Welder Salary in the United States
The median active welding job in the US currently posts at $29/hr — about $60,320/yr at full-time hours. That's the live, employer-posted number across 1,986 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
$29/hr
≈ $60,320/yr full-time
75th percentile
$35/hr
Cert-stamped / specialty welders
Based on 1,986 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaii | $39/hr | $81,120 | 7 |
| Mississippi | $37/hr | $76,960 | 22 |
| New Jersey | $36/hr | $74,880 | 108 |
| California | $35/hr | $72,800 | 426 |
| Delaware | $34/hr | $70,720 | 11 |
| Washington | $34/hr | $70,720 | 63 |
| Kansas | $33/hr | $68,640 | 37 |
| Maine | $32/hr | $66,560 | 14 |
| Utah | $32/hr | $66,560 | 21 |
| Idaho | $31/hr | $64,480 | 19 |
| Illinois | $31/hr | $64,480 | 253 |
| Louisiana | $31/hr | $64,480 | 31 |
| Arizona | $30/hr | $62,400 | 184 |
| Colorado | $30/hr | $62,400 | 58 |
| Massachusetts | $30/hr | $62,400 | 22 |
| New York | $30/hr | $62,400 | 99 |
| West Virginia | $30/hr | $62,400 | 5 |
| Georgia | $29/hr | $60,320 | 162 |
| Indiana | $29/hr | $60,320 | 100 |
| Missouri | $29/hr | $60,320 | 58 |
| Oregon | $29/hr | $60,320 | 45 |
| Virginia | $29/hr | $60,320 | 90 |
| Connecticut | $28/hr | $58,240 | 19 |
| Maryland | $28/hr | $58,240 | 26 |
| Minnesota | $28/hr | $58,240 | 83 |
| Pennsylvania | $28/hr | $58,240 | 117 |
| South Carolina | $28/hr | $58,240 | 55 |
| Texas | $28/hr | $58,240 | 446 |
| Florida | $26/hr | $54,080 | 110 |
| Iowa | $26/hr | $54,080 | 19 |
| Nevada | $26/hr | $54,080 | 6 |
| Ohio | $26/hr | $54,080 | 134 |
| Oklahoma | $26/hr | $54,080 | 70 |
| Tennessee | $26/hr | $54,080 | 38 |
| Wisconsin | $26/hr | $54,080 | 87 |
| Alabama | $25/hr | $52,000 | 52 |
| Arkansas | $25/hr | $52,000 | 27 |
| Kentucky | $25/hr | $52,000 | 20 |
| North Carolina | $25/hr | $52,000 | 42 |
| South Dakota | $25/hr | $52,000 | 25 |
| Michigan | $24/hr | $49,920 | 68 |
| Nebraska | $24/hr | $49,920 | 25 |
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.