Tool and Die Maker Salary by State 2026

National tool and die maker salary overview

At the national level, tool and die makers still command better wages than many broad production roles because the work is harder to replace and harder to train. The latest national wage panel shows a median annual wage of $63,180, a 75th percentile wage of $77,430, and a 90th percentile wage of $87,660. Median hourly pay lands at $30.38, which helps explain why experienced die makers remain tough hires in stamping, moldmaking, aerospace, and precision machining environments. Source: CareerOneStop / O*NET.

The demand story is less rosy. O*NET's national trend panel shows 55,200 tool and die maker jobs in 2024, dropping to 49,300 in 2034. That is a projected -11% decline, but it still leaves roughly 4,700 annual openings. Those openings matter more than the headline decline because they reflect retirements, turnover, and replacement demand inside an aging skilled-trades workforce. Source: O*NET national trends panel.

That combination, higher pay with flat or declining headcount, is common in legacy skilled trades. Shops need fewer total people than they did 20 years ago because CAD/CAM, CNC wire EDM, high-speed machining, and process automation changed how tooling gets built. But the people who remain need a deeper skill stack. They read prints, hold tight tolerances, understand metallurgy, and know how tooling decisions affect uptime, scrap, and quoted margins. One bad tool build can shut a plant down fast.

Across the states that currently publish usable wage data, the average state median is $63,465. The spread from Louisiana to Kansas is $36,010, or about 80%. That is a real labor-market gap. It is large enough to break national comp bands, distort recruiting across state lines, and change where OEMs or custom manufacturers decide to expand their tooling operations.

Top-paying states for tool and die makers

The top end of the pay table skews toward states with specialized manufacturing mixes, smaller talent pools, or both. Kansas leads the current state median at $81,230, followed by Washington at $78,310, California at $77,800, and Maine and Connecticut close behind. Those are not random outcomes. Aerospace, complex machinery, moldmaking, and high-mix precision work tend to support higher tooling wages because a mistake costs real money.

One caution, high wages do not always mean the deepest labor market. Some smaller states pay well because they have a narrow pool of experienced talent and a handful of employers competing for it. If you're benchmarking compensation, look at wage, employment base, and openings together instead of treating pay as a standalone signal.

State wage links point to the original O*NET wage page for that state, sourced from BLS-backed wage data.

Lowest-paying states, and why cheaper labor can fool you

Louisiana sits at the bottom of the current wage table at $45,220, followed by West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Maryland. That does not automatically make those markets easy places to hire. Lower posted wages can still pair with tight local labor pools, older workers near retirement, or a plant mix that outsources the most complex tooling work. Cheap labor and easy hiring are not the same thing.

Manufacturers often get burned when they set pay off a low state median and ignore replacement pressure. A shop may be in a lower-wage state, but if only a few experienced die makers can troubleshoot progressive dies, read CMM reports, and hand-fit critical surfaces, the real market rate for the people you actually need is much higher than the headline median.

Fastest-growth states for tool and die maker demand

Projected growth tells a different story than pay. Georgia leads the available state trend data at 12% projected growth, with Utah, North Dakota, and Idaho next at 10%. Washington follows at 7%. These are not huge national-growth numbers, but in a trade this specialized, single-digit and low-double-digit growth can still tighten a market quickly when the starting labor pool is small.

Growth markets are where manufacturers often feel pressure before the wage tables fully catch up. Expansion in aerospace, metal stamping, industrial equipment, or food packaging can pull experienced die makers into better-funded plants first, leaving smaller custom shops scrambling to fill second shift and maintenance-toolroom seats.

States with the most annual tool and die maker openings

Openings show where hiring is real, not theoretical. Michigan leads the available state data with 820 projected annual openings, followed by Ohio at 560, Illinois at 480, and Wisconsin, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Indiana behind them. That lines up with the traditional tooling belt. These are the markets where dies, molds, stamping support, and machining infrastructure are still dense enough to produce steady replacement demand.

If you sell recruiting, training, metrology, CAD/CAM, maintenance, or toolroom equipment into manufacturers, these are the states worth watching. Big opening counts signal where tribal knowledge is turning over, where apprenticeship pipelines matter, and where downtime risk grows if the next generation of skilled die makers does not come through fast enough.

States with the largest tool and die maker employment bases

Employment concentration helps explain where the trade still has real industrial depth. Michigan leads the available state data with 9,660 workers, then Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and California. This is the geography of long-standing toolroom capacity, automotive supply chains, industrial machinery, and stamping infrastructure. If you need experienced talent fast, the largest labor pools are still concentrated in a familiar set of Midwestern and coastal manufacturing states.

Tool and die maker salary by state, full table

The full table below combines wage medians, hourly medians, projected growth, and annual openings. Some states currently publish wage data but not state trend data, and others publish trend data without a wage estimate. We left those cells marked as N/A instead of guessing. That is slower, but it's the right way to build a page people can cite.

How manufacturers should read this data

First, do not read this as a generic machinist table. Tool and die work sits closer to the high-skill end of shop labor. The people in these roles are usually carrying part of your uptime, maintenance response, launch readiness, and quality performance whether that shows up in their job title or not.

Second, wage medians are only the starting point. A press shop running progressive dies, a mold builder supporting medical parts, and an OEM maintenance toolroom may all hire "tool and die makers" into completely different workloads. The local market rate for a die troubleshooter who can diagnose galling, improve tool life, or fit repairs under schedule pressure can be far above the state median.

Third, the replacement-demand story matters. National employment is projected down, but the trade still posts thousands of annual openings. That is what aging skilled-trades workforces look like. A shrinking occupation can still be a painful hiring market if the people exiting are more experienced than the people entering.

For marketers and service providers, this page is useful for a different reason. It shows where factories are likely dealing with tooling bottlenecks, maintenance pressure, and workforce turnover. If you sell toolroom software, metrology, apprenticeship support, recruiting, or die maintenance services, these labor-market signals help you pick better states to target.

FAQ

Cite this page