Welder Salary in the United States
The median active welding job in the US currently posts at $30/hr — about $62,400/yr at full-time hours. That's the live, employer-posted number across 1,991 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
$25/hr
Entry-level / first-year welders
Median
$30/hr
≈ $62,400/yr full-time
75th percentile
$37/hr
Cert-stamped / specialty welders
Based on 1,991 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | $35/hr | $72,800 | 366 |
| Iowa | $34/hr | $70,720 | 7 |
| Kansas | $34/hr | $70,720 | 5 |
| West Virginia | $34/hr | $70,720 | 10 |
| Illinois | $33/hr | $68,640 | 241 |
| Mississippi | $33/hr | $68,640 | 39 |
| New Jersey | $33/hr | $68,640 | 103 |
| New York | $33/hr | $68,640 | 102 |
| North Dakota | $33/hr | $68,640 | 10 |
| Wyoming | $33/hr | $68,640 | 15 |
| Maryland | $32/hr | $66,560 | 19 |
| Pennsylvania | $32/hr | $66,560 | 90 |
| South Dakota | $32/hr | $66,560 | 18 |
| Virginia | $32/hr | $66,560 | 79 |
| Delaware | $31/hr | $64,480 | 12 |
| Texas | $31/hr | $64,480 | 349 |
| Washington | $31/hr | $64,480 | 68 |
| Arizona | $30/hr | $62,400 | 176 |
| Massachusetts | $30/hr | $62,400 | 12 |
| Montana | $30/hr | $62,400 | 8 |
| Oregon | $30/hr | $62,400 | 30 |
| Colorado | $29/hr | $60,320 | 48 |
| Connecticut | $29/hr | $60,320 | 15 |
| Georgia | $29/hr | $60,320 | 100 |
| Tennessee | $29/hr | $60,320 | 20 |
| Alabama | $28/hr | $58,240 | 24 |
| Florida | $28/hr | $58,240 | 118 |
| Louisiana | $28/hr | $58,240 | 24 |
| Maine | $28/hr | $58,240 | 6 |
| Minnesota | $28/hr | $58,240 | 39 |
| Nevada | $28/hr | $58,240 | 11 |
| Idaho | $27/hr | $56,160 | 25 |
| Indiana | $27/hr | $56,160 | 18 |
| North Carolina | $27/hr | $56,160 | 15 |
| Oklahoma | $27/hr | $56,160 | 47 |
| Utah | $27/hr | $56,160 | 30 |
| Missouri | $26/hr | $54,080 | 42 |
| New Hampshire | $26/hr | $54,080 | 15 |
| New Mexico | $26/hr | $54,080 | 5 |
| Ohio | $26/hr | $54,080 | 44 |
| South Carolina | $26/hr | $54,080 | 30 |
| Wisconsin | $26/hr | $54,080 | 82 |
| Michigan | $25/hr | $52,000 | 48 |
| Arkansas | $24/hr | $49,920 | 18 |
| Nebraska | $24/hr | $49,920 | 27 |
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.