Welder Salary by State (2025-2026): BLS Pay Data for All 50 States

National welder wage overview

The national median annual wage for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers is $51,000, or $24.52 per hour. That makes welding a solid skilled-trades occupation, but not a uniform one. A pipe welder in a Gulf Coast industrial market, a TIG welder in aerospace, and a production MIG welder in a contract shop can all sit under the same occupation code while earning very different pay.

The state data makes that point fast. Hawaii tops the current dataset at $76,970, while West Virginia is at $47,000. The average visible state median is $54,639. That means a plant budgeting welder wages off the national number alone can miss local reality by a wide margin. For manufacturers, that shows up in missed hires, longer open reqs, and rushed overtime when qualified welders are hard to replace.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook says welders held about 457,300 jobs in 2024, and employment is projected to grow 2% from 2024 to 2034. That growth rate is not hypergrowth, but it still matters. Fabricators, heavy equipment OEMs, shipyards, energy contractors, and structural steel shops keep needing qualified people who can pass tests, read prints, and produce sound welds without rework eating margin.

1. National median annual welder pay is $51,000. O*NET local wages
2. National median hourly welder pay is $24.52. O*NET local wages
3. The highest state median in the current table is $76,970 in Hawaii. Source
4. The lowest state median with published data is $47,000 in West Virginia. Source
5. The gap between the highest and lowest state medians is $29,970, or roughly 64%. High and low
6. Welders held about 457,300 jobs in 2024. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook
7. Welder employment is projected to grow 2% from 2024 to 2034. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook

Welder salary by state table

The table below shows median annual and hourly pay for welders in every state plus Washington, DC. These are market medians from a federal wage dataset, not self-reported job board submissions. That makes them more useful for compensation planning, benchmarking, and source-backed content. One caveat, Colorado shows as "No data available" in the current O*NET state wage table even though BLS current OEWS pages indicate May 2024 data exists. We kept Colorado in the table and marked it clearly instead of backfilling it with an older estimate.

Highest-paying states for welders

The top of the welder pay table is not random. Hawaii and Alaska are expensive labor markets with specialized industrial demand and smaller talent pools. Wyoming and Louisiana benefit from energy, industrial maintenance, and heavy fabrication demand. Connecticut, Washington, and Massachusetts have aerospace, defense, marine, and high-spec manufacturing work that tends to reward skill depth over commodity labor pricing. These are the states with the highest welder pay in the current dataset, and they are where many of the highest-paid welders cluster when the work involves shutdowns, pressure systems, or code requirements.

For plant leaders, this matters because the highest-paying states often set the competitive ceiling for travel welders, code welders, and candidates with multiple process certifications. If you need someone who can jump between TIG stainless, pipe, pressure work, and repair, you are not competing only with the shop across town. You are competing with entire regional labor markets that price those skills differently.

Lowest-paying states for welders

Lower-paying states are not automatically weak manufacturing markets. In many cases they are strong production regions with lower labor costs, thinner union presence, or more commodity welding work in the mix. But the low medians do matter. If you are recruiting for high-spec welding in a low-median state, you usually have to price well above market, or your candidate pool collapses to people who are not yet ready for your work mix.

West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Dakota all sit toward the bottom of the current ranking. That can look attractive for greenfield planning, but only if the shop can train. If your backlog depends on passing procedure qualifications quickly, managing fit-up without rework, or keeping field crews staffed, local medians alone can be misleading.

Regional patterns in welder pay

The Gulf and Mountain regions are stronger than many general salary guides suggest. Louisiana lands at $59,860, Wyoming at $66,070, and North Dakota at $60,270. Those are not lifestyle premiums. They reflect industrial demand, energy work, maintenance shutdowns, and tougher talent replacement in markets where welding still directly ties to uptime and project execution.

New England also shows up repeatedly near the top. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire all clear or approach the upper tier. That lines up with shipbuilding, defense suppliers, precision fabrication, pressure work, and a labor market where experienced welders do not sit unemployed for long.

The Southeast stays mixed. Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina are lower-cost markets on the statewide median, but they are not easy labor markets. A shop doing structural welding may live close to the state median. A plant doing sanitary TIG, code pipe, or thin-gauge aerospace work usually does not. That's why the phrase "welder salary by state" is helpful for context, but not enough to set a final pay band for a hard-to-fill opening.

The Midwest is less dominant here than it is for machinists. States like Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan stay near the middle of the pack. That tells you something important. Big manufacturing footprints do not automatically create top-of-market welder wages. The work mix, certification requirements, and severity of shortages matter more than sheer plant count.

Methodology and source notes

We built this page from O*NET OnLine wage tables for occupation code 51-4121.00, Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers. O*NET points those wage tables back to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024 wage data. For each state, we captured the published median annual and median hourly figures. We did not use averages, self-reported salaries, or scraped job postings. That matters because job ads can swing hard by season, overtime expectations, and whether the posting is really for a fitter, fabricator, maintenance welder, or pipe welder bundled under one title.

There is also a difference between what a welder salary article usually means and what a manufacturer actually needs. Most generic salary pages blur together all welding work. Federal wage data does not solve every nuance, but it gives you a more stable baseline than anecdotal salary claims. If your team is doing compensation planning, state medians are the clean starting point. If you are writing a trade article or workforce brief, they are also easier to defend because the source trail is public and consistent.

One source quirk is worth calling out. Colorado currently appears with no published state value in the O*NET local wages table for this occupation, even though the BLS current OEWS occupation page indicates Colorado data exists for May 2024. We treated that as a source limitation, not an excuse to guess. Leaving a transparent gap is more credible than quietly mixing different vintages and pretending the dataset is cleaner than it is. For readers looking for a true state-by-state reference, that kind of transparency matters more than forcing a filler number into the table.

What actually drives welder pay higher

Welding pay moves when the work gets harder to replace. That usually means one of five things. First, the process itself is demanding, TIG on thin stainless, orbital pipe work, aluminum repair, pressure vessel welding, or code work with expensive failure risk. Second, the shop needs more than arc time. It needs someone who can fit, read prints, set sequence, limit distortion, and catch a bad prep before it becomes scrap. Third, the job is tied to uptime, shutdown schedules, or customer deadlines where a missed weld costs more than the welder's hourly rate.

Fourth, location changes the market. A welder in Hawaii at $37.01 per hour median is competing in a much tighter labor market than a welder in West Virginia at $22.60 per hour. Cost of living is part of that story, but so is labor scarcity and project mix. Fifth, employers pay up when overtime is constant or travel is required. The salary data on this page does not include every premium, but it helps you see where base-market pricing starts before overtime, per diem, cert bonuses, or field differentials get layered on.

The national table also shows how wide the earnings band can be. On the national O*NET wage table, the lowest 10 percent earned less than $38,130, while the top 10% earn $75,850 or more. In other words, the highest 10 percent earned far more than the midpoint. That gap is why generic articles about the average welder salary often mislead both job seekers and plant managers. The median is useful. The spread is what tells you how much complexity the market is paying for. It also explains why pipe welders, TIG welding specialists, shutdown crews, and specialty fabricators making metal parts can sit far above a simple average salary figure.

How manufacturers should use welder salary data

If you run a fabrication business, wage data should inform more than recruiting. It should shape quoting, capacity plans, and job mix. A shop trying to win low-margin work in a high-wage state has to know exactly what labor it can afford. A shop in a lower-wage state might have an advantage on standard MIG production, but that edge disappears if it suddenly needs high-spec TIG or pipe talent and has no bench. The right question is not just "what does a welder make?" It is "what kind of welder do we need, and what does that cost in our real market?"

This is also where salary data becomes marketing data. If your plant operates in a tougher hiring market, you need better margins and fewer bad-fit quotes. Otherwise labor pressure bleeds into every department. More overtime. More expediting. More burnout. Better inbound lead quality can offset some of that by helping you focus on work that supports your labor model instead of forcing you to chase every RFQ that lands in the inbox.

For workforce teams, the page works as a benchmark, not a finished comp plan. Start with the state median, then adjust for process difficulty, certification requirements, shift, travel, and inspection burden. If the role must pass x-ray or pressure testing, own fit-up, and solve distortion issues without supervision, you are not hiring at the state midpoint. You are buying judgment, and the market prices judgment above averages. Certified welding skill, apprenticeship depth, and local job openings all shape what employers ultimately have to offer.

How welder wages compare with nearby manufacturing roles

Welders sit in a middle band of skilled manufacturing pay. They are slightly above CNC operators, below machinists, and noticeably below toolroom and maintenance roles. That pattern makes sense. Welding skill is valuable, but broader setup complexity, troubleshooting scope, and mechanical repair responsibility tend to push other roles higher at the national median.

The welder median is about 2% above CNC tool operators. That is a small premium, which helps explain why some shops lose entry-level welders to easier production roles if their weld work is repetitive and wage progression is unclear. On the other hand, welders trail machinists by about 10% at the national median, which is consistent with broader setup and process responsibility in many machining roles.

Maintenance is the real premium comparison. Industrial machinery mechanics sit at $63,760, about 20% above the welder median. That gap helps explain why mechanically strong welders often move into maintenance, millwright-adjacent work, or multi-craft positions if a plant gives them a path there. If your shop wants to retain experienced welding talent, compensation is only part of the equation. Advancement paths matter too.

What this means for manufacturers hiring welders

The practical lesson is simple. State medians are the floor, not the final answer. If you need people who can pass x-ray quality work, own fit-up, or weld exotic alloys, your real market pay is probably above your state median. If the role is repetitive production welding with tight fixtures and short training time, statewide medians may be closer to usable.

This also ties directly to sales and capacity planning. When welder hiring drags, lead times stretch, scrap risk rises, and margin gets squeezed by overtime. The best manufacturers do not treat labor data as an HR-only issue. They use it to decide which jobs to pursue, how aggressively to expand, and whether their marketing mix needs to shift toward higher-margin work that supports better wages.

Another overlooked use case is benchmarking plant strategy across sites. Suppose one facility is in Texas at $49,830 median welder pay, while another is in Connecticut at $64,520. Those are not interchangeable labor assumptions. If both plants quote the same type of work, one of them needs a pricing, automation, or customer-mix advantage to protect margin.

The same logic applies to expansion. Lower-median states can look appealing when you are choosing a location, but median pay is only one variable. You still need to ask how dense the local labor pool is, how much industrial competition exists, how many schools feed the trade, and whether your process mix demands people who can ramp fast. A lower wage market with chronic scarcity can be worse than a higher wage market with deeper talent.

If you're publishing content or building a recruiting page, welder salary data attracts links because it is useful well beyond manufacturing marketing. Trade schools cite it. Workforce boards cite it. Training providers cite it. Local journalists cite it. That only works if the numbers are clean and the source trail is obvious, which is why every important stat on this page points back to the original federal data source.

Extra pay factors that state medians do not capture

State medians are a clean baseline, but welder pay moves up or down fast once job details change. Union welders typically earn more in markets with strong collective bargaining, especially when benefits, pension value, and overtime rules are included. Non-union welders can still out-earn the market if they work refinery shutdowns, travel crews, nuclear work, defense projects, or niche fabrication with limited local competition. The point is not that one model always wins. The point is that specialization, seniority, and schedule intensity can all push compensation well above a published median.

That is why hiring managers asking how much does a welder make should usually narrow the question. Welders usually earn more when they can handle TIG welding, pressure work, exotic materials, or field repair that carries high failure costs. A welder building simple metal parts on a repeat production line faces a different labor market than someone welding pipe in a refinery turnaround. Certified welding credentials matter too, but employers often pay even more for consistent fit-up, print reading, inspection readiness, and the ability to solve problems without burning schedule.

Training path also affects earnings. Apprenticeship systems can create stronger wage ladders because skills, tests, and progression are more clearly defined. In looser labor markets, welders may start lower and rely on overtime or job hopping to lift earnings. Either way, the federal data still matters because it shows where employers begin. Nationally, welders earn a median annual wage of $51,000, but higher wages usually go to people whose skill mix is harder to replace than the generic job title suggests. In the broader welding industry, that often means vocational training, an AWS-backed welding technician program, pipe welding exposure, and evidence that the candidate can meet demand for skilled labor in high-pressure environments.

Welder salary by state FAQ

What state pays welders the most?

In this dataset, Hawaii has the highest published median welder wage at $76,970, followed closely by Alaska at $75,140 and Wyoming at $66,070. Those markets combine high costs, smaller labor pools, and more specialized industrial demand, so they sit near the highest pay and highest average wage bands in the country.

What state pays welders the least?

Among states with published current data, West Virginia has the lowest median annual wage at $47,000. Arkansas and Alabama are very close behind. That does not automatically mean those are easy hiring markets. It means the statewide midpoint is lower, not that welders work in those states is simple or easy to staff.

How much do welders make per hour?

Nationally, welders earn a median of $24.52 per hour. By state, the median ranges from $22.60 in West Virginia to $37.01 in Hawaii in the current table. Real hourly earnings can go higher with overtime, cert premiums, shutdown work, travel assignments, or specialty niches such as underwater welders. For anyone evaluating a welding career, that spread is a reminder that location and skill stack matter as much as the title.

Why is Colorado missing from the current table?

The current O*NET local wage page for Colorado shows "No data available" for this occupation even though the BLS current occupation page says Colorado May 2024 data is available. Rather than invent a value or mix vintages, we left Colorado marked as unavailable and linked directly to the underlying source page.