Surveying and Mapping 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 Surveying and Mapping Technicians ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $44,180. 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 56,720 jobs nationally, Surveying and Mapping Technicians make up 0.04% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 7,810 of those jobs, the top three states hold 30.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in Alaska (location quotient 3.47, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $36,910 or less, and one in ten earns $80,870 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.2 to 1 and the annual gap is $43,960. The mean ($56,890) versus median ($51,940) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 51 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Nevada at $75,660; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Surveying and Mapping Technicians stands number 367 by employment and number 495 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 46% less than its group median, and it supplies 2.2% of the group's 2,567,220 jobs. In 24 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $51,940, 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

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX is the largest metro employer with 2,290 jobs, 4.0% 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, Oklahoma City, OK posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $47,410 a year, against $83,250 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

The median annual wage of $51,940 works out to $4,328 a month before taxes, $1,998 per biweekly paycheck, and $999 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($44,180) to the 75th ($65,240) is worth $21,060 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $57,134 would sit between the median ($51,940) and the 75th percentile ($65,240), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $44,180, is $7,760 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

Sibling occupations in Architecture and Engineering Occupations: Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Surveyors, Mechanical Drafters, Environmental Engineers, Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.