AutoCAD salary in 2025 is a software question wearing a wage question's clothes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish pay for AutoCAD, or for any other drafting program. It publishes pay for drafters. In May 2025 the median for all drafters was $68,090. Architectural and civil drafters, the group most often hired to live in AutoCAD, had a median of $66,150. The mean for that group was $70,740.
AutoCAD remains the file a huge number of shops still issue. That commercial fact does not create a premium in the national table. A worker who knows the program is more employable. The employer's industry and the worker's occupation decide the published wage.
Who is actually being measured
Drafters use computer aided design software to turn designs into technical drawings. The handbook lists that as the job, not as a brand skill. Some employers still say CAD operator. The survey folds operators into drafters. If the posting says AutoCAD drafter and the work is sheets, details, and dimensions, CAD drafter salary 2025 is the page with the full band: under $46,700 at the bottom tenth, $68,090 in the middle, over $102,590 at the top tenth.
Architectural and civil work is where AutoCAD, and Civil 3D on top of it, shows up most often in building and infrastructure offices. The joint median of $66,150 is the official number. Civil 3D does not get its own line. MicroStation does not either. Civil drafter salary 2025 explains the shared code. Architectural drafter salary 2025 stays with buildings. Both pages have to use the same wage, because that is all the government printed.
Industry matters more than the license key
| Drafter group or industry, May 2025 median | Wage |
|---|---|
| All drafters | $68,090 |
| Architectural and civil drafters | $66,150 |
| Mechanical drafters | $71,550 |
| Electrical and electronics drafters | $76,870 |
| Drafters in construction | $70,640 |
| Drafters in architectural and engineering services | $68,090 |
| Drafters in manufacturing | $65,370 |
| Drafters in administrative and support services | $61,360 |
A construction employer paid the highest of those industry medians. A staffing or support employer paid the lowest. Two AutoCAD users with the same certificate can sit in those two cells. The software did not cause the $9,000 gap. The employer category did.
Mechanical drafters, who more often use SolidWorks or Inventor, had a higher median than the architectural and civil group. Electrical drafters were higher still. Knowing AutoCAD instead of those tools is not a published raise or a published cut. It is a signal about which industry you are probably in. The industry then has its own number.
Revit did not delete this wage
A lot of building work has moved into Revit and other modeling tools. The drafter handbook already treats building information modeling as part of the job. The architectural and civil median includes people whose main tool is AutoCAD and people whose main tool is a model. The survey did not split them, so any claim that Revit pays a specific premium over AutoCAD is a claim from outside this data.
Revit designer salary 2025 uses the same drafter median and then the architect median of $99,280, because the argument worth having is about occupation, not about which Autodesk product opens the file. An architect median for an AutoCAD drafter is the same mistake as a Revit premium. The license and the education are what the extra money is for.
Employment, and the tool that speeds the work
Drafter employment is projected to grow 1 percent from 2025 to 2035. Architectural and civil drafters, the AutoCAD heartland, are projected to grow 5 percent. The bureau says CAD and BIM raise productivity and let engineers and architects keep tasks that used to be drafted. AutoCAD is part of that productivity story. It is also still the skill named on thousands of requisitions. Both things are true. Productivity pressure and a living job market are not opposites in a replacement driven occupation. The handbook expects about 14,400 drafter openings a year, mostly because people leave.
How to answer the salary question in an interview
Say the occupation, then the industry. An architectural drafter in a design firm is near $66,150 to $68,090 at the national middle. A drafter placed through a support firm is nearer $61,360 if the all drafter industry cut applies. A mechanical AutoCAD user who is really a mechanical drafter should be looking at $71,550, not at the architectural number, even if the software is the same.
Do not add a dollar figure for years of AutoCAD. The survey does not measure them. Do not subtract one for also knowing Revit. Bring a portfolio of the drawing types, because that is what sorts you into a specialty the table does recognize.
Sources
- Occupational Outlook Handbook, Drafters. May 2025 medians, industry medians, and outlook.
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Mean for architectural and civil drafters.