Mechanical Engineering Technologists and 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 Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $57,330. 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

BLS counted 37,450 Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Michigan, where the location quotient is 5.13, meaning the occupation holds 5.13 times its national share of local jobs. Michigan employs the most people outright, 5,470 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 29.0% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $57,330 at the 25th percentile, $68,730 at the middle, $82,980 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $53,950, a ratio of 2.1 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 Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians runs from the $100,430 median in Louisiana down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Michigan (5,470 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians stands number 440 by employment and number 293 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Architecture and Engineering Occupations, the group median wage is $96,690 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 29% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.5% of the group's 2,567,220 jobs. In 21 of the 45 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $68,730, 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

Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI is the largest metro employer with 3,580 jobs, 9.6% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 150 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Salt Lake City-Murray, UT posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $61,480 a year, against $103,970 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $68,730 a year is $5,728 a month gross, $2,643 every two weeks, $1,322 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($57,330) to the 75th ($82,980) is worth $25,650 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 $5,728 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 $75,603 would sit between the median ($68,730) and the 75th percentile ($82,980), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $57,330, is $11,400 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Architecture and Engineering Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Architects, Except Landscape and Naval, Architectural and Civil Drafters, Electronics Engineers, Except Computer, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Computer Hardware Engineers, Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.