Income by Occupation Statistics (2026)

The US annual mean wage across all occupations was $69,770 in May 2025.

Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations sat well above it at $108,700 across 9.8 million workers. Educational instruction and library occupations sat just below at $67,540 across 9.1 million, and construction and extraction at $65,360 across 6.4 million.

The gap between those last three groups is under $3,000 a year, which is a reminder that the popular ranking of jobs by prestige does not track the actual pay distribution very closely.

The two highest paying occupations in the entire OEWS survey were pediatric surgeons at $502,050 and cardiologists at $454,940.

Not one non-medical occupation appears near the top. The highest paying healthcare occupation that is not a physician, surgeon or dentist was nurse anesthetists at $248,320.

That concentration is a feature of how OEWS measures pay: it captures wages and salaries, so occupations whose earners are typically owners or partners taking profit rather than salary are systematically understated.

The largest occupation in the country was home health and personal care aides, with 4.3 million workers, followed by retail salespersons and fast food and counter workers at 3.9 million each.

Eight of the ten largest occupations paid below the national average, ranging from $32,150 for fast food and counter workers up to $46,590 for customer service representatives.

Only two of the ten paid above it: registered nurses at $101,420 and general and operations managers at $134,940.

OEWS publishes an annual mean, and a mean is pulled upward by the very top of the distribution.

The consequence is visible in the previous section: the average is $69,770 but the majority of people in the largest occupations earn well under $50,000.

So the national average is a real number and a poor description of a typical job, which is why the occupation-level figures on this page matter more than the headline.

Registered nurses averaged approximately $77,000 in both Alabama and South Dakota and $150,280 in California, a near doubling for the same credential.

Elementary school teachers averaged $72,650 nationally, ranging from $52,300 in Mississippi to $97,970 in Washington.

At the metropolitan level the spread widens further, from $48,500 in Enid, Oklahoma to $106,760 in Mount Vernon-Anacortes, Washington. Cost of living explains part of that and not all of it.

Construction and extraction occupations were 4.1% of national employment but 9.1% of employment in Wyoming and 8.1% in North Dakota.

At the metropolitan level the concentration is extreme: 14.8% of all employment in Midland, Texas and 12.8% in Odessa.

These are one-industry economies in the strict statistical sense, and that concentration is a risk factor for the households in them that has nothing to do with their individual pay.

The public sector accounted for 14.6% of employment with an occupational mix that barely overlaps the private one.

Its largest occupations are educational: 1.2 million public elementary school teachers, 1.1 million teaching assistants, 910,670 secondary school teachers and 548,550 middle school teachers.

Outside education, the biggest public-sector roles were police and sheriffs patrol officers at 663,800, registered nurses at 537,990 and janitors and cleaners at 502,420.

56% of registered nurses, about 1.9 million jobs, work in general medical and surgical hospitals. The next largest employers were offices of physicians at 232,420 and home health care services at 198,180.

The same job title pays differently across those settings, which is why occupation alone is an incomplete predictor of pay.

For construction occupations the pattern repeats: building equipment contractors employ 1.3 million, but local government excluding schools and hospitals employs another 369,310 of the same workers.

Occupation determines not only the level of income but its shape. Salaried professional roles produce a predictable monthly figure, while trades, commission roles and healthcare shift work produce something lumpier.

Occupation also determines what benefits come attached, which is a larger part of total compensation than the wage number suggests, particularly for retirement access and health premiums.

And it determines geographic mobility. A nurse can move from Alabama to California and roughly double their pay. Most occupations cannot.

Someone whose pay depends on an industry should think hard before also holding that industry in a portfolio, because a downturn then arrives in the salary and the savings at the same time.

The extreme case is company stock. An employee holding a meaningful position in their own employer has a portfolio whose worst year coincides with their worst job year by construction.

The general principle is that human capital is an asset with a sector exposure, and a portfolio is the natural place to offset it rather than double it.

The OEWS programme publishes employment and wage estimates for roughly 830 occupations nationally, across the states and about 530 metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, plus around 410 industry classifications.

It is an establishment survey, so it captures what employers report paying, and it excludes the self-employed entirely.

The May 2025 panel carries one caveat worth stating: the federal appropriations lapse from 1 October to 12 November 2025 required additional collection and processing time, though BLS reports the response rate was within the normal range and no methodological modifications were needed.

Every wage and employment figure is from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics news release for May 2025, USDL-26-0725, published 15 May 2026, and its table 1.

All wages quoted are annual means, not medians. OEWS publishes both, and mixing the two across a page is a common error in secondary coverage of this dataset.

State and metropolitan figures come from the same release's state and area supplements.