Salary by State
Pay for the same job varies by state more than most people expect, and the gap is not random: it tracks the cost of living, the concentration of employers, and in licensed occupations the supply of qualified people. This page explains how to read the state figures on this site, and where they mislead.
Which states appear for an occupation
State pages on this site exist only where a state genuinely employs the occupation in reportable numbers. That is a deliberate choice rather than a limitation. Crossing every occupation with every state would produce around 40,000 pages, most of them describing a job that a handful of people in that state hold, at a figure the survey is too thin to support.
So a missing state means one of two things: the Bureau of Labor Statistics suppressed the estimate because the sample was too small to publish reliably, or the employment is below the threshold this site uses. Neither means nobody does that job there.
The comparison this data cannot make
None of these figures are adjusted for cost of living, and this site does not adjust them. That is worth stating plainly because the unadjusted comparison is the one people make by default, and it is frequently backwards. A state paying 20 percent above the national median with housing costs 45 percent above it leaves you worse off, and the wage data alone will never show that.
The honest use of a state comparison is narrow: it tells you what employers in that state pay, which is what you need when negotiating an offer you already have. It does not tell you where to move.
Common questions
Which state has the highest salaries?
- It depends entirely on the occupation, which is why this site reports pay per state per job rather than publishing a single state ranking. States with high overall averages tend to be those with a concentration of high-paying industries, not states that pay more for the same work.
Why does the same job pay so differently between states?
- Three things drive most of the gap: local cost of living, how concentrated employers are in that state, and in licensed occupations how many qualified people are available. Licensing rules that differ between states also restrict supply, and restricted supply raises pay.