Average Salary by State

Highest and Lowest Paying States

The top of the table is a short list of coastal and resource states. Massachusetts leads at $63,590, followed by Washington ($62,990) and Alaska ($61,000). At the other end, Mississippi ($40,120), Arkansas ($43,630), and West Virginia ($45,300) sit at the bottom. The full spread is 1.58× — $23,470 a year between the best-paid and worst-paid state medians.

That spread is smaller than most people expect, and far smaller than the spread inside any one job. Only 20 of the 50 states pay at or above the national median of $50,980, because the populous, high-paying states pull the national figure up past most of the map. Where you live moves your pay by tens of percent. What you do for a living moves it by multiples — see average salary by job title for how far apart the occupations sit.

One place beats every state and is not on the list. The District of Columbia has a median wage of $91,540 — $27,950 clear of Massachusetts. It is excluded above because it is a single dense city rather than a state, and comparing it to Wyoming or Montana measures urban density, not geography. Adjusted for its own prices it comes to $83,294.

Cost-of-Living-Adjusted Salary Rankings

A paycheck is a claim on goods, not a score. The Adjusted column restates every state’s median wage in national-average dollars using BEA regional price parities, so the numbers can be compared to each other directly. Doing that erases 40% of the distance between the top and bottom state: a 1.58× nominal gap becomes 1.30×, and $23,470 becomes $13,989.

It also reorders the middle of the table. California falls 16 places, from 9th on wages to 25th on what those wages buy. Hawaii falls 23, the steepest drop in the country. Florida — a state people move to for the money — falls 13 places to 49th, because its prices now run above the national average while its wages do not. Moving the other way, North Dakota climbs 14 places to 3rd, and Iowa climbs 19 to 12th.

The effect is large enough to flip the answer to the question most people are actually asking. On paper 20 states beat the national median wage. On spending power, 37 do — because only 16 states are more expensive than the national average, and the expensive ones are where most Americans live.

Two cautions before you act on the column. A state price level is an average over its cities and its countryside, and the variation inside Texas or California dwarfs the variation between the median pair of states. And prices are not the same as taxes: Texas levies no income tax, which the parities do not capture. To compare two specific cities against your own salary rather than a state median, use the cost of living adjustment tool.

Remote Work Salary Implications by State

Remote work turns the two halves of this table against each other. Your salary is set by your employer’s market; your costs are set by yours. Keep a Massachusetts wage of $63,590 and move to Arkansas, where prices are 86.9% of the national average, and the same paycheck is worth $73,176 — a raise of $13,072 in spending terms, granted by a moving company rather than a manager.

Employers know this, which is why many index pay to the employee’s location rather than the company’s. The question a location-adjusted offer really asks is how much of that arbitrage you keep. A cut proportional to the price difference leaves you exactly where you started; anything smaller is a gain. Between California (110.7) and Arkansas (86.9) that break-even cut is 21% — so an employer proposing more than that is not adjusting your pay, it is cutting it.

Three things the state figures will not tell you. Your state income tax changes with the move and the parities ignore it. Your housing cost is the component that actually drives the difference, and it varies far more within a state than between states. And a remote role may quietly reset your next raise to the local market. Put real numbers on the trade with the remote work salary calculator, which compares an offer in one location against your costs in another.

Household Income Is Not a Salary

The two income columns measure different things, and conflating them is the most common way to feel underpaid without being underpaid. A median wage is what one worker is paid for one job. A median household income is everything arriving at one address — two earners, a pension, rental income, interest. Nationally that is $81,604 against $50,980, or 1.6× as much, almost entirely because most households contain more than one earner.

The two also rank states differently. Massachusetts tops the household column at $104,569 and Mississippi sits last at $59,301. States with high employment rates and large families rise on the household measure without paying any better per job. When you compare yourself to this page, use the wage column. Use the household column only when you are comparing a whole family’s income to other families.

Is Your State’s Median a Good Salary?

A state median is a floor to reason from, not a target. What it covers depends on your rent, your dependents, and your city. We work through what each of these figures actually buys at the salary level nearest to it:

• Massachusetts, $63,590 — is $65k a good salary?
• California, $58,240 — is $60k a good salary?
• Texas, $48,620 — is $50k a good salary?
• Mississippi, $40,120 — is $35k a good salary?

If your state median looks low against your own offer, that is the normal case for anyone with a credential — the median averages every occupation in the state, from surgeons to cashiers. Take a specific number into the conversation instead, using the salary negotiation guide.

Frequently Asked Questions