Official U.S. wage data · BLS OEWS May 2025
What does your job pay in your metro area?
Median pay, the full percentile range, and employment for 830 occupations across 393 metro areas, 137 nonmetropolitan areas, and every state — taken directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Or pick step by step
Type a job the way you’d say it — we match it to the official occupation. City lookups resolve to the BLS metro area that contains the city.
The U.S. pay landscape
Before you look up a single job, here is what the May 2025 release says about American pay overall — every figure below is a wage BLS published, not an estimate of ours.
Eight in ten U.S. jobs pay between $31,200 and $128,560 a year — the 10th to 90th percentile of the May 2025 estimates. Half of all jobs pay more than $50,980, half pay less.
Occupations with the highest published medians
Ranked by the median annual wage BLS published for the whole United States. Occupations without a published national median are not ranked. Pay reflects what employers report — not how hard a job is to enter.
Metro areas with the highest all-job medians
BLS’s own “all occupations” median for each metropolitan statistical area — the whole multi-county region, not city limits. Higher medians often track higher living costs, which these figures do not adjust for.
Where every occupation’s median lands
| Median annual wage band | Occupations |
|---|---|
| Under $40,000 | 98 |
| $40,000 to $60,000 | 298 |
| $60,000 to $80,000 | 209 |
| $80,000 to $100,000 | 82 |
| $100,000 to $150,000 | 102 |
| $150,000 and above | 36 |
Each bar counts how many of the 825 detailed occupations with a published U.S. median fall in that band, labeled by the band’s lower edge. Occupations BLS does not publish a national median for are not counted.
Straight to an answer: Registered Nurse in Atlanta $100,490 · Software Developer in Seattle $167,280 · Electrician in Houston $59,180 · Elementary School Teacher in Chicago $78,390 · Truck Driver (Heavy and Tractor-Trailer) in Dallas $59,530 · Accountant and Auditor in New York $105,650
Compare electrician pay: Houston vs Dallas · Browse the Seattle metro area · Registered nurse pay nationwide
How to read these numbers
They are area estimates
BLS publishes wages for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, not city limits. A result for “Atlanta” describes the whole Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell, GA metro area, and we always label it that way.
Percentiles beat averages
The median is what the middle worker earns. The 10th–90th percentile range shows how pay spreads with experience, employer, and specialty — no single number is “the” salary.
Estimates, not offers
Figures are survey estimates of what employers currently pay across each area. They are not predictions of any individual’s next paycheck. Where BLS suppresses a value, we say so — we never fill gaps. Methodology
Coverage
Every published cross-industry estimate from the May 2025 OEWS release is searchable: 830 detailed occupations across 393 metro areas, 137 nonmetropolitan areas, all 50 states plus DC, and three U.S. territories. Browse the occupation directory or the metro area directory, or check exactly where the data comes from.