Construction and Building Inspectors 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 ($46,560) to the 90th ($112,320). 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

With 137,210 jobs nationally, Construction and Building Inspectors make up 0.09% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 15,920 of those jobs, the top three states hold 30.0%, and the deepest concentration sits in New Jersey (location quotient 1.86, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $65,760 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($112,320) is 2.4 times the 10th percentile ($46,560), a gap of $65,760 a year. The mean of $76,430 sitting above the median of $72,120 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Construction and Building Inspectors runs from the $101,160 median in California down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (15,920 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Construction and Building Inspectors stands number 219 by employment and number 272 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Construction and Extraction Occupations, the group median wage is $54,660 across 60 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 32% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.2% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 16 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $72,120, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 11,060 jobs, 8.1% 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, Pittsburgh, PA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $63,120 a year, against $124,790 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. 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, $72,120 a year is $6,010 a month gross, $2,774 every two weeks, $1,387 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($57,300) to the 75th ($92,330) is worth $35,030 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 $6,010 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 $79,332 would sit between the median ($72,120) and the 75th percentile ($92,330), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $57,300, is $14,820 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Construction and Extraction Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Loading and Moving Machine Operators, Underground Mining, Extraction Workers, All Other, Explosives Workers, Ordnance Handling Experts, and Blasters, Helpers--Roofers, Floor Sanders and Finishers, Underground Mining Machine Operators, All Other. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.