Your State's Pay Figure Is Hiding Your City: Collision Pay by Metro Area
Short answer: a state median blends a city with everything around it, and for a decision it is the wrong unit. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue proves it. So does every other metro on this page.
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue's top decile for body repairers is $154,890. Washington's state figure is $133,140. Read the state row and you understate the city's ceiling by $21,750.
And the gap inside a state can rival the gap between states. The 51 state medians span $26,410, from Kentucky to Rhode Island. California's metros span $20,030 on their own, from Visalia at $58,030 to Santa Rosa-Petaluma at $78,060. Three-quarters of the entire national spread, inside one state.
First, the reason we will not tell you the highest-paying metro in America
The federal file says it is Hinesville, Georgia, at $81,790, comfortably ahead of San Francisco.
Hinesville has thirty body repairers.
That is the whole problem with metro data and it has to come before anything else on this page. 149 of the 361 metros with a published median rest on fewer than 100 people. At that size one person changing jobs moves the number, and a league table sorted without a floor is a list of small samples wearing a crown.
So every ranking below takes a minimum of 100 body repairers in the metro. That threshold is a judgement, it is stated rather than buried, and it changes the answer: the highest-paying metro we are willing to name is Santa Rosa-Petaluma, California, not Hinesville. Thin metros are still in the data and can be looked up. They are just not allowed to top a table.
Puerto Rico's two metros are in the federal file and are excluded from every ranking here, because the rest of this site covers the fifty states and DC.
The twenty best-paying metros for a collision technician
Minimum 100 body repairers employed.
| Metro area | Body repairers | Bottom 10% under | Median | Top 10% over |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA | 260 | $48,960 | $78,060 | $100,150 |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 610 | $48,570 | $76,800 | $100,250 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 2,680 | $47,610 | $76,740 | $96,240 |
| Vallejo, CA | 160 | $45,630 | $73,890 | $97,960 |
| Modesto, CA | 180 | $46,450 | $68,640 | $82,490 |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,270 | $41,910 | $67,090 | $101,280 |
| Atlantic City-Hammonton, NJ | 130 | $45,150 | $66,340 | $94,250 |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,340 | $46,350 | $64,590 | $154,890 |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 1,950 | $39,560 | $63,920 | $81,730 |
| Stockton-Lodi, CA | 260 | $39,120 | $63,810 | $95,080 |
| Fresno, CA | 310 | $38,360 | $63,670 | $82,460 |
| Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA | 120 | $44,570 | $63,360 | $81,260 |
| Charleston-North Charleston, SC | 660 | $48,790 | $63,080 | $78,110 |
| Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | 940 | $45,940 | $63,020 | $95,020 |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 1,010 | $38,900 | $62,640 | $91,840 |
| Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA | 100 | $39,410 | $62,610 | $83,550 |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 2,130 | $38,240 | $62,550 | $90,140 |
| Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN | 170 | $38,810 | $62,380 | $72,500 |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 1,830 | $47,990 | $62,200 | $104,270 |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 1,650 | $39,790 | $61,990 | $87,410 |
Where the ceiling is highest
The 90th percentile is what the top tenth of the trade earns. It is a different question from the median and it produces a different list.
| Metro area | Body repairers | Median | Top 10% over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,340 | $64,590 | $154,890 |
| Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA | 100 | $58,240 | $151,110 |
| Macon-Bibb County, GA | 100 | $48,090 | $130,650 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,150 | $59,770 | $128,960 |
| Reno, NV | 260 | $60,210 | $127,930 |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 690 | $60,520 | $126,890 |
| Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA | 170 | $56,660 | $125,930 |
| Boulder, CO | 120 | $61,570 | $125,530 |
| Savannah, GA | 200 | $56,340 | $124,990 |
| Greeley, CO | 140 | $58,410 | $124,110 |
| Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | 820 | $60,100 | $123,130 |
| Billings, MT | 130 | $58,960 | $122,970 |
Washington takes the top of this table and it is not a rounding artefact. Seattle alone employs 1,340 body repairers with a 90th of $154,890. That is more than the ceiling in any state, including Washington's own.
The lowest-paying metros
Minimum 100 body repairers employed.
| Metro area | Body repairers | Bottom 10% under | Median | Top 10% over |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tallahassee, FL | 120 | $33,900 | $45,160 | $74,480 |
| Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH | 180 | $31,290 | $45,760 | $61,340 |
| Jackson, TN | 120 | $33,300 | $45,770 | $73,890 |
| Youngstown-Warren, OH | 200 | $35,250 | $45,960 | $75,930 |
| Port St. Lucie, FL | 180 | $30,120 | $46,130 | $72,690 |
| Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA | 120 | $31,640 | $46,150 | $75,260 |
| Lexington-Fayette, KY | 200 | $28,720 | $46,170 | $81,450 |
| Columbus, GA-AL | 130 | $34,530 | $46,220 | $68,700 |
| Clarksville, TN-KY | 110 | $29,380 | $46,240 | $70,810 |
| Knoxville, TN | 520 | $35,130 | $46,410 | $76,060 |
How much a state figure hides
Lowest and highest metro median inside each state, against the state's own published figure:
| State | Metros counted | Lowest metro | Highest metro | Spread inside the state | The state figure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | 17 | Visalia $58,030 | Santa Rosa-Petaluma $78,060 | $20,030 | $66,860 |
| Michigan | 7 | Saginaw $48,640 | Detroit-Warren-Dearborn $62,550 | $13,910 | $56,880 |
| Texas | 17 | College Station-Bryan $47,200 | Midland $58,750 | $11,550 | $51,700 |
| Georgia | 4 | Brunswick-St. Simons $46,850 | Savannah $56,340 | $9,490 | $51,190 |
| Pennsylvania | 8 | Erie $49,050 | Chambersburg $58,280 | $9,230 | $53,660 |
| Florida | 16 | Tallahassee $45,160 | Gainesville $54,300 | $9,140 | $48,600 |
| Ohio | 7 | Youngstown-Warren $45,960 | Columbus $51,180 | $5,220 | $49,080 |
| North Carolina | 9 | Fayetteville $47,960 | Durham-Chapel Hill $52,440 | $4,480 | $50,520 |
Read California's row. A body repairer in Visalia and one in Santa Rosa are in the same state, under the same law, reading the same state median of $66,860, and $20,030 apart. The state figure is accurate about the state and describes neither of them.
Michigan is the same story at $13,910: Detroit-Warren-Dearborn at $62,550 against Saginaw at $48,640.
What this does not tell you
It is not adjusted for cost of living, and at metro level that matters far more than it does at state level. San Francisco and Visalia are not the same place to spend $60,000. This dataset does not answer that and we are not going to approximate it.
It is not every place. Metros are defined areas; the rest of each state sits in "nonmetropolitan" residuals that BLS publishes separately and that are not cities. We have not used them here, because a balance-of-state area is not somewhere you can move to.
It is not a job offer. A median is the middle of everyone currently doing the job in that metro, veterans included. The bottom column is closer to an entry figure and is still not one.
It is one occupation. SOC 49-3021, automotive body and related repairers. Mechanics (49-3023) are published for 392 metros and glass installers (49-3022) for only 61; both are in the underlying data and neither is tabled here.
Small metros stay volatile even above our floor. A metro with 110 people is steadier than one with 30 and is not steady. Treat anything under a few hundred as directional.
What we could not verify
- Why the pattern exists. We can show that metro spread rivals state spread. We have not established what drives it and are not going to guess.
- Metro figures against an independent republisher. Our state tables are checked row by row against ONET; ONET publishes metro data too but we have not run that comparison at this scale. The metro figures rest on the source file and on our own checks, which is one channel fewer than the state pages.
- Nonmetropolitan areas, in the separate BLS balance-of-state file, unread.
- Change over time. One release. A metro that pays well this year may simply have had a good year.
Sources
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, metropolitan and nonmetropolitan area file, downloaded through a browser on 18 August 2026 after an automated request to BLS was refused under their stated policy. Metropolitan rows only (
AREA_TYPE4). US federal public domain. Parsed bytools/pull_oews_metro.py, tables generated bytools/build-metro-tables.js. - State comparisons from the same survey's state file. See what a collision technician is paid in every state, where all 51 rows are verified against an independent republication.
- What a collision technician is paid in every state
- What a mechanic is paid in every state
- Every job in a body shop, and what it pays
- Dealer or independent: what the pay data shows
General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.