Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Alaska pays this job best, at $80,840. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $64,593 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers is also the real leader: Alaska at $80,840, holding through tax and through price deflation to $64,593. 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
$53,750
People doing it
416,210
Highest paid
$80,840
AK
Best off, really
$64,593
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$39,240
Highest tenth
$77,530
Lowest, really
$40,616
GA
States with data
51
National average
$56,760
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $40,616 and $64,593. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 416,210 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $53,750. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $53,750. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $40,616 to $64,593. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- National employment in welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers is 416,210 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $39,240 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $53,750 |
| Top tenth earn over | $77,530 |
| This salary | $53,750 |
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 Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
The national median for this job
$53,750around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $39,240 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $53,750 |
| Top tenth | $77,530 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $47,970 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $80,840 |
| Spread | $32,870 |
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 | $53,340 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $54,891 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $80,840 | $65,701 | $64,593 |
| WY | $63,820 | $53,459 | $58,845 |
| ND | $62,000 | $51,997 | $58,706 |
| LA | $62,250 | $50,717 | $57,407 |
| HI | $79,000 | $59,846 | $55,102 |
| NM | $59,840 | $48,615 | $53,786 |
| NV | $61,520 | $51,611 | $53,219 |
| VT | $60,890 | $49,197 | $50,910 |
| ME | $62,220 | $49,294 | $50,768 |
| IA | $55,090 | $44,963 | $50,653 |
| WI | $58,410 | $47,087 | $50,578 |
| MT | $55,610 | $45,006 | $49,871 |
| CT | $64,880 | $51,493 | $49,661 |
| NH | $62,360 | $52,286 | $49,633 |
| UT | $58,380 | $46,490 | $48,936 |
| MN | $60,280 | $48,039 | $48,812 |
| WA | $63,020 | $52,817 | $48,651 |
| SD | $49,440 | $41,905 | $47,568 |
| MS | $51,100 | $41,287 | $47,297 |
| NE | $52,220 | $42,466 | $46,988 |
| CO | $58,590 | $47,388 | $46,742 |
| VA | $59,180 | $47,089 | $46,739 |
| TX | $53,340 | $45,039 | $46,348 |
| MD | $60,310 | $48,138 | $46,302 |
| KY | $51,470 | $41,852 | $46,262 |
| MO | $51,950 | $42,418 | $46,226 |
| DE | $57,270 | $45,585 | $45,928 |
| MA | $62,570 | $49,646 | $45,868 |
| OK | $49,720 | $40,393 | $45,753 |
| OH | $50,340 | $41,960 | $45,702 |
| AR | $47,970 | $39,408 | $45,554 |
| AZ | $55,600 | $45,867 | $45,366 |
| ID | $50,530 | $40,956 | $44,797 |
| WV | $48,810 | $40,005 | $44,563 |
| SC | $49,980 | $41,341 | $44,368 |
| NJ | $59,440 | $48,204 | $44,271 |
| PA | $52,900 | $43,061 | $44,165 |
| IN | $49,730 | $40,701 | $44,151 |
| TN | $48,040 | $40,780 | $44,079 |
| NC | $50,590 | $41,319 | $43,892 |
| KS | $49,410 | $39,412 | $43,809 |
| NY | $59,140 | $47,102 | $43,765 |
| AL | $48,490 | $39,064 | $43,419 |
| DC | $60,180 | $48,069 | $43,382 |
| OR | $59,450 | $45,296 | $43,254 |
| MI | $49,990 | $40,473 | $42,972 |
| CA | $58,060 | $47,155 | $41,885 |
| IL | $51,320 | $41,020 | $41,495 |
| FL | $50,640 | $42,869 | $41,439 |
| RI | $50,580 | $41,344 | $40,769 |
| GA | $48,430 | $39,276 | $40,616 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $53,750, 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 Alaska, at $65,701.
- 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 Georgia, on $40,616.
- These are distribution medians for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers, with a national value of $53,750. 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 welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers 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 $65,701, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers 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; Georgia anchors the distribution at $40,616. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.