Average Salary In USA By Profession

What People Actually Make in the US: I Went Down the Salary Rabbit Hole So You Don’t Have To

A few months back, my cousin called me freaking out because she got a job offer for $58,000 and had no idea if that was good or if she was about to get taken for a ride. She kept asking, “Is that normal? Am I being lowballed?” And honestly, I didn’t have a great answer for her on the spot, so I spent a weekend digging through actual government wage data instead of the random “salary calculator” sites that just make numbers up based on whatever ads they’re running that week.

That weekend turned into a bit of an obsession. I ended up cross-referencing everything against the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, which is basically the gold standard because it pulls from actual payroll records at over a million employers, not people self-reporting their salary on a forum because they’re bragging or venting.

Here’s what I learned, and what I wish someone had just told my cousin (and me) years ago.

The number everyone quotes is kind of misleading.

If you Google “average US salary,” you’ll see something around $69,000 to $73,000 thrown around constantly. That’s the mean — the average pulled from BLS data across all occupations, all 155 million or so workers in the country.

But here’s the catch: means get dragged up hard by high earners. A handful of surgeons and tech executives making $300k+ can pull the “average” way above what a normal person actually experiences.

The median tells a truer story. Full-time median earnings sit closer to $62,000 a year. That’s the number where half of workers make more, half make less. If you’re trying to figure out whether your offer is reasonable, the median is a far better gut check than the mean.

I made this mistake myself early on — I compared a job offer to the “average” salary for my field, felt bad about my number, and later realized I was comparing myself to a mean that included partners at consulting firms. Total apples to oranges.

What different professions are actually pulling in right now

Based on the most recent BLS wage release, here’s a snapshot across common careers. These are national averages — your city and industry will swing this a lot, which I’ll get into below.

Healthcare is where the real money is if you’re willing to put in the schooling. Registered nurses average around $101,000 a year nationally, and that’s not even counting overtime or shift differentials, which a lot of hospital nurses stack on top. Nurse anesthetists are on another planet entirely, averaging close to $250,000. Respiratory therapists land around $87,000, and speech-language pathologists are close behind at $98,000.

Tech still pays well, though it’s not the “everyone becomes a millionaire” story people had in their heads a few years ago. Software developers average around $137,000, with entry-level roles more realistically starting somewhere between $80,000 and $105,000 depending on the market and whether it’s a startup or an established company.

Teaching is where the gap between passion and paycheck really shows. Elementary teachers average around $72,000, high school teachers about $80,000, and college professors closer to $100,000. But this varies wildly by state — a teacher in California can pull $95,000+ while someone doing the same job in Mississippi might be sitting around $48,000. Same degree, same responsibilities, completely different paycheck.

Skilled trades deserve way more respect than they get in these conversations. Plumbers and pipefitters average about $72,000, electricians roughly $71,000, and HVAC techs around $68,000. Welders come in lower at about $57,000, though that number climbs fast with specialized certifications like underwater welding or aerospace work. I know a guy who did a four-year electrical apprenticeship instead of college and came out debt-free making more than most of my friends who spent six figures on a degree.

Management roles sit near the top of the pay scale across the board — human resources managers average around $164,000, financial managers close to $187,000, and top executives can average well over $190,000. These numbers reflect years of climbing the ladder, though, not entry points.

Retail and food service remain at the bottom of the wage scale, and this is where the “average salary” conversation gets uncomfortable. Cashiers and retail salespeople are among the largest job categories in the entire country by headcount, and they’re also among the lowest paid.

How to actually check where you stand

If you want to do this for your own job the right way, here’s the process I now use every time I’m curious or job hunting:

Step one, go straight to the BLS OEWS data instead of a salary aggregator site. Search “BLS OEWS” plus your job title. It’s clunky-looking, government-website-in-2003 energy, but the data is real, and it’s free.

Step two, look at the median, not just the mean. I can’t stress this enough after getting burned by it myself.

Step three, filter by state or metro area if the tool allows it. National averages are basically useless if you’re trying to negotiate a specific offer in a specific city. A software developer salary in Austin and one in rural Ohio are not the same conversation.

Step four: check the percentile breakdown if it’s available. The 25th to 75th percentile range tells you way more than a single average number ever will. It shows you the realistic range instead of one flattened figure.

Step five: factor in cost of living before you get excited or discouraged. A $75,000 salary in Ohio can go a lot further than $95,000 in San Francisco once you account for rent and taxes. There are free cost-of-living calculators, like the one from NerdWallet, that let you plug in two cities and compare.

Mistakes I see people make constantly

The biggest one is comparing their salary to a national “average” without adjusting for location or industry. Finance and tech tend to pay 15 to 40% above the general average for a given role, while nonprofits and retail typically pay below it. Comparing a marketing job at a nonprofit to the “average marketing salary” is going to make you feel worse than you should.

Another one — people assume self-reported salary sites are accurate. Places where users type in their own numbers tend to skew high because people who are proud of their salary post more often than people who aren’t. That’s not a knock on those sites; it’s just a data bias worth knowing about.

And the last one, which got my cousin in the first place — not accounting for total compensation. Base salary is only part of the picture. Health insurance, retirement matching, bonuses, and paid time off all have real dollar value that doesn’t show up in a plain salary number.

Where my cousin landed, for what it’s worth

She ended up taking that $58,000 offer after we compared it to the median for her role and city, and it turned out to be solidly in the middle of the range, not a lowball at all. She just didn’t have context. That’s really the whole point of digging into this stuff — it’s not about chasing the highest number possible; it’s about knowing whether the number in front of you actually makes sense.

Pay data changes every year when BLS puts out updated numbers, so it’s worth a quick check any time you’re negotiating something new rather than relying on whatever figure you remember from a headline two years ago. If you’re ready to turn your skills into income, check out our full guide on AI Trainer Jobs (Remote) in Florida.