Millwrights 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 Millwrights ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $55,420. 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

With 40,660 jobs nationally, Millwrights make up 0.03% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 3,220 of those jobs, the top three states hold 20.2%, and the deepest concentration sits in Alabama (location quotient 3.41, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $93,740, which is 2.1 times the $45,100 at the 10th, a difference of $48,640 annually. Because the mean wage ($68,640) sits above the median ($65,170), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 48 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Michigan at $83,240; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Millwrights stands number 424 by employment and number 328 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations, the group median wage is $59,300 across 51 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 10% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 6,045,030 jobs. In 23 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $65,170, 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 1,330 jobs, 3.3% 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, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $62,150 a year, against $89,410 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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

The median Millwrights paycheck, gross, is $2,507 every two weeks on an annual $65,170, which is $5,431 a month and $1,253 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($55,420) to the 75th ($80,580) is worth $25,160 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $71,687 would sit between the median ($65,170) and the 75th percentile ($80,580), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $55,420, is $9,750 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations

Sibling occupations in Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations: Medical Equipment Repairers, Electrical and Electronics Repairers, Commercial and Industrial Equipment, Maintenance Workers, Machinery, Control and Valve Installers and Repairers, Except Mechanical Door, Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians, Outdoor Power Equipment and Other Small Engine Mechanics. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.