How much do elevator installers make in Michigan in 2026?

Elevator installers and repairers in Michigan earn a median $99,140 a year, which works out to $47.66 an hour based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That puts this trade well above most construction and extraction occupations in the state. The numbers come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025.

The spread across the pay scale is wide. Workers at the 25th percentile — those earlier in their careers or in slower markets — bring in $60,760 a year, or about $29.21 an hour. Workers at the 75th percentile earn $139,690 a year, roughly $67.16 an hour. That $78,930 gap between the bottom and top quartile tells you this is a trade where experience, certifications, and the specific work you take on make a real difference to your paycheck.

Entry into the elevator trade typically runs through a four-year apprenticeship administered by the National Elevator Industry Educational Program (NEIEP). During that period wages are set as a percentage of journeyman scale and step up as you complete semesters. Once you hold a journeyman card, Michigan requires an elevator mechanic license issued through the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. That licensing requirement keeps the workforce credentialed and helps hold wages up relative to unlicensed trades.

Geography inside Michigan matters. The Detroit metro — Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties — concentrates the heaviest commercial construction activity in the state. High-rise office buildings, hospital systems, and dense residential towers all require elevator installation and ongoing maintenance. Grand Rapids is the second-largest market, with significant healthcare and mixed-use development driving demand. Lansing, Flint, and Ann Arbor generate steadier maintenance and modernization work rather than large new-installation projects, which can affect the mix of hours and overtime available to workers in those areas.

The nature of the work also shifts pay. New construction installation is physically intensive and often pays better for the duration of a project, but it follows the construction cycle and can include periods of lower hours. Maintenance and repair contracts — where you're responsible for a portfolio of units in office buildings, hospitals, or residential towers — provide more consistent hours year-round. Modernization work, upgrading older hydraulic or traction units to current code, sits between the two and is a growing segment as Michigan's older commercial building stock ages.

Overtime is common in this trade. Elevator mechanics are frequently on call for emergency service, and callbacks outside regular hours are paid at premium rates. Workers who are willing to take on on-call rotations can push their total annual earnings noticeably above the figures shown here, which reflect straight base wages only.

The 75th percentile figure of $139,690 ($67.16/hr) is not a ceiling. Lead mechanics, foremen, and workers who hold additional certifications — such as Qualified Elevator Inspector (QEI) credentials — often exceed it. Inspectors employed by the state or third-party inspection firms represent a separate but related career path that some journeyman mechanics move into after accumulating field experience.

No union scale data is available for this specific trade and state at the time of publication. For workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement, wage and benefit details are set by the local contract and may differ from the BLS figures shown here. Benefits — health insurance, pension contributions, and paid time off — are part of total compensation and are not captured in the hourly and annual wage figures on this page.