Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $61,920. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

With 136,390 jobs nationally, Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians make up 0.09% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 15,900 of those jobs, the top three states hold 31.7%, and the deepest concentration sits in Oklahoma (location quotient 5.36, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $61,920 at the 25th percentile, $78,680 at the middle, $95,050 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $72,290, a ratio of 2.5 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians runs from the $97,730 median in New Jersey down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (15,900 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians stands number 222 by employment and number 218 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations, the group median wage is $59,300 across 51 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 33% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.3% of the group's 6,045,030 jobs. In 22 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $78,680, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 7,180 jobs, 5.3% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $40,980 a year, against $106,180 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $78,680 a year is $6,557 a month gross, $3,026 every two weeks, $1,513 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($61,920) to the 75th ($95,050) is worth $33,130 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $6,557 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $86,548 would sit between the median ($78,680) and the 75th percentile ($95,050), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $61,920, is $16,760 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Helpers--Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Workers, Security and Fire Alarm Systems Installers, Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers, Medical Equipment Repairers, Electrical and Electronics Repairers, Commercial and Industrial Equipment, Maintenance Workers, Machinery. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.