Highest paid
$109,390
WA
Best off, really
$79,020
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,680
Highest tenth
$92,680
Lowest, really
$42,341
WV
States with data
45
National average
$66,860
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $42,341 to $79,020.
- Just 56,930 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 45 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $64,050. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Washington pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in tool and die makers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $42,341 to $79,020 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 56,930 are employed nationally in tool and die makers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for tool and die makers 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: Tool and Die Makers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,680 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $64,050 |
| Top tenth earn over | $92,680 |
| This salary | $64,050 |
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 Tool and Die Makers
The national median for this job
$64,050around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,680 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $64,050 |
| Top tenth | $92,680 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Tool and Die Makers, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $46,190 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $109,390 |
| Spread | $63,200 |
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 | $55,470 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $57,083 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $109,390 | $85,786 | $79,020 |
| KS | $83,890 | $63,454 | $70,532 |
| ND | $73,130 | $60,110 | $67,866 |
| ME | $79,910 | $60,973 | $62,796 |
| NE | $69,150 | $55,034 | $60,895 |
| OK | $65,870 | $52,643 | $59,628 |
| IN | $68,050 | $54,725 | $59,365 |
| IA | $65,000 | $52,549 | $59,199 |
| KY | $66,570 | $53,450 | $59,081 |
| WI | $68,120 | $54,163 | $58,179 |
| CT | $77,540 | $59,865 | $57,735 |
| AL | $64,800 | $51,452 | $57,188 |
| VT | $69,300 | $55,119 | $57,038 |
| SD | $59,770 | $50,205 | $56,990 |
| SC | $65,250 | $52,598 | $56,449 |
| MN | $71,020 | $55,487 | $56,379 |
| OH | $62,280 | $51,226 | $55,794 |
| MI | $65,590 | $52,345 | $55,577 |
| TN | $60,760 | $51,001 | $55,127 |
| NH | $69,910 | $58,012 | $55,068 |
| NJ | $74,460 | $58,646 | $53,862 |
| MO | $60,810 | $49,120 | $53,530 |
| AR | $56,840 | $46,206 | $53,413 |
| MS | $57,980 | $46,540 | $53,315 |
| CA | $77,030 | $59,931 | $53,233 |
| NV | $61,350 | $51,475 | $53,078 |
| OR | $73,930 | $54,921 | $52,445 |
| NC | $61,060 | $49,314 | $52,384 |
| FL | $63,890 | $53,516 | $51,730 |
| ID | $57,800 | $46,412 | $50,765 |
| PA | $61,160 | $49,444 | $50,712 |
| CO | $63,800 | $51,345 | $50,645 |
| RI | $63,430 | $51,187 | $50,475 |
| VA | $64,050 | $50,722 | $50,345 |
| NY | $68,080 | $53,645 | $49,844 |
| GA | $60,020 | $48,010 | $49,649 |
| MA | $67,230 | $53,085 | $49,045 |
| IL | $61,170 | $48,447 | $49,008 |
| TX | $55,470 | $46,750 | $48,109 |
| AZ | $59,140 | $48,623 | $48,092 |
| UT | $56,740 | $45,246 | $47,626 |
| MD | $58,110 | $46,475 | $44,702 |
| LA | $46,950 | $38,882 | $44,012 |
| NM | $47,960 | $39,621 | $43,835 |
| WV | $46,190 | $38,010 | $42,341 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for tool and die makers, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $64,050 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 tool and die makers, 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 Washington, at $85,786.
- Levelling out prices for tool and die makers 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 — West Virginia sits at the bottom on $42,341.
- All wage figures for tool and die makers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $64,050. 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 tool and die makers 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 $85,786, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to tool and die makers 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 West Virginia at $42,341. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $42,341 — and the two source series are dated independently.