Average Salary by Occupation in 2025: Complete Guide
Highest-Paying Occupations
Healthcare and specialized professions continue to dominate the top of the earnings scale. According to the May 2024 OEWS data, the highest-paying occupations include:
Outside healthcare, several occupations command impressive salaries. Chief Executives earn a median of $161,550, while Marketing Managers bring home a median of $161,030. Computer and Information Systems Managers earn a median of $169,510, reflecting the sustained demand for tech leadership.
Technology and Engineering Salaries
The tech sector remains one of the highest-paying fields for workers without medical degrees. Here is where key tech and engineering roles fall:
Software developers in California earn significantly more than the national median, with a mean annual wage exceeding $155,000 in the state. Washington state follows closely, driven by major employers in the Seattle metro area.
Mid-Range Professional Salaries
Many white-collar professional roles fall in the $60,000 to $130,000 range, representing solid middle-class incomes:
These mid-range salaries can vary dramatically by location. A registered nurse in California earns a mean annual wage of roughly $133,000, while the same role in Alabama or Mississippi pays closer to $63,000 — a gap of more than $70,000 for the same job title.
Entry-Level and Service Occupations
The median annual wage for all occupations was $49,500 in May 2024, but many common roles fall below this figure. Elementary School Teachers earn a median of $69,790 and Graphic Designers make $61,300. Retail salespersons, one of the largest occupations by employment, earn a median of $33,680.
State-level variation is especially dramatic for teachers. New York and California offer mean annual teacher salaries above $90,000, while states like Mississippi and West Virginia pay mean wages closer to $49,000. This gap underscores why cost-of-living context matters when comparing salaries — a topic we explore in our guide to the cheapest cities to live in.
Year-Over-Year Wage Growth
Wages grew broadly across most occupation categories between 2023 and 2024. The overall median annual wage rose from $48,060 to $49,500, an increase of roughly 3.0%. Some sectors outpaced this average:
These growth rates generally exceeded the 2.9% average CPI inflation for 2024, meaning most workers saw modest real wage gains.
How Geographic Location Affects Pay
Location is one of the single biggest factors in salary differences. The BLS publishes state-level data that reveals dramatic variation:
However, higher nominal salaries in expensive states do not always translate to higher purchasing power. A $133,000 nursing salary in San Francisco (Cost of Living Index: 179.6) has roughly the same purchasing power as a $74,000 salary at the national average. Use our Cost of Living Calculator to see how salaries compare across cities after adjusting for local prices.
How to Use This Data
Understanding where your salary falls relative to national benchmarks is the first step toward informed career and financial decisions. Rather than just looking at averages, you should know your percentile ranking — whether you earn more or less than 50%, 75%, or 90% of people in your occupation.
Use our Salary Percentile Calculator to see your exact ranking across 30+ occupations with BLS percentile data. If you are considering a job change, also check how your potential salary stacks up after taxes and cost-of-living adjustments in your target city.