Tree Trimmers and Pruners
What the pay figures show
- Minnesota comes first for tree trimmers and pruners on every measure. $77,460 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $60,538 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For tree trimmers and pruners, Minnesota's $77,460 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $60,538. 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
$50,960
People doing it
55,160
Highest paid
$77,460
MN
Best off, really
$60,538
MN, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,940
Highest tenth
$80,310
Lowest, really
$35,219
TX
States with data
49
National average
$55,970
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
98.42%
MN, 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 $35,219 to $60,538.
- Just 55,160 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $50,960 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Minnesota leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in tree trimmers and pruners 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 $35,219 to $60,538 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 55,160 are employed nationally in tree trimmers and pruners — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- Coverage for tree trimmers and pruners runs to 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Tree Trimmers and Pruners
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,940 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $50,960 |
| Top tenth earn over | $80,310 |
| This salary | $50,960 |
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 Tree Trimmers and Pruners
The national median for this job
$50,960around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,940 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $50,960 |
| Top tenth | $80,310 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Tree Trimmers and Pruners, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Nebraska · $39,380 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Minnesota · $77,460 |
| Spread | $38,080 |
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 | $39,880 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $41,039 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MN | $77,460 | $59,579 | $60,538 |
| MO | $61,140 | $49,370 | $53,802 |
| OR | $75,440 | $55,851 | $53,333 |
| MT | $59,580 | $48,009 | $53,199 |
| NJ | $71,940 | $57,013 | $52,362 |
| VT | $62,170 | $50,141 | $51,887 |
| IL | $64,450 | $50,920 | $51,510 |
| WI | $57,930 | $46,725 | $50,189 |
| WA | $63,850 | $53,483 | $49,265 |
| MI | $57,550 | $46,226 | $49,081 |
| RI | $61,040 | $49,357 | $48,669 |
| SD | $50,430 | $42,701 | $48,471 |
| PA | $58,200 | $47,157 | $48,366 |
| UT | $56,890 | $45,360 | $47,746 |
| NH | $59,660 | $50,117 | $47,574 |
| NY | $62,400 | $49,546 | $46,035 |
| MA | $62,550 | $49,631 | $45,854 |
| OH | $49,650 | $41,425 | $45,119 |
| CA | $62,550 | $50,493 | $44,851 |
| WV | $49,140 | $40,256 | $44,843 |
| NV | $51,210 | $43,327 | $44,676 |
| LA | $47,350 | $39,191 | $44,362 |
| AR | $45,650 | $37,629 | $43,498 |
| TN | $47,350 | $40,226 | $43,480 |
| OK | $46,950 | $38,292 | $43,373 |
| NM | $47,330 | $39,142 | $43,305 |
| WY | $46,210 | $39,310 | $43,270 |
| ND | $44,820 | $38,193 | $43,121 |
| KS | $48,400 | $38,657 | $42,969 |
| NC | $48,480 | $39,708 | $42,180 |
| AZ | $50,680 | $42,037 | $41,577 |
| HI | $56,990 | $45,083 | $41,510 |
| CO | $51,390 | $41,919 | $41,348 |
| IN | $46,050 | $37,852 | $41,062 |
| KY | $44,410 | $36,427 | $40,265 |
| IA | $42,890 | $35,624 | $40,132 |
| DE | $49,330 | $39,646 | $39,944 |
| GA | $46,910 | $38,130 | $39,432 |
| SC | $43,660 | $36,671 | $39,356 |
| ID | $43,840 | $35,935 | $39,306 |
| MS | $41,560 | $34,003 | $38,953 |
| VA | $48,550 | $39,159 | $38,868 |
| ME | $46,430 | $37,673 | $38,799 |
| CT | $48,930 | $39,543 | $38,137 |
| FL | $46,070 | $39,197 | $37,889 |
| AL | $41,500 | $33,755 | $37,518 |
| MD | $47,210 | $38,234 | $36,776 |
| NE | $39,380 | $32,734 | $36,219 |
| TX | $39,880 | $34,224 | $35,219 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of tree trimmers and pruners 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 $50,960.
- Take-home figures for tree trimmers and pruners assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Minnesota, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $59,579.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for tree trimmers and pruners. 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 Texas, on $35,219.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for tree trimmers and pruners, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $50,960, 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.
- Take-home calculations for tree trimmers and pruners assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $59,579, in Minnesota. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for tree trimmers and pruners 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; Texas anchors the distribution at $35,219. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.