Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers worker at that point in the distribution, so $72,660 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

With 82,900 jobs nationally, Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers make up 0.05% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 27,350 of those jobs, the top three states hold 46.6%, and the deepest concentration sits in Nevada (location quotient 3.57, 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: $63,570 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($101,380) is 2.7 times the 10th percentile ($37,810), a gap of $63,570 a year. The mean of $62,810 sitting above the median of $58,140 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 Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers runs from the $104,670 median in Hawaii down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (27,350 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers stands number 298 by employment and number 437 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 6% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.3% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 18 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $58,140, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 7,690 jobs, 9.3% 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, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $42,360 a year, against $97,430 in Urban Honolulu, HI. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,845 a month before tax, $2,236 biweekly, $1,118 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,880) to the 75th ($72,660) is worth $25,780 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $63,954 would sit between the median ($58,140) and the 75th percentile ($72,660), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,880, is $11,260 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: Helpers--Painters, Paperhangers, Plasterers, and Stucco Masons, Helpers--Extraction Workers, Loading and Moving Machine Operators, Underground Mining, Extraction Workers, All Other, Explosives Workers, Ordnance Handling Experts, and Blasters, Helpers--Roofers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.