What the Job Pays

A job title is a range wearing a name tag. These are the occupations where the range is widest - where the top tenth of earners collects six to nearly thirty times what the bottom tenth does, under the same words on the same business card. Commission, celebrity, and partnership do most of the stretching. Ranked by the ratio of 90th- to 10th-percentile annual pay; every bar reads off the shared dollar ruler above.

1. 01 Athletes and Sports Competitors 28.0×
   $26,500 median $66,710 $742,310
2. 02 Surgeons, All Other 8.2×
   $80,320 median $414,010 $655,320
3. 03 Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric 7.8×
   $84,170 median $358,550 $659,290
4. 04 Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons 7.2×
   $86,250 median $352,220 $622,640
5. 05 Makeup Artists, Theatrical and Performance 7.2×
   $23,360 median $97,150 $167,470
6. 06 Personal Financial Advisors 7.1×
   $50,190 median $105,070 $357,020
7. 07 Chief Executives 6.7×
   $75,700 median $213,990 $507,730
8. 08 Radiologists 6.7×
   $89,010 median $420,860 $594,410
9. 09 Cardiologists 6.6×
   $107,190 median $496,010 $712,130
10. 10 Physicians, All Other 6.5×
    $69,170 median $265,930 $452,360
11. 11 General Internal Medicine Physicians 6.5×
    $73,570 median $256,560 $475,430

The signal tick marks the median; the bar spans the 10th to 90th percentile. OEWS reports these annual percentiles in full, so no figure here is top-coded.

A wide spread is not the same as a common opportunity. Plot each widest-spread job against how many people actually hold it and the lottery sorts itself out: the most extreme ratios belong to thin markets - fifteen thousand athletes, a few thousand specialist surgeons - while the titles that employ hundreds of thousands (physicians, financial advisors, chief executives) sit at tamer, more institutional spreads. The ceiling is real everywhere; the number of chairs under it is not.

Each dot is one occupation from the widest-spread list; vertical axis is a log scale of national headcount. On narrow screens the labels drop out - the table carries the same values.

Twelve jobs, floor to ceiling, on one dollar ruler. The wide bar is the middle half of earners (25th to 75th percentile); the whiskers reach the 10th and 90th. The reading is shape, not just rank: a fast-food wage is a cluster and a manager's is a tail. Some titles promise a number; others promise a gamble - and the comb shows which is which before you sign.

1. Fast Food and Counter Workers $31,200
   $22,840 $42,650
2. Retail Salespersons $35,410
   $27,210 $47,890
3. Home Health and Personal Care Aides $35,800
   $27,040 $45,040
4. Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers $58,640
   $40,140 $79,380
5. Electricians $63,190
   $42,640 $108,510
6. Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education $63,970
   $47,960 $104,340
7. Accountants and Auditors $83,680
   $56,020 $144,090
8. Registered Nurses $97,550
   $68,940 $137,470
9. General and Operations Managers $105,770
   $50,090 $253,390
10. Software Developers $135,980
    $82,460 $214,670
11. Lawyers $159,670
    $78,360 $351,600
12. Chief Executives $213,990
    $75,700 $507,730

middle half (p25-p75) median p10 to p90

File every occupation by its national median and weigh each bin by headcount, and the American payroll is bottom-heavy: 50% of the roughly 155.4M wage-and-salary jobs sit in occupations whose median pay is under $50,000 a year. The six-figure titles that dominate salary discourse account for about one job in seven.

Each column bins occupations by their national median, weighted by headcount - the grain is the occupation, so within-job spread (the rest of this page) is not visible here. Bands under $50k are drawn in the signal blue; the table carries exact values on any screen.

Every payroll in America grew on paper over these five years. Divide by the price of groceries and the ledger turns over: the biggest real raise went to the lowest-paid job on this page - fast-food counters, where pandemic-era hiring pushed the floor up - while elementary-school teachers, on published salary schedules that reprice slowly, took a double-digit real pay cut without a single nominal one.

nominal median, indexed (2019 = 100) consumer prices (CPI-U)

All panels share one scale, indexed to 100 at May 2019. "Real" divides the wage index by CPI-U over the same span (+22.8% prices). Where the blue line ends below the gray one, the raise lost to the register.

A raise is not evenly distributed inside a job either. From 2019 to 2024 the tight labor market bid hardest for the cheapest hour: in the low-wage occupations the floor grew faster than the ceiling - retail's 10th percentile rose +29.9% while its 90th managed +20.1%. Tech ran the other way: the software ceiling (+26.9%) pulled far ahead of its own floor (+15.6%).

floor = 10th-percentile pay ceiling = 90th-percentile pay

1. Retail Salespersons floor +29.9% ceiling +20.1%
2. Fast Food and Counter Workers floor +32.1% ceiling +23.3%
3. Accountants and Auditors floor +15.5% ceiling +8.2%
4. Registered Nurses floor +27.3% ceiling +21.6%
5. Home Health and Personal Care Aides floor +28.1% ceiling +22.9%
6. General and Operations Managers floor +20.0% ceiling +16.2%
7. Electricians floor +24.8% ceiling +26.1%
8. Software Developers floor +15.6% ceiling +26.9%

Growth is nominal, 2019 to 2024, computed from each occupation's published 10th- and 90th-percentile annual wage. Blue tick = floor, ink tick = ceiling; every row also states both figures as text.

Before geography moves a wage, the letterhead does. The industries that employ registered nurses price the same license $22k apart: hospitals top the ledger at $100,220, while schools pay $78,620. The great mass of the profession (2.02M of them) works in hospitals, and the staffing agencies that place travel nurses sit in the middle of the pack, not at the top.

1. Hospitals 2.02M employed $100,220
2. Outpatient Care Centers 173k employed $99,350
3. Employment Services (staffing and travel agencies) 102k employed $90,840
4. Nursing Care Facilities 142k employed $85,510
5. Offices of Physicians 232k employed $85,000
6. Home Health Care Services 198k employed $84,930
7. Educational Services 95k employed $78,620

Blue tick = that industry's median for registered nurses; the thin gray tick repeating in every row is the national cross-industry median, $97,550. The ruler is zoomed ($70k to $130k, not zero-based) to read the differences; exact figures sit beside each row.

One occupation, 13 metros, zero adjustment for what the rent costs. A registered nurse in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara posts a median 1.6× the one in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim - same license, same shift, same survey. OEWS prices the labor, not the life: whether $216,740 in San Jose outbuys $135,560 in Los Angeles is a question this table refuses to answer. The reference line is the national median, $97,550.

The thin vertical rule in every row is the national median for registered nurses, $97,550. Bars at or above it are drawn in the signal blue; below it, muted - and each row states its dollar figure, so color never carries the reading alone.

The metro swing, drawn to the state line. A registered nurse's median runs from $140,270 in California to $39,880 in Puerto Rico - a 3.5× gap on one license, before a dollar of it meets a lease. The West Coast and the Northeast pay dark blue; the South pays light; the national median is $97,550. Cost of living would redraw this map - which is exactly why OEWS leaves it out.

Hover a state for its figures

Show all 53 states as a table

State	Median	vs national
California	$140,270	+$43k
Hawaii	$136,320	+$39k
Oregon	$129,010	+$31k
Washington	$124,200	+$27k
Alaska	$109,480	+$12k
New York	$109,440	+$12k
New Jersey	$106,500	+$9k
Massachusetts	$104,550	+$7k
Nevada	$103,670	+$6k
Connecticut	$102,740	+$5k
District of Columbia	$102,540	+$5k
Minnesota	$101,510	+$4k
Rhode Island	$100,640	+$3k
Colorado	$100,260	+$3k
Maryland	$99,790	+$2k
New Hampshire	$99,700	+$2k
Delaware	$99,520	+$2k
Arizona	$99,500	+$2k
Vermont	$97,460	-$0k
Pennsylvania	$96,430	-$1k
Illinois	$95,990	-$2k
Texas	$95,970	-$2k
Wisconsin	$95,530	-$2k
New Mexico	$94,340	-$3k
Michigan	$94,300	-$3k
Virginia	$93,600	-$4k
Georgia	$93,550	-$4k
Idaho	$92,460	-$5k
Maine	$86,990	-$11k
Montana	$85,280	-$12k
Nebraska	$84,730	-$13k
Utah	$84,600	-$13k
North Carolina	$84,350	-$13k
Florida	$84,190	-$13k
Virgin Islands	$84,120	-$13k
Wyoming	$83,760	-$14k
Indiana	$83,500	-$14k
Oklahoma	$82,920	-$15k
Ohio	$82,510	-$15k
South Carolina	$82,360	-$15k
Missouri	$81,780	-$16k
Tennessee	$81,500	-$16k
Kentucky	$81,040	-$17k
North Dakota	$80,730	-$17k
Louisiana	$80,230	-$17k
West Virginia	$80,130	-$17k
Kansas	$79,320	-$18k
Arkansas	$78,940	-$19k
Iowa	$78,630	-$19k
South Dakota	$78,060	-$19k
Mississippi	$77,090	-$20k
Alabama	$77,080	-$20k
Puerto Rico	$39,880	-$58k

Hover a state for its median. States are shaded in one blue ramp, light to dark; the table is the source of truth. Wages are annual, not cost-of-living adjusted.