Outdoor Power Equipment and Other Small Engine Mechanics Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Outdoor Power Equipment and Other Small Engine Mechanics worker at that point in the distribution, so $56,080 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

BLS counted 34,240 Outdoor Power Equipment and Other Small Engine Mechanics jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in South Dakota, where the location quotient is 2.35, meaning the occupation holds 2.35 times its national share of local jobs. Florida employs the most people outright, 3,520 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 24.3% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $38,260 at the 25th percentile, $46,560 at the middle, $56,080 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $30,940, a ratio of 1.9 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

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 50 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Massachusetts at $57,060; the jobs leader is Florida:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Outdoor Power Equipment and Other Small Engine Mechanics stands number 459 by employment and number 610 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 21% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.6% of the group's 6,045,030 jobs. In 24 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $46,560, 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 950 jobs, 2.8% 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, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $46,960 a year, against $58,090 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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: $3,880 a month before tax, $1,791 biweekly, $895 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,260) to the 75th ($56,080) is worth $17,820 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 $51,216 would sit between the median ($46,560) and the 75th percentile ($56,080), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,260, is $8,300 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: Electronic Equipment Installers and Repairers, Motor Vehicles, Precision Instrument and Equipment Repairers, All Other, Signal and Track Switch Repairers, Electrical and Electronics Installers and Repairers, Transportation Equipment, Musical Instrument Repairers and Tuners, Commercial Divers. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.