Supervisor of Mechanics and Installers Salary in Texas: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A first-line supervisor of mechanics, installers, and repairers in Texas earns a median salary of $76,760 a year, or about $36.90 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most people in the role land between $59,210 and $98,610. The bottom 10 percent make around $46,860, and the top 10 percent clear $125,700. Texas has no state income tax, which keeps more of that pay in your pocket than most states.

How Texas pay compares to the national figure

The national median for this role is $79,860, per the BLS OEWS 2025 release. Texas sits at $76,760, which is $3,100 below the national line, or about 3.9 percent lower on the headline number. That looks like a small penalty until you account for taxes. Texas levies no state income tax, so a Texas supervisor keeps a larger share of each dollar than someone earning the identical gross in California, New York, or any state with a meaningful income tax.

The state mean (average) sits higher than the median, at $81,430. When the mean runs above the median like this, it tells you the top of the pay range is stretched out. A cluster of high earners in specialized fields, think oil and gas, aviation maintenance, or industrial plant work, pulls the average up while the typical worker stays nearer the median. For a real person weighing this career, the median is the honest middle, and the 25th to 75th percentile band, $59,210 to $98,610, is where most offers will fall.

Texas also carries one of the largest workforces in the country for this occupation. The state employs roughly 75,340 first-line supervisors of mechanics, installers, and repairers. That volume matters: a deep employer base means more openings, more lateral moves, and more competition for skilled supervisors, all of which support pay over time.

It helps to read the gap in context. A $3,100 shortfall against the national median sounds like a reason to look elsewhere, but the national figure blends in high-cost, high-tax states like California, New York, and Massachusetts that report large gross salaries and then take a chunk back at the state line. Texas reports a slightly lower gross and keeps the full amount. On a net basis, which is the number covered in section four, the Texas worker comes out ahead of an identically paid worker in any income-tax state. The headline gap and the take-home reality point in opposite directions, and the take-home reality is the one that pays your bills.

Texas pay by experience level

Pay for this role climbs steeply with experience, crew size, and the complexity of the equipment you oversee. A newly promoted lead handling a small shop sits near the bottom of the range. A seasoned maintenance superintendent running a large industrial or transportation operation sits near the top. The table below maps the BLS percentile points to typical career stages.

The jump from the median to the 75th percentile is worth $21,850 a year. That gap is usually the difference between supervising one crew and managing a full department, or between a general repair shop and a specialized, safety-critical operation. Reaching the 90th percentile, $125,700, almost always means a superintendent or maintenance manager title, profit-and-loss responsibility, or oversight of multiple sites. Hourly figures above are derived from the annual values at a standard 2,080-hour year.

Look at the full spread for a moment. The distance from the 10th percentile ($46,860) to the 90th ($125,700) is $78,840, which means the top earners in this role make roughly 2.7 times what the bottom earners make. That is a wide spread for a single occupation, and it tells you the title alone is not the pay driver. What you supervise, where you supervise it, and how many people and dollars you are responsible for matter far more than the job label. The early-career step from the 10th to the 25th percentile is $12,350, and the step from the 25th to the median is $17,550. Both of those moves are realistic inside the first several years if you add scope and credentials, which is exactly what section five lays out.

Texas pay by metro area

Where you work inside Texas changes the number. The two big metros, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, pay the most and employ the most people. El Paso sits well below the rest. Here are the five largest Texas metro markets for this role, by employment, from the BLS OEWS 2025 data.

Dallas-Fort Worth leads at $78,740, about $1,980 above the statewide median. Houston is right behind at $78,250, with nearly the same headcount. Together, those two metros employ close to 39,000 supervisors, more than half of the entire state total. Austin ($76,270) and San Antonio ($75,790) sit close to the state median, within a few hundred dollars of each other. El Paso is the outlier at $64,520, roughly $14,220 below Dallas-Fort Worth and $12,240 under the state median, a reflection of a smaller industrial base and lower local wage floors along the border.

One practical takeaway: the highest-paying metros are also the largest job markets, so chasing pay and chasing opportunity point in the same direction here. If you’re early in your career and mobile, the Dallas-Houston corridor offers both the deepest pipeline of supervisor openings and the strongest median pay in the state.

The spread between metros is narrower than it looks at first, with one exception. Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio all sit within a $2,950 band, from $75,790 to $78,740. For four of the five biggest markets, your pay barely moves whether you supervise a crew in Houston or San Antonio, so the smarter way to compare those four is on housing cost, not salary. San Antonio’s lower cost of living can make its $75,790 median go further than Austin’s $76,270, even though the gross is slightly smaller. El Paso is the one market where the salary itself drops meaningfully, by about 18 percent against Dallas-Fort Worth, and that is the trade for the region’s lower living costs. The combined employment of Austin and San Antonio, 11,790 positions, shows there is a steady supervisor market in central and south Texas even without the headcount of the two giant metros.

Take-home pay after tax in Texas

Gross salary is the headline; take-home is what funds your life. Texas has no state income tax, so the only mandatory deductions on a standard paycheck are federal income tax and FICA (Social Security and Medicare). The table below runs each percentile point through 2026 federal withholding and FICA for a single filer taking the standard deduction. Your real number shifts with filing status, dependents, retirement contributions, and benefits.

At the median salary of $76,760, a Texas supervisor takes home about $62,387 a year, or $5,199 a month, after an effective tax rate near 18.7 percent. The entry-level worker keeps about 84.7 percent of gross; the senior earner at $125,700 keeps about 76.9 percent, because more income falls into higher federal brackets. Notice the state-tax column stays at $0 across every row. That zero is the whole Texas advantage.

Track the effective rate as pay climbs and you can see the federal bracket structure at work. The entry earner pays about 15.3 percent all-in, the median earner 18.7 percent, the experienced earner 21.1 percent, and the senior earner 23.1 percent. That rising rate is normal and expected, because the United States uses graduated federal brackets where only the next dollar of income is taxed at the higher rate, not your whole salary. The practical lesson for a Texas worker chasing a raise: a jump from the median to the 75th percentile adds $21,850 in gross but only about $15,371 in net, because federal tax and FICA take the rest. Always price a raise on the after-tax gain, not the gross headline.

Here is the comparison that an AI summary won’t run for you. Take the same $76,760 median and drop it into California, a high-tax state. A single filer earning that gross in Texas nets about $62,387. In California, that same salary nets roughly $59,221, because California income tax claws back the difference. The gap is $3,166 a year that stays in a Texas worker’s pocket, every year, on the median salary alone. Over a ten-year stretch in the role, that’s more than $31,000 in pure tax savings, before any raise. Scale it up to the senior pay band and the annual gap widens further.

The number that actually matters is net pay minus local housing. Take-home looks generous until rent or a mortgage lands. A median earner clearing $5,199 a month has real room in a market like San Antonio or El Paso, where housing runs cheaper, and a tighter budget in central Austin, where costs have climbed hard. Before you accept an offer, subtract your real monthly housing cost from the net-monthly figure above. That remainder, not the gross salary, is your true standard of living. To pressure-test a specific offer with your own filing status and deductions, run it through the Texas paycheck calculator. If you’d rather hand the whole filing off when tax season comes, TurboTax walks you through federal withholding line by line.

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How to earn more as a mechanics supervisor in Texas

The pay range here is wide, $46,860 at the 10th percentile to $125,700 at the 90th, which means the ceiling is real and reachable. Closing that gap comes down to the equipment you oversee, the certifications you carry, and the size of the operation you run. Concrete moves that push you up the percentile ladder in Texas:

• Move into a high-wage industry. Texas pay clusters at the top in oil and gas, petrochemical plants, aviation and aerospace maintenance, and heavy industrial sites along the Gulf Coast and in the Permian Basin. A supervisor at a refinery or a fleet maintenance hub routinely earns near the 75th to 90th percentile, $98,610 to $125,700.
• Stack technical certifications. ASE Master and Advanced Level certifications, EPA 608 for refrigeration, NIMS for industrial maintenance, and OSHA 30 safety credentials all read as proof you can run a compliant, low-incident crew. Each one is a concrete line on a promotion case.
• Add management and reliability training. Lean, Six Sigma, CMRP (Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional), and basic project-management coursework move you from “best technician” to “person who runs the department.” Self-paced supervisory and reliability courses through Coursera are a low-cost way to build that case before you ask for the title.
• Target the Dallas-Houston corridor. The two largest metros pay the most and post the most openings. Relocating from El Paso ($64,520 median) to Dallas-Fort Worth ($78,740 median) is worth roughly $14,220 a year on the median alone.
• Take on people and budget scope. The leap from the median to the 90th percentile is almost always a leap in responsibility: more crews, multiple shifts, multiple sites, or profit-and-loss ownership. Volunteer for the scheduling, budgeting, and hiring duties that build the resume for a superintendent or maintenance-manager role.
• Negotiate on total comp. In industrial and energy settings, shift differentials, on-call pay, overtime, and annual safety or production bonuses can add thousands on top of base. Always price the offer on total compensation, not base salary alone.

Job outlook for mechanics supervisors in Texas

Texas employs about 75,340 first-line supervisors of mechanics, installers, and repairers, one of the deepest markets in the country for the role. That scale is driven by the state’s industrial base: energy, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, construction equipment, and a large vehicle fleet sector all need people to run maintenance crews. Supervisor roles like this one don’t offshore and don’t automate away easily, because the work is hands-on, on-site, and judgment-heavy.

Demand concentrates in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, which together account for nearly 39,000 of the state’s positions. San Antonio (6,230) and Austin (5,560) add steady mid-size markets, while El Paso (1,610) is smaller but still active. The five metros covered here add up to about 52,320 jobs, which leaves roughly 23,000 more positions spread across smaller Texas markets, the Permian Basin, the Gulf Coast refining belt, and rural industrial sites. That distribution means a supervisor isn’t locked into one or two cities to find work. For anyone holding strong technical credentials and a few years of lead experience, the volume of openings across these metros makes Texas a favorable place to move up. To see live postings and pay ranges by metro, scan a board like ZipRecruiter and filter by your target city.

Related and higher-paying roles in Texas

If you’re weighing adjacent supervisor and inspection roles in Texas, here’s how they stack against the $76,760 median for a first-line mechanics supervisor, using BLS OEWS 2025 figures for the state.

A Production and Operating Supervisor in Texas earns a median of $70,140, which is $6,620 LESS than a first-line mechanics supervisor in Texas. An Inspector, Tester, Sorter, Sampler, and Weigher earns a median of $46,210, which is $30,550 LESS than this role. On the median, supervising a mechanics and installation crew pays more than both of these adjacent paths in Texas, which makes a lateral move into either one a pay cut at the typical level.

That ranking is worth keeping in mind if you’re charting a path. The inspector and tester role, at $46,210, sits right around the 10th percentile of the mechanics-supervisor range, so a technician thinking about quality and inspection work as a step up should know it pays close to entry-level supervisor money in Texas, not more. The production supervisor role at $70,140 is closer, within $6,620 of this role, and it can be a sideways move that opens different industries rather than a raise. If pay is the goal, staying on the mechanics and installation supervision track and climbing the percentile ladder within it beats switching lanes. The sibling-state links below let you check how the same role pays in California, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania if relocation is on the table.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 (occupation 49-1011, Texas state and metro estimates); federal and FICA tax estimates for tax year 2026 (single filer, standard deduction). Last updated 2026. See our methodology.