US Salary Benchmark by Occupation & Location (BLS Wage Data)

About the US Salary Benchmark by Occupation & Location (BLS Wage Data)

Look up what an occupation pays in the United States, in a state, or in a metropolitan or nonmetropolitan area, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS): employment, the mean wage and the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th and 90th percentiles, hourly or annual. Search by job title — matched to the official occupation list through the BLS job title list — or by SOC code, then compare up to five places for one occupation, or up to five occupations in one place, with a chart of each pay range.

The estimates come straight from the BLS files and are public; nothing you search for is sent anywhere. In the free preview the search and the comparison work, and the comparison shows its first rows in full with a watermarked chart; every row, the CSV file and the copied summary need a Pro pass.

Common uses

• Job seekers checking whether an offer is in the range people in the occupation earn where the job is.
• Small employers and recruiters setting a pay range for a new role (with your own pay data alongside).
• Comparing what an occupation pays in different cities before a move.
• Students choosing between careers by what they pay.

What the estimates cover

• An employer survey. OEWS asks about 1.1 million nonfarm establishments about their employees’ jobs and pay, in six half-yearly panels over three years that are modelled to one reference month (technical notes).
• Who is not in it: the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms, household workers and unpaid family workers, most farm work and private households; federal jobs only for the Postal Service and the executive branch; and no military occupations.
• What pay means: straight-time gross pay — base pay, commissions, tips and production bonuses — but not overtime, shift differentials, nonproduction bonuses (such as year-end bonuses) or benefits like health insurance and pension contributions.
• Annual wages are the hourly wage × 2,080 hours (a full-time year), except for occupations paid by the year that do not work 2,080 hours (teachers, pilots), which have annual wages only, and some paid by the hour without full-year schedules (actors, musicians), which have hourly wages only.
• Top of the range: very high wages may be published only as at or above the top of the published range, shown here with ≥.
• Not over time: BLS does not encourage using the estimates to compare wages from one release to the next.

Choosing the right occupation

BLS classifies workers by their duties, not their job titles, so a title search only suggests the occupations whose listed titles fit: read the occupation’s definition on the SOC 2018 pages when in doubt. Some occupations are published only as a broader group (the code then ends in 0, or the group is named), and a few are not published in some places — the table says so. The estimates hold no pay by experience or level of work: a senior and a junior accountant are in the same distribution.

Using the figures for pay decisions

The percentiles describe what employers in the survey paid people in the occupation; they are not what a particular company pays, what a job is worth or an offer you can expect. Pay also depends on the employer, the industry, experience, skills, union coverage and hours. For a salary range, use these figures as one reference point next to your own data — the Salary Band Builder turns your own midpoints into bands. For immigration prevailing wages, use the Department of Labor’s own wage data and determinations.

Limitations

• Not financial or legal advice, and not a prevailing wage determination.
• One reference period per release; the figures are not updated between BLS releases.
• No industry or company size breakdown: the estimates are cross-industry for each place.
• No pay for the self-employed, and no bonuses outside straight-time pay or benefits.
• Small occupations in small places are often not published, and estimates with a high relative standard error are approximate.

Privacy

Your searches and choices stay in your browser: the page downloads the estimates and the title list from this site and works through them on your device.