The 10 Best States For Logging Equipment Operators (And The Worst)

Best Logging Equipment Operator States Research Summary

The best state for logging equipment operators is Idaho, where the average annual salary is $49,500 and the average experienced salary is $75,280.

The worst state for logging equipment operators is New York, where the average annual salary is only $29,840.

There are currently 25,510 logging equipment operator jobs available across the U.S.

Approximently 98.2% of logging equipment operators are men.

Logging Equipment Operators are one of the most common jobs in America. Additionally, a significant number of people work as logging equipment operators in every state in the union — it’s not like they are all just concentrated in California or the South.

Since logging equipment operators are such a prominent occupation, we at Zippia wanted to look at where logging equipment operators have it the best: where there are plenty of jobs to go around, and people get paid what they deserve during every phase of their career.

To that end, we dove into the numbers from the BLS to figure out which states have the best opportunities for logging equipment operators. After all the numbers had been crunched, we were left with this list of the best of best for America’s logging equipment operators:

So there you have it — Idaho is the best of the best when it comes to being a logging equipment operators.

How did it end up here and does it really deserve this ranking? Read on to see how we completed our research on the best states for logging equipment operators and for more on the top ten states.

How we determined the best states to be a logging equipment operator

Here at Zippia, we talk to a lot of people of all different backgrounds looking for jobs. Our research has concluded that there are two common things people want in a job:

Availability of jobs
Pay

So in order to find out the best states for logging equipment operators in America we needed to figure out where the jobs are and how well logging equipment operators get paid. This led to the following criteria taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Occupational Employment Statistics for 2015:

Location quotient. A measure of how common a job is a given state.
Average annual salary.
Average annual salary for entry-level work.
Average annual salary for experienced professionals.

To make all the salary numbers more apples to apples across states, we compared the salary data relative to the state’s cost of living.

Applying this standardization allows us to account for that fact that it costs more to live in certain in states. For example, the average salary for logging equipment operators in California is $41,970 and the average salary in Oregon is $43,530, but the Illinois salary actually goes further in paying for life’s essentials.

In order to develop and overall ranking, we ranked each state for each criteria from 1 to 50 where 1 was the best.

We then averaged all the rankings for a state into a Job Score with the state having the lowest overall Job Score earning the distinction of being the best state for logging equipment operators in America.

So without further ado, let’s get into just what made each state so great for logging equipment operators.