Statewide pay Government data
Drywall installers in Tennessee earn a statewide median of $47,510 a year, 12% below the typical U.S. metro, ranking #38 of 49 states. About 1,150 people work in the trade statewide.
Statewide pay range
States ranked near Tennessee
See all states on the drywall installer overview.
Pay by city Government data
BLS publishes drywall installer pay for 5 Tennessee metros: Chattanooga, Clarksville, Kingsport, Memphis and Nashville.
| Metro | Median pay | Real pay | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|
| NashvilleTENNESSEE · TN | $50,640 | $52,565 | 500 |
| MemphisTENNESSEE · TN | $47,100 | $51,096 | 140 |
| KingsportTENNESSEE · TN | $45,670 | $52,830 | 40 |
| ChattanoogaTENNESSEE · TN | $45,170 | $49,386 | 60 |
| ClarksvilleTENNESSEE · TN | $39,480 | $43,410 | 40 |
Pay: BLS OEWS, May 2025 (metro-level). Real pay: BEA price parities, 2024. How we calculate
Pay outside the cities Government data
BLS also reports pay for Tennessee's rural (nonmetropolitan) regions.
BLS OEWS nonmetropolitan areas, May 2025.
The job (national)
Apply plasterboard or other wallboard to ceilings or interior walls of buildings. Apply or mount acoustical tiles or blocks, strips, or sheets of shock-absorbing materials to ceilings and walls of buildings to reduce or reflect sound. Materials may be of decorative quality. Includes lathers who fasten wooden, metal, or rockboard lath to walls, ceilings, or partitions of buildings to provide support base for plaster, fireproofing, or acoustical material.
Nationally, jobs are projected to grow 2.5% from 2025 to 2035, with about 6,600 openings a year. Typical training: moderate-term on-the-job training.
Nationally, drywall installers have 187 injuries or illnesses serious enough to miss work per 10,000 full-time workers, 2.2× the rate for all jobs (87). The most common cause is being struck by or caught in objects and equipment.
What the work is like Government data
How often drywall installers deal with each condition, from surveys of workers in the job.
Getting started usually takes some preparation (high school plus months of training).
O*NET 31.0 Work Context and Job Zones (U.S. Department of Labor), national.
Serious injuries & deaths reported to OSHA Government data
Tennessee runs its own workplace-safety program (an OSHA State Plan), so its injury reports aren't in the federal dataset. Nationally, in states federal OSHA covers, drywall and insulation contractors filed 512 severe injury reports from 2015 to 2024; the most common cause was falls, slips and trips (67%). OSHA also opened 4 fatality investigations at drywall and insulation contractors in Tennessee over the same years (federal and state programs).
OSHA Severe Injury Reports, January 2015–December 2024 (states under federal OSHA only).
Fatality investigations: OSHA Fatality Inspection Data, events 2015–2024, all states.
Licensing in Tennessee Official source
The main state licensing office in Tennessee is the Tennessee Board for Licensing Contractors. It can point you to the right license for drywall installers.
Official Tennessee licensing site ↗
Requirements for drywall installers vary by state and sometimes by city; always confirm with the official agency.
Union membership
In 2025, 4.8% of wage and salary workers in Tennessee were union members, below the U.S. rate of about 10% (#42 of 51 states and D.C.), and 5.7% were covered by a union contract. These figures cover all jobs in the state, not only drywall installers.
BLS Union Members, 2025 (Current Population Survey), table 5.
Cities in Tennessee
All trades in Tennessee.