Aircraft Structure, Surfaces, Rigging, and Systems Assemblers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($46,040) to the 90th ($94,950). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 32,890, or 0.02% of the U.S. total. Kansas leads the state table with 10,470 jobs; the top three states sum to 56.2% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Kansas posts a location quotient of 34.31, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $94,950, which is 2.1 times the $46,040 at the 10th, a difference of $48,910 annually. Because the mean wage ($66,510) sits above the median ($61,680), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Aircraft Structure, Surfaces, Rigging, and Systems Assemblers runs from the $93,550 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Kansas (10,470 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Aircraft Structure, Surfaces, Rigging, and Systems Assemblers stands number 467 by employment and number 381 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 34% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.4% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 10 of the 24 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $61,680, 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

Wichita, KS is the largest metro employer with 10,100 jobs, 30.7% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $57,250 a year, against $84,350 in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $61,680 works out to $5,140 a month before taxes, $2,372 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,186 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($53,180) to the 75th ($75,240) is worth $22,060 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $67,848 would sit between the median ($61,680) and the 75th percentile ($75,240), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $53,180, is $8,500 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Power Plant Operators, Crushing, Grinding, and Polishing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Computer Numerically Controlled Tool Programmers, Food Cooking Machine Operators and Tenders, Pressers, Textile, Garment, and Related Materials, Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.