Sheet Metal Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Sheet Metal Workers worker at that point in the distribution, so $79,620 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

May 2024 employment stood at 117,470, or 0.08% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 10,270 jobs; the top three states sum to 24.6% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Oklahoma posts a location quotient of 2.09, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $38,030 or less, and one in ten earns $102,680 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $64,650. The mean ($66,110) versus median ($60,850) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

New Jersey posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $94,310, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Sheet Metal Workers stands number 241 by employment and number 394 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 11% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.8% of the group's 6,361,730 jobs. In 25 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,850, 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 4,560 jobs, 3.9% 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, Birmingham, AL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $48,450 a year, against $114,420 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, 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: $5,071 a month before tax, $2,340 biweekly, $1,170 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,290) to the 75th ($79,620) is worth $32,330 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 $66,935 would sit between the median ($60,850) and the 75th percentile ($79,620), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,290, is $13,560 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Structural Iron and Steel Workers, Helpers--Electricians, Glaziers, Brickmasons and Blockmasons, Hazardous Materials Removal Workers, Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators. The full directory is on the Careers hub.