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 five to ten 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 9.7×
   $24,700 median $53,400 $239,200+
2. 02 Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes 6.9×
   $34,600 median $84,900 $239,200+
3. 03 Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents 5.7×
   $42,300 median $76,900 $239,200+
4. 04 Real Estate Brokers 5.2×
   $34,700 median $63,060 $178,700
5. 05 Personal Financial Advisors 5.0×
   $47,570 median $99,580 $239,200+
6. 06 Public Relations and Fundraising Managers 4.9×
   $42,200 median $134,760 $208,000
7. 07 Producers and Directors 4.8×
   $39,900 median $85,320 $190,600
8. 08 Insurance Sales Agents 3.8×
   $34,900 median $59,080 $132,900
9. 09 Physicians, All Other 3.6×
   $66,900 median $229,300 $239,200+
10. 10 Lawyers 3.4×
    $69,800 median $151,160 $239,200+
11. 11 Chief Executives 3.0×
    $79,900 median $206,680 $239,200+

A trailing + marks pay the survey top-codes at $239,200/yr, so the real top-decile spread is even wider.

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 - seventeen thousand athletes, fourteen thousand agents - while the titles that employ half a million or more 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 $29,500
   $21,400 $40,900
2. Home Health and Personal Care Aides $33,500
   $24,200 $45,800
3. Retail Salespersons $34,200
   $24,300 $58,200
4. Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers $54,700
   $37,100 $80,300
5. Elementary School Teachers $63,400
   $46,100 $97,600
6. Electricians $63,700
   $42,200 $104,300
7. Accountants and Auditors $81,300
   $50,400 $132,900
8. Registered Nurses $93,600
   $66,300 $135,200
9. General and Operations Managers $99,200
   $45,300 $213,000
10. Software Developers $133,080
    $71,300 $208,900
11. Lawyers $151,160
    $69,800 $239,200+
12. Chief Executives $206,680
    $79,900 $239,200+

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: 46.5% of the roughly 151.2M 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 $42k apart: employment services - the travel-nurse premium, rented back to hospitals by the shift - top the ledger at $121,000, while schools pay $79,100. The great mass of the profession (1.98M of them) is in hospitals, near the national median.

1. Employment Services (staffing and travel agencies) 168k employed $121,000
2. Outpatient Care Centers 165k employed $102,300
3. Hospitals 1.98M employed $96,800
4. Home Health Care Services 178k employed $87,200
5. Nursing Care Facilities 132k employed $84,600
6. Offices of Physicians 208k employed $83,900
7. Educational Services 96k employed $79,100

Blue tick = that industry's median for registered nurses; the thin gray tick repeating in every row is the national cross-industry median, $93,600. 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 2.1× the one in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater - same license, same shift, same survey. OEWS prices the labor, not the life: whether $166,700 in San Jose outbuys $80,700 in Tampa is a question this table refuses to answer. The reference line is the national median, $93,600.

The thin vertical rule in every row is the national median for registered nurses, $93,600. 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 $137,000 in California to $63,200 in Mississippi - a 2.2× 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 $93,600. Cost of living would redraw this map - which is exactly why OEWS leaves it out.

Show all 51 states as a table

State	Median	vs national
California	$137,000	+$43k
Hawaii	$119,000	+$25k
Oregon	$106,400	+$13k
Washington	$105,300	+$12k
Massachusetts	$104,600	+$11k
Alaska	$104,200	+$11k
District of Columbia	$103,400	+$10k
Nevada	$101,300	+$8k
New Jersey	$101,100	+$8k
New York	$100,200	+$7k
Connecticut	$97,200	+$4k
Rhode Island	$96,100	+$3k
Minnesota	$92,300	-$1k
Arizona	$89,300	-$4k
Colorado	$88,100	-$6k
Maryland	$87,300	-$6k
New Hampshire	$85,100	-$9k
Texas	$84,300	-$9k
New Mexico	$84,200	-$9k
Illinois	$83,200	-$10k
Vermont	$83,100	-$11k
Wisconsin	$82,600	-$11k
Delaware	$82,400	-$11k
Virginia	$82,400	-$11k
Pennsylvania	$82,200	-$11k
Michigan	$82,100	-$12k
Georgia	$82,000	-$12k
Wyoming	$82,000	-$12k
Idaho	$81,600	-$12k
Florida	$81,300	-$12k
Montana	$80,400	-$13k
Ohio	$79,300	-$14k
Maine	$78,200	-$15k
North Carolina	$78,100	-$16k
Utah	$78,100	-$16k
South Carolina	$76,400	-$17k
Indiana	$74,300	-$19k
Louisiana	$74,100	-$20k
West Virginia	$74,100	-$20k
Nebraska	$74,000	-$20k
Missouri	$73,400	-$20k
North Dakota	$73,200	-$20k
Kentucky	$72,400	-$21k
Oklahoma	$72,300	-$21k
Tennessee	$71,200	-$22k
Iowa	$70,900	-$23k
Kansas	$70,200	-$23k
South Dakota	$66,100	-$28k
Arkansas	$65,100	-$29k
Alabama	$63,400	-$30k
Mississippi	$63,200	-$30k

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.