Almost every “average salary for X” figure you see online traces back to one government survey. Here is what it is and how to read it.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), program documentation and the May 2024 release.
What OEWS is
OEWS is a Bureau of Labor Statistics program that estimates how many people work in each occupation and what they are paid. It is the backbone of US occupational wage data — used by job sites, career guides, government and researchers.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Sample | ~1.1 million establishments over a 3-year cycle |
| Occupations | 800+ detailed occupations (SOC codes) |
| Geography | National, all 50 states + DC, and ~580 metro areas |
| Wage stats | Mean, median, and 10th / 25th / 75th / 90th percentile |
| Latest release | May 2024 (published 2025) |
| License | U.S. public domain |
What the numbers mean
For each occupation OEWS publishes:
- Employment — estimated number of jobs.
- Mean wage — the average.
- Median wage — the middle (half earn less, half more). See mean vs median.
- Percentiles — the 10th through 90th, showing the spread. See wage percentiles explained.
All wages are gross — total pay before tax and deductions — not take-home.
Two quirks to know
- Top-coding. Very high wages are capped: any annual wage at or above $239,200 in May 2024 is reported as that cap, not a precise number. This affects top physician and dentist roles, so their real median is even higher than shown.
- Suppression. When a cell has too few responses or risks revealing an employer, BLS suppresses it. We show suppressed values as a dash (—) and never guess.
What OEWS does not cover
OEWS counts wage and salary workers at establishments. It excludes the self-employed, business owners, unpaid family workers, and most agricultural and private-household workers. So for trades and creative fields with lots of self-employment (some photographers, hairdressers, contractors), the survey may understate total earnings.
How WageAtlas uses it
We download the published OEWS national and state files, commit a static snapshot, and build a page for each of the 124 most-searched occupations and every state. We never invent figures; our rankings and percentile bands are transparent calculations over the BLS inputs. Full details on our methodology page.
Bottom line
When you see an official US salary figure, it almost certainly comes from OEWS. It is rigorous and free, but remember: it is a gross-wage survey estimate, it can lag a year, and it leaves out the self-employed.