Helpers--Painters, Paperhangers, Plasterers, and Stucco Masons Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Helpers--Painters, Paperhangers, Plasterers, and Stucco Masons offer sit among all 7,220 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 7,220, or 0.00% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 1,920 jobs; the top three states sum to 47.0% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Idaho posts a location quotient of 4.86, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $20,360 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($51,720) is 1.6 times the 10th percentile ($31,360), a gap of $20,360 a year. The mean of $40,880 sitting above the median of $38,140 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 25 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Ohio at $52,000; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Helpers--Painters, Paperhangers, Plasterers, and Stucco Masons stands number 726 by employment and number 739 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 30% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 11 of the 25 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,140, 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 580 jobs, 8.0% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

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, $48,790 a year, against $48,790 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,178 a month before tax, $1,467 biweekly, $733 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($35,230) to the 75th ($45,290) is worth $10,060 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 $41,954 would sit between the median ($38,140) and the 75th percentile ($45,290), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $35,230, is $2,910 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

Sibling occupations in Construction and Extraction Occupations: Pipelayers, Miscellaneous Construction and Related Workers, Septic Tank Servicers and Sewer Pipe Cleaners, Solar Photovoltaic Installers, Insulation Workers, Mechanical, Helpers, Construction Trades, All Other. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.