Salary by State and Occupation (2023)

BLS OEWS wage distributions for every U.S. state, sliced by 2-digit SOC occupational major group. Currently showing: Architecture & Engineering.

Written by Jere SalmistoReviewed by CalcFi EditorialLast reviewed 2026-04-19Methodology

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics^[1]program surveys ~200,000 establishments semi-annually and publishes state-level wage percentiles (P10, P25, P50, P75, P90) plus employment counts. Occupational groupings use the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification^[2] — this page exposes the 20 major (2-digit) groups. Pick one below.

Switch occupational major group

11 · Management 13 · Business & Financial Ops 15 · Computer & Mathematical 17 · Architecture & Engineering 19 · Life, Physical & Social Sciences 21 · Community & Social Service

Wage by State — Architecture & Engineering

Rank	State	Median (P50) ▼	P10	P90	Employment
1	District of Columbia	$122,320^[1]	$74,490	$183,500	11,700
2	California	$108,660^[1]	$62,890	$197,350	337,470
3	New Mexico	$105,310^[1]	$58,880	$169,750	23,730
4	Maryland	$103,450^[1]	$58,560	$174,360	50,670
5	Washington	$101,870^[1]	$62,770	$165,230	73,920
6	Oregon	$100,740^[1]	$59,360	$161,520	44,570
7	Massachusetts	$100,050^[1]	$61,570	$163,560	73,420
8	Alaska	$99,380^[1]	$61,410	$161,980	7,160
9	Rhode Island	$99,300^[1]	$58,240	$157,520	8,410
10	Colorado	$98,730^[1]	$57,630	$166,480	70,260
11	New Jersey	$98,490^[1]	$59,070	$161,630	50,500
12	Connecticut	$98,180^[1]	$62,660	$151,870	33,620
13	Virginia	$96,840^[1]	$56,060	$163,780	72,190
14	Alabama	$95,800^[1]	$50,120	$163,160	47,820
15	Illinois	$91,830^[1]	$55,320	$139,850	79,940
16	Arizona	$90,310^[1]	$53,130	$156,530	54,110
17	Delaware	$90,100^[1]	$48,920	$147,680	5,960
18	Hawaii	$88,940^[1]	$55,540	$133,160	8,810
19	New Hampshire	$88,360^[1]	$54,160	$153,780	14,150
20	New York	$87,510^[1]	$55,120	$154,800	104,260
21	Louisiana	$87,360^[1]	$45,820	$155,410	28,810
22	Minnesota	$86,760^[1]	$58,190	$135,250	58,320
23	Texas	$85,110^[1]	$47,560	$162,080	225,870
24	Michigan	$83,840^[1]	$49,860	$131,410	126,220
25	Ohio	$83,620^[1]	$50,190	$136,560	99,620
26	Oklahoma	$83,390^[1]	$48,470	$136,510	26,420
27	Pennsylvania	$82,920^[1]	$51,080	$139,430	96,850
28	Maine	$82,910^[1]	$52,400	$128,780	10,540
29	Georgia	$82,250^[1]	$46,860	$146,060	61,450
30	Iowa	$82,180^[1]	$51,050	$126,920	23,550
31	Kansas	$82,080^[1]	$47,860	$136,100	25,030
32	South Carolina	$81,940^[1]	$47,740	$135,480	41,090
33	Utah	$81,840^[1]	$46,560	$131,900	33,690
34	Indiana	$81,620^[1]	$49,560	$128,920	50,810
35	Missouri	$81,460^[1]	$47,710	$138,880	37,180
36	Vermont	$81,240^[1]	$51,260	$155,060	6,240
37	Wyoming	$81,240^[1]	$49,730	$132,500	4,380
38	Nevada	$81,230^[1]	$46,930	$134,450	16,190
39	Florida	$81,100^[1]	$46,110	$140,820	116,760
40	North Carolina	$80,290^[1]	$45,860	$133,080	72,010
41	Idaho	$80,200^[1]	$47,150	$146,640	13,670
42	West Virginia	$79,970^[1]	$47,000	$131,470	9,290
43	Wisconsin	$79,720^[1]	$51,190	$123,160	52,550
44	North Dakota	$78,770^[1]	$48,820	$126,690	5,870
45	Tennessee	$78,440^[1]	$42,650	$131,140	42,440
46	Kentucky	$78,330^[1]	$43,700	$124,850	28,310
47	Mississippi	$78,280^[1]	$38,830	$129,220	13,550
48	South Dakota	$77,480^[1]	$45,320	$118,350	6,280
49	Montana	$76,890^[1]	$46,970	$120,800	8,390
50	Nebraska	$76,750^[1]	$46,610	$124,830	12,760
51	Arkansas	$74,670^[1]	$38,980	$122,020	12,830

P10 / P50 / P90 are annual wage percentiles from BLS OEWS. Employment is the state-level headcount for the SOC major group at the OEWS publication date. A few small-employment cells may be suppressed by BLS for confidentiality.

How to Read OEWS

Why Percentiles, Not Averages

OEWS reports wage percentiles because the wage distribution for most occupational groups is right-skewed — a handful of high earners pull the arithmetic mean well above the median. P50 is the experience the median worker actually has; P10 is the bottom decile; P90 is the top decile (but not the very top, which BLS caps at $240k).

Cross-Check With Cost of Living

A $110k Computer & Mathematical median in San Francisco is not the same as a $110k median in Austin — the BEA housing RPP is ~2× higher on the coast. Always pair OEWS with BEA RPP before making a relocation decision.

Major-Group vs Detailed SOC

This page uses 2-digit SOC major groups (e.g., 15-0000“Computer and Mathematical”). BLS also publishes the full 6-digit detailed SOC (e.g., 15-1252Software Developers) with narrower wage bands — those sit in the state's detailed OEWS table, which CalcFi's pSEO salary pages consume separately.

How we compute this — methodology

This page calls listStateSalary()from CalcFi's data repository. Each StateSalaryContext row has a record-level source: SourceRef (all wage fields come from the same OEWS release), plus a nested occupations[] array keyed by SOC 2-digit code. The query-string ?soc= filters to one row per state for the chosen occupational group.

Refresh cadence:BLS publishes OEWS state tables annually in May (for the previous May survey period). That's the slowest of CalcFi's data feeds — expect a one-year lag. The retrievedAt date shown above reflects the last ETL fetch, not the vintage year itself (shown in the highlights tile).

Known limits:some small employment cells are suppressed by BLS (marked “—”). OEWS covers non-farm wage and salary workers and excludes the self-employed — so Schedule-C and 1099 income isn't in these numbers.

Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) — OEWS state-level wage estimates, May 2023 vintage; P10 / P50 / P90 annual wages. www.bls.gov/oes/. Retrieved 2026-04-19. License: Public domain (U.S. federal government).
U.S. Office of Management and Budget — Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) — 2018 SOC system — 2-digit major groups used throughout this page. www.bls.gov/soc/. Retrieved 2026-04-19.

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