Wage Percentiles Explained: 10th to 90th, and What Each Means for Your Offer

The Candidate Just Asked "Is That Your Best Offer?" — Here's How to Know

You've extended an offer to a journeyman HVAC tech. You landed on a number that felt right — somewhere between what you paid the last hire and what your gut said the market was. Then the candidate pauses, says he has another interview lined up, and asks if you can do better.

Can you? You don't actually know.

That's the gap that BLS wage percentiles close. They tell you, with hard national data, exactly where your number sits in the real market for that trade — whether you're in the bottom fifth, right at the middle, or genuinely competitive with the top third of employers. And once you understand what each percentile point means, you can walk into every offer conversation with a defensible answer.

This article breaks down the five percentile points the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes for every trade occupation — the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th — in plain English, with a worked example anchored on real BLS figures. By the end, you'll know exactly which one to anchor your next offer to, and why.

What a Wage Percentile Actually Means (In One Sentence)

A wage percentile is a ranking point. When the BLS says the 75th percentile wage for a trade occupation is a certain dollar amount, it means 75 out of every 100 workers in that role earn less than that figure — and 25 earn more.

That's it. No algebra required.

The BLS publishes these figures through its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, known as OEWS — a survey that samples approximately 1.1 million establishments across the country and produces wage estimates by occupation, state, and metro area. When you see a BLS percentile number, it's built from that survey; it's not a job-board average or a self-reported salary estimate. It is the authoritative federal benchmark, and it's the same data that powers every BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook wage figure you may have seen.

For a deeper look at how the OEWS survey is structured and what it covers, see our guide to reading BLS OEWS data for trades.

The Five Percentile Points — and What Each Tells an Employer

The BLS publishes five standard percentile points for most occupations. Here is what each one means in a hiring context.

10th percentile — the floor of the market. Nine out of ten workers in this trade earn more than this figure. Offering at the 10th percentile is not a cost-saving move; it's a signal to the candidate — and to the market — that the role is entry-level at best, or that the employer isn't tracking wages at all. You might see the 10th percentile used as the hard floor in a salary band, the lowest you would ever pay for a brand-new apprentice on day one.

25th percentile — early-career or entry range. Three out of four workers earn more than this. For a specialty trade shop, the 25th percentile typically describes a newer journeyman or someone just out of apprenticeship in a market where labor is not especially tight. It is a legitimate anchor for your band minimum, but it will struggle to compete for experienced talent.

50th percentile (the median) — the market midpoint. Half of all workers in this trade earn less; half earn more. This is the most widely cited BLS figure — it appears in the Occupational Outlook Handbook as the headline wage — and it represents the true center of gravity of the labor market. Anchoring an offer at the median means you are exactly competitive: you will attract candidates who value the role, the employer, or the benefits enough to meet the market, but you will lose price-sensitive candidates to employers paying above median. For most stable, non-urgent hires in a moderately competitive market, the median is a reasonable starting anchor.

One note worth making here: the median and the mean (average) are not the same thing, and for trade wages they can differ in meaningful ways. If you want to understand when to use each one, our article on mean vs. median wage for trades walks through the distinction.

75th percentile — the competitive offer zone. Only one in four workers earns more than this. Offering at or near the 75th percentile signals to the market that you are a serious, above-average employer. It is where you go when: the role has been open for more than a few weeks; the candidate has specialized skills you genuinely need; you are in a metro area where competition for that trade is intense; or you simply cannot afford to lose this hire. This is the percentile that wins counter-offers.

90th percentile — top of market. Nine out of ten workers earn less than this. Wages at the 90th percentile reflect the most experienced, most specialized, or most in-demand workers in the trade — often in high-cost metros, in highly unionized segments, or in roles that carry supervisory or estimating responsibility alongside the field work. Paying at the 90th percentile for a standard journeyman hire is almost always above-market; where the 90th percentile becomes useful is in setting the ceiling of your salary band, or in understanding the absolute top of what you may eventually pay a long-tenured lead technician.

A Worked Example with Real BLS Numbers

Let's make this concrete using a trade where the numbers are clear.

The BLS reports the following national wage percentiles for Electricians (SOC 47-2111), as of May 2024:

Percentile	Annual Wage (May 2024, national)
10th	$39,430
50th (median)	$62,350
90th	$106,030

(Source: BLS OEWS, May 2024. Confirm the current figure at bls.gov/oes before using in an offer.)

Now suppose you are hiring a journeyman electrician — a few years of experience, not yet a lead, in a market you'd describe as moderately competitive. A reasonable offer anchor is somewhere between the median ($62,350) and the 75th percentile. The BLS does not always publish the 25th and 75th for every occupation in every geography, but you can use the median and the 90th to reason about the shape of the distribution.

Here is a simple worked example of how you might build a salary band from those anchors:

• Band minimum (entry-level journeyman): Start slightly below the median — say, $58,000 as a round figure — to reflect someone with minimal independent experience.
• Band midpoint (fully competent journeyman): Anchor at or just above the median — $63,000 — representing the market center for a capable, experienced hire.
• Band maximum (senior journeyman / near lead): Set a ceiling that approaches but doesn't exceed the 90th percentile for this type of role — $80,000 to $85,000 — leaving headroom for a genuine promotion into a lead or foreman title.

This is a worked example to illustrate the method, not a prescribed formula. The right band for your shop depends on your geography, your benefits package, union or prevailing-wage context, and what your competitors are doing in your market. For a step-by-step walkthrough of building an offer-ready band, see our guide to building a salary band for trades.

Which Percentile Should Your Offer Actually Anchor To?

The short answer: it depends on three things — how urgently you need to fill the role, how competitive your local labor market is, and how experienced the specific candidate is.

A simple mental model:

• Routine hire, standard candidate, moderate market → median (50th)
• Urgent fill, experienced candidate, tight market → 75th percentile
• Mission-critical senior role, can't afford to lose → approach 90th, justify it
• Pure entry-level, abundant labor supply → 25th percentile, with a clear path

What you should never do is set an offer number without knowing where it lands in the distribution. "We pay $28 an hour" tells you nothing unless you know that $28 is the 42nd percentile for your trade in your state — or the 61st. Context is everything.

We dig into the tactical decision of which percentile to pay — and how to document that decision for consistency across your hiring team — in our dedicated article on which percentile you should pay. And if you want to see how percentile anchoring fits into a full benchmarking process, the skilled trades wage benchmarking guide covers the end-to-end workflow.

The One Thing the Percentile Doesn't Tell You

BLS OEWS percentiles are national figures unless you pull the state or metro-specific table. A national median is the average of Duluth and San Francisco and rural Mississippi all rolled into one number. That national figure is genuinely useful as a baseline — it tells you the shape of the market — but before you finalize an offer, you should check whether BLS publishes a state or metro-level wage for your specific occupation and geography.

You can do that directly at bls.gov/oes. Pull the table for your state or metropolitan statistical area (an MSA is the BLS term for a major metro region and its surrounding commuter counties), find the SOC code for your trade, and read the percentile column. That local figure is the one that belongs in your offer.

Where BLS suppresses a local estimate — because the sample is too small to publish reliably — fall back to the state figure, or to the national figure with a note that local conditions may differ. Suppression is common for rarer trades in smaller metros. It does not mean the data is wrong; it means the sample was too small to meet BLS publication standards.

Stay Sharp on Trade Wages — Sign Up for the Newsletter

Wage percentiles are not static. BLS releases updated OEWS figures annually, and the numbers shift with labor-market conditions, construction demand cycles, and regional economic changes. The best way to stay current — and to know when a published figure you're using in offers has aged out — is to have someone track it for you.

Our newsletter delivers practical, BLS-grounded wage intelligence for trade employers: new releases, what changed and why, and how to adjust your offer strategy when the numbers move. No jargon, no filler — just the update you actually need before the next hire.

Subscribe at SkilledMarkets.com/pricing to see what a wage-intelligence workflow looks like for a shop your size, or look for the newsletter signup on any page of the site.

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Note on data: All wage figures in this article are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, May 2024 release, and represent national estimates. Confirm the most current figure at bls.gov/oes before using any number in an offer.