Methodology
Every figure on this site is reproduced from one named public source, with the industry code, year and read date printed beside it. Nothing is estimated, modelled or typed in by hand.
The source
All figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which is built from the unemployment-insurance tax reports every employer files, so it is a census of employers with payroll rather than a survey. We use the 2024 and 2023 annual averages for private ownership, industry code NAICS 339950, Sign Manufacturing, by state, read from the BLS open-data files on September 22, 2026.
What a "sign shop" is here
An establishment whose primary activity is manufacturing signs and related displays: electric and non-electric signs, channel letters, monument and storefront signs, printed banners, vehicle graphics and similar. It must have employees on payroll. That means the count leaves out owner-only shops with no staff, general print shops whose main business is paper, engravers, and installation contractors classified under construction codes. It is the narrowest honest definition of the sign trade, and it is the one the government keeps year after year.
Employees and pay
Employment is the annual average of monthly employment across the year's twelve months. Average annual pay is total annual wages divided by that employment, so it blends everyone on a sign shop's payroll, owners drawing a salary, fabricators, designers, installers and office staff, and a state with many part-time workers shows lower average pay for that reason. It is not a wage for one occupation; for that, the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey is the source.
Withheld values
Where a state has too few sign employers for a figure to be published without identifying one of them, the BLS withholds it. Such values show as a dash and the state is left out of the ranking for that measure. In 2024, 2 states had pay withheld.
Ranks, shares and changes
States are ranked by establishment count among the states with a published count; "median state" pay is the median of the published state averages. Share of U.S. shops divides a state's count by the national total of 7,581. Changes compare 2024 with 2023 for the same state, ownership and industry code.
Updates
The BLS publishes annual averages each spring for the prior year. This site is rebuilt when a new year appears. Tables may be reused with attribution to Sign Trade Data and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Corrections: hello@signtradedata.com.