Welder Salary in the United States
The median active welding job in the US currently posts at $28/hr — about $58,240/yr at full-time hours. That's the live, employer-posted number across 1,970 active listings, not a survey number from two years ago. Use the state breakdown below to see where pay clusters highest right now.
25th percentile
$24/hr
Entry-level / first-year welders
Median
$28/hr
≈ $58,240/yr full-time
75th percentile
$33/hr
Cert-stamped / specialty welders
Based on 1,970 active welding jobs in the US with employer-posted wages, normalized to hourly rate.
Welding salary by state
Median hourly wage in each state with a meaningful sample size, ranked highest to lowest.
| State | Median hourly | ~Annual | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | $38/hr | $79,040 | 8 |
| New Jersey | $35/hr | $72,800 | 81 |
| Wyoming | $35/hr | $72,800 | 8 |
| Hawaii | $34/hr | $70,720 | 5 |
| Washington | $33/hr | $68,640 | 75 |
| District of Columbia | $32/hr | $66,560 | 5 |
| Maine | $32/hr | $66,560 | 12 |
| Mississippi | $32/hr | $66,560 | 32 |
| South Carolina | $32/hr | $66,560 | 56 |
| California | $31/hr | $64,480 | 306 |
| Nevada | $31/hr | $64,480 | 16 |
| Pennsylvania | $31/hr | $64,480 | 112 |
| Arizona | $30/hr | $62,400 | 95 |
| Connecticut | $30/hr | $62,400 | 21 |
| New Hampshire | $30/hr | $62,400 | 6 |
| Delaware | $29/hr | $60,320 | 6 |
| Massachusetts | $29/hr | $60,320 | 43 |
| Nebraska | $29/hr | $60,320 | 6 |
| New York | $29/hr | $60,320 | 106 |
| Colorado | $28/hr | $58,240 | 50 |
| Illinois | $28/hr | $58,240 | 169 |
| Indiana | $28/hr | $58,240 | 50 |
| Maryland | $28/hr | $58,240 | 30 |
| Minnesota | $28/hr | $58,240 | 89 |
| Montana | $28/hr | $58,240 | 8 |
| North Carolina | $28/hr | $58,240 | 59 |
| North Dakota | $28/hr | $58,240 | 5 |
| Oregon | $28/hr | $58,240 | 70 |
| Arkansas | $27/hr | $56,160 | 22 |
| Idaho | $27/hr | $56,160 | 21 |
| Louisiana | $27/hr | $56,160 | 61 |
| Oklahoma | $27/hr | $56,160 | 53 |
| Texas | $27/hr | $56,160 | 292 |
| Utah | $27/hr | $56,160 | 26 |
| Virginia | $27/hr | $56,160 | 101 |
| Alabama | $26/hr | $54,080 | 53 |
| Florida | $26/hr | $54,080 | 103 |
| Kentucky | $26/hr | $54,080 | 33 |
| New Mexico | $26/hr | $54,080 | 9 |
| Wisconsin | $26/hr | $54,080 | 94 |
| Ohio | $25/hr | $52,000 | 136 |
| South Dakota | $25/hr | $52,000 | 22 |
| Vermont | $25/hr | $52,000 | 7 |
| West Virginia | $25/hr | $52,000 | 5 |
| Georgia | $24/hr | $49,920 | 97 |
| Iowa | $24/hr | $49,920 | 25 |
| Kansas | $24/hr | $49,920 | 28 |
| Missouri | $24/hr | $49,920 | 35 |
| Michigan | $23/hr | $47,840 | 65 |
| Tennessee | $23/hr | $47,840 | 39 |
How we calculate this
Numbers come straight from the wages employers post on their own job ads — not government surveys, not self-reported salaries. Every listing we ingest from Indeed, Adzuna, USAJobs, Jooble, and the company career pages we crawl gets parsed for a posted wage, normalized to hourly rate (so a $52,000/yr posting becomes $25/hr, a $1,000/wk gig becomes $25/hr), and then aggregated.
We exclude listings without an explicit wage, listings that look like garbage data (e.g. $1.50/hr or $400/hr), and any scope with fewer than 5 wage-tagged matches. The numbers update daily as new jobs come in and stale listings expire.