🇺🇸 United States·Wage by occupation × state·BLS OEWS May 2025
Am I paid fairly, and would moving help?
Set your salary, your job, and your state. We place you in the role's pay distribution, then show whether the same job pays more somewhere else.
I earn $ a year as in .
vs Software Developers nationally
Lower-middle
37%
You out-earn 37% of Software Developers in the U.S., which is 0.9× the median. Against all U.S. workers, you out-earn 87%.
Would moving help?
The same job, in another state
Loading state-by-state data…
Distribution
Wage distribution · Software Developers
Bottom 25% Middle 50% 75th–90th Top 10%+ You
What this means
You're in the lower-middle for Software Developers.
You out-earn about 37% of Software Developers, between the 25th percentile ($105,210) and the median ($135,980). Common early-career or lower-cost-of-living territory for this role.
Reaching the median would mean $15,980 more. Two levers move this fastest: where the job is, and how long you've been in it. The location check above shows the first.
Next milestone · $15,980 more to reach the median ($135,980)
The top-10% line
Cross $214,670 and you've out-earned 90% of Software Developers. That's the highest rank the data resolves.
Mean vs median
The average Software Developers earns $148,100, against the median of $135,980. Top earners pull the average up.
The full spread
From $82,460 at the bottom to $214,670 at the top: a 2.6× range inside one job title.
Vs the typical U.S. worker
This role's median is 2.7× the all-occupation median of $50,980.
Per hour
The median works out to about $65.38 an hour at full-time.
How many do this
About 1.69M people work as Software Developers, within Computer and Mathematical.
Keep it in perspective
Earning more somewhere else isn't always living better there.
The location panel above is gross pay, not take-home life. A state that pays your role 30% more often costs more to live in, taxes more, or sits far from the people you'd want nearby. Run the numbers on cost of living and state tax before a higher median talks you into a move.
And a fair salary is only one part of the picture. Health, time, and who you spend your days with rarely appear in a wage table, yet they do more for how a life feels than another percentile. Treat this page as a fact about your pay, not a verdict on your situation.
It means where your salary sits in the actual wage distribution for your exact occupation, not a survey of opinions. We compare your number to the five published points of your occupation's pay (10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles) from the BLS OEWS. "Fair" is a personal judgment, but this gives you the factual ground to make it.
Often, yes, in gross terms: the same occupation can pay 30–50% more in one state than another. But the figures here are nominal wages, not adjusted for cost of living or state taxes. A higher median in an expensive state can leave less in your account, so treat the location panel as where the pay is, then weigh the cost side before deciding.
We interpolate your salary linearly between the published percentile points: nationally we have five points, and per state we have three (10th, median, 90th). Earn exactly the median and you out-earn 50%. We never invent points the survey doesn't publish.
The OEWS publishes only up to the 90th percentile. Above it, everyone shares the same ceiling: the data cannot tell a 91st-percentile earner from a 99th. So the top tier we show is "Top 10%+", and we never display a top-1% or top-5% figure, because it would be made up.
Very possibly. To see where your pay ranks across all 825 U.S. occupations and which ones out-earn yours, use the "Which jobs pay more than yours?" page.