Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($42,940) to the 90th ($104,840). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

With 98,360 jobs nationally, Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers make up 0.06% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 10,300 of those jobs, the top three states hold 28.7%, and the deepest concentration sits in West Virginia (location quotient 2.56, 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 $104,840, which is 2.4 times the $42,940 at the 10th, a difference of $61,900 annually. Because the mean wage ($72,440) sits above the median ($70,500), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

New York posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $105,900, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Telecommunications Line Installers and Repairers stands number 272 by employment and number 285 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 19% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.6% of the group's 6,045,030 jobs. In 19 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $70,500, 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 8,590 jobs, 8.7% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $32,820 a year, against $100,670 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $70,500 a year is $5,875 a month gross, $2,712 every two weeks, $1,356 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($50,620) to the 75th ($95,520) is worth $44,900 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 $5,875 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 $77,550 would sit between the median ($70,500) and the 75th percentile ($95,520), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $50,620, is $19,880 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Recreational Vehicle Service Technicians, Rail Car Repairers, Electric Motor, Power Tool, and Related Repairers, Locksmiths and Safe Repairers, Motorcycle Mechanics, Bicycle Repairers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.