Construction and Extraction: pay for 60 occupations, May 2025

In short

• Highest median pay in this field: Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers, $109,910 a year.
• Lowest: Helpers--Painters, Paperhangers, Plasterers, and Stucco Masons, $40,470 a year.
• Most jobs: Construction Laborers (1,096,780), First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers (812,210) and Electricians (757,220).
• For comparison, the median for all occupations in the country was $50,980 a year.

Sorted by median pay, highest first. "Not published" in the yearly or hourly column means BLS releases only the other one for that occupation.

The field as a whole

Construction and Extraction holds 6,425,160 of the 155,495,730 jobs in the national figures, about 4 in every 100. Its median pay of $59,540 a year is 17% above the median for all occupations ($50,980), which places it number 11 of the 22 fields. Across the whole field, the lowest-paid tenth earned less than $38,100 and the highest-paid tenth more than $101,650; the middle half earned between $46,880 and $77,970. The average was $65,360, 10% above the median.

Inside the field

Inside the field, the best-paid occupation with a published yearly median earns 2.7 times the lowest ($109,910 against $40,470). 39 of the 60 occupations with a yearly median are above the national median of $50,980, and 21 are below it. The occupation in the middle of the field's list is Glaziers, at $57,080. Jobs are unevenly spread: the three largest occupations hold 41% of the field's jobs, while the smallest, Terrazzo Workers and Finishers, has 1,180. Pay stretches furthest within Terrazzo Workers and Finishers, where the highest-paid tenth earn over $126,130 and the lowest-paid tenth under $46,090.

Reading the field

Pay also moves with place. For the field's largest occupation, Construction Laborers, the state medians run from $24,270 in Puerto Rico to $77,110 in Hawaii; its own page has every state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts every occupation into one field by the work done, not by the industry of the employer, so an accountant at a hospital is counted under business and financial operations, not health care.

Questions about this field

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Checked in November 2026. Figures are for employees, before tax, and leave out overtime pay and benefits. They are official statistics, not advice or a pay offer; see bls.gov/oes for the original tables.

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