Mechatronics Training Gap: Where Technician Pay Is High and Programs Are Few

Where Do Mechatronics Technicians Earn the Most Compared With Program Supply?

Each dot below is one state. Left to right is the median annual wage for mechatronics technicians in May 2025. Bottom to top is how many mechatronics programs the state has in our directory. If training followed pay, the dots would climb toward the upper right. They don't.

The six states in the top 10 for technician pay with thin training are North Dakota ($82,820), Maine ($82,510), Connecticut ($81,860), Washington ($81,220), Alaska ($80,290) and Illinois ($79,400). Only the other four, New Mexico, Nevada, California and Arizona, have six or more programs. New Mexico leads the country at $119,320 with 6 programs and 670 jobs.

The flip side is just as stark. Indiana has 12 programs and a median of $47,440, the lowest of the 40 states. Texas has 13 programs, the most jobs after California at 1,800, and a median of $54,460. Lots of programs and lots of jobs can still mean modest pay, so program count alone isn't a reason to pick a state.

A fair warning on the small markets. North Dakota reports 90 technician jobs, Alaska 40 and Montana 70, so those medians come from a handful of employers. The training gap there is real, but so is how few openings there are.

Which States Have Many Mechatronics Technician Jobs and Few Programs?

Divide each state's BLS technician jobs by its programs and the pressure points show up. Massachusetts has 920 jobs and a single program in our directory. Washington and Florida are in the same spot with one program each.

Spread the gap across the country and it gets bigger. The 16 states with two or fewer programs, among them Pennsylvania (650 jobs, 2 programs), New York (410, 2) and Minnesota (400, 2), hold 4,650 of the 15,000 jobs BLS reports at the state level. That's 31% of the technician workforce with at most two places to train in-state.

Mechatronics Program Cost and Length by Credential Level

The credential you pick changes how long you wait to earn and what each year costs. Tuition here is the annual in-state figure each program lists, so a four-year bachelor's costs about four of those years.

Certificates are the cheapest door in: 65 programs with a median of 12 months and $3,650 a year. Associate degrees are the biggest group at 93 programs, 24 months and $4,350 a year. The 75 bachelor's programs cost more than twice as much a year at a median of $10,075, and they spread wide, from $3,500 at a public university to $60,110 at a private one.

How Many Mechatronics Programs Are Online or Hybrid?

15 of the 244 programs, or 6%, are online or hybrid: 5 fully online and 10 hybrid. They sit in 10 states: Arkansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin. That includes 3 certificates, 5 associate degrees, 4 bachelor's programs and 3 master's programs.

Mechatronics is hands-on, so most programs need you in a lab with PLCs, sensors and robots. That's why remote study barely dents the gap. A student in Connecticut, Washington or Illinois can't enroll in an online or hybrid program from our directory in their own state. If you live in one of those states, check our list of best online mechatronics programs and expect to travel for lab weeks.

Mechatronics Programs and Technician Pay in All 51 Jurisdictions

Click a column heading to sort. A dash means the state has no figure in that column.

Download the data as a CSV (51 rows, one per state plus DC).

What the Mechatronics Training Gap Means If You're Choosing a Program

If you live in a state with plenty of programs, you have the luxury of comparing. Start with our best mechatronics associate programs and sort by cost, since a median associate degree runs $4,350 a year. Texas, Ohio and California give you the most choices.

If you live in a high-pay state with one or two programs, treat that program as your whole plan and look closely at its employer partners and its job placement. Then check whether a neighbor state's mechatronics certificate gets you working sooner at $3,650 a year. Certificates are the cheapest way to start, and you can often stack them toward an associate degree later.

If you can't move, apprenticeships are the other door. Many technicians learn on the job, and we cover that route in mechatronics apprenticeships. To see what you could earn once you're in, the mechatronics technician salary page has the full percentile and metro breakdown, and the mechatronics technician career guide lays out the steps. Browse every state at mechatronics programs by state.

Methodology and Sources

• Programs. 244 programs at 191 schools in the MechatronicsPrograms.com directory, counted by the state of the offering school. Levels are certificate (65), associate (93), bachelor's (75) and master's (11). Delivery is the format each program lists: on campus, online or hybrid.
• Pay and jobs. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 estimates, published April 30, 2026, for SOC 17-3024, Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians. National employment is 15,520 with a median of $73,900, a 10th percentile of $47,840 and a 90th percentile of $109,890. We use the state median annual wage and state employment.
• Coverage. BLS reports a median wage for 40 states; 39 also have a job count. Kansas, Arkansas, West Virginia and Utah have programs in the directory but no BLS state wage, so they sit out of the pay comparisons. Jobs per program is shown only where a state has both a job count and at least one program.
• Training gap. We define a thin state as one with three or fewer programs. The rank correlation of -0.21 is a Spearman coefficient across the 40 states with a wage.
• Tuition and length. Annual in-state tuition and full-time length as listed by each program, summarized by median and range. Tuition varies by residency and year, so treat the figures as a starting point.
• Limits. Technician jobs include every employer that hires the occupation, not only graduates of these programs, and many technicians train through apprenticeships or on the job. Small state job counts make small state medians swing.

Source for wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. How we vet and score programs is on our methodology page.

Cite This Report