Rankings from the numbers
Every list here is computed from the same public data as the trade pages, nothing hand-picked.
Highest-paying trades
Median hourly wage, every trade tracked here.
- 1Construction manager$55.28
- 2Elevator mechanic$52.84
- 3Lineman$45.83
Highest-paying construction jobs
The building trades plus supervisors and managers.
- 1Construction manager$55.28
- 2Elevator mechanic$52.84
- 3Lineman$45.83
Most in-demand trades
Projected employment change over the next decade.
- 1Solar installer+36.5%
- 2Wind turbine technician+29.5%
- 3HVAC technician+10.9%
Best-paying states for each trade
States that show up most often in a trade's top five.
- 1Hawaii19 trades
- 2Washington19 trades
- 3Illinois15 trades
Real wage growth by trade
Ten-year change in the median, after inflation.
- 1Plasterer+13.8%
- 2Cement mason+11.2%
- 3Roofer+11.2%
Union scale vs market pay by state
Union electrician package as a multiple of the market median.
- 1New Jersey2.80×
- 2Delaware2.72×
- 3Missouri2.60×
Stalest prevailing wage rates
Survey-based Davis-Bacon rates still in force, oldest first.
See the full rankingTrade × state heatmap
Highest medians anywhere in the trade × state grid.
- 1Construction manager, New York$74.69
- 2Construction manager, Washington$74.55
- 3Construction manager, Massachusetts$69.71
How these lists are built
These rankings are recomputed from the source data every time the site is rebuilt, so they move when BLS publishes a new May release or when a Davis-Bacon determination changes. The pay rankings use the median hourly wage from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025); the growth ranking uses the BLS Employment Projections; the real-wage ranking adjusts each year's median with the CPI-U; and the two prevailing-wage rankings read the current federal wage determinations, comparing the union base + fringe package with the market median and listing survey rates that have not been updated in eight years or more.
Every ranking has a table twin with the exact figures, and the heatmap shows all trades in all states at once. Rankings compare medians, which hide a lot: two trades with the same median can have very different top-end pay, so the tables also show the 90th percentile where it matters, and the trade pages show the whole distribution. Job counts from the same survey are a useful sanity check: a trade with a high median but only a few thousand jobs nationwide is a niche, not a career path most people can take. State-level versions of the pay ranking are on each state page.