About WageAtlas

WageAtlas is an independent reference site for US gross wages by occupation and state. It answers the question "how much does an X earn?" using the official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey — not crowdsourced or estimated salaries.

What we publish

• A page for each of 124 high-search occupations with the national mean, median and 10th-to-90th-percentile annual wage, plus pay in all 51 states.
• A page for each of the 51 states (50 + DC) with its overall wage and benchmark occupations.
• Rankings of the highest-paying jobs, highest-paying states and biggest occupations.
• A salary percentile tool and a wage percentiles explainer.

Where the numbers come from

Every wage is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, May 2024 release (published 2025, retrieved June 2026). OEWS is a semi-annual survey of roughly 1.1 million establishments that estimates employment and gross wages for more than 800 occupations nationally and in every state. It is U.S. public domain. The US median wage across all jobs is $49,500. We do not invent figures: missing or suppressed values show as a dash.

Gross, not take-home

These are gross (pre-tax) wages, not paychecks. Your take-home pay is lower and depends on federal and state tax, benefits and deductions. For after-tax estimates, use a paycheck calculator.

How we work

Pages are generated from a committed snapshot of the OEWS data files and standard, documented calculations (ranks, medians of states, percentile bands). See our methodology for sources, the exact data files, update cadence and limitations.

Contact

Questions or corrections? Get in touch.

Last updated: 2026-06-20