Median Salary by Occupation Group (2026)
Management Occupations pay a US median of $126,520, the highest of the 22 major job groups (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch).
Wage estimates: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Rankings, ratios and shares on this page are PayCrunch calculations from that national file. Figures are annual and not adjusted for cost of living.
Employment, median and mean annual wages for every SOC major occupation group in the BLS OEWS May 2025 national file.
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Management Occupations pay a US median of $126,520, the highest of the 22 major job groups (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch).
Key statistics
Each line is one figure with its source. Quote any of them directly; the citation format is at the foot of the page.
- Management Occupations is the highest-paying of the 22 major occupation groups, at a median of $126,520 and a mean of $145,260.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations is the lowest, at $35,050.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The largest group is Office and Administrative Support Occupations, with 17,753,430 jobs and a median of $47,450.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- 12 of 22 groups have a median above the all-occupations median of $50,980.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
All major occupation groups
Sorted by median annual wage. Employment, median and mean are the figures BLS publishes for each SOC major group.
| Group▲ | SOC▲ | Employment▲ | Median▲ | Mean▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management Occupations | 11-0000 | 11,132,700 | $126,520 | $145,260 |
| Computer and Mathematical Occupations | 15-0000 | 5,260,110 | $109,280 | $120,080 |
| Legal Occupations | 23-0000 | 1,305,620 | $102,500 | $139,510 |
| Architecture and Engineering Occupations | 17-0000 | 2,617,130 | $99,520 | $106,830 |
| Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations | 29-0000 | 9,823,860 | $86,530 | $108,700 |
| Business and Financial Operations Occupations | 13-0000 | 10,537,240 | $82,660 | $95,230 |
| Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations | 19-0000 | 1,473,260 | $82,530 | $94,600 |
| Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations | 27-0000 | 2,046,290 | $62,750 | $79,790 |
| Educational Instruction and Library Occupations | 25-0000 | 9,100,570 | $60,570 | $67,540 |
| Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations | 49-0000 | 6,086,190 | $59,620 | $63,320 |
| Construction and Extraction Occupations | 47-0000 | 6,425,160 | $59,540 | $65,360 |
| Community and Social Service Occupations | 21-0000 | 2,668,680 | $58,300 | $63,410 |
| Protective Service Occupations | 33-0000 | 3,776,610 | $50,080 | $60,720 |
| Office and Administrative Support Occupations | 43-0000 | 17,753,430 | $47,450 | $51,560 |
| Production Occupations | 51-0000 | 8,565,760 | $46,990 | $51,600 |
| Transportation and Material Moving Occupations | 53-0000 | 13,677,150 | $44,350 | $49,850 |
| Sales and Related Occupations | 41-0000 | 13,424,300 | $38,530 | $54,960 |
| Healthcare Support Occupations | 31-0000 | 7,901,670 | $38,340 | $40,800 |
| Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations | 37-0000 | 4,548,260 | $37,680 | $40,880 |
| Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations | 45-0000 | 435,200 | $36,630 | $41,510 |
| Personal Care and Service Occupations | 39-0000 | 3,255,790 | $36,410 | $41,070 |
| Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations | 35-0000 | 13,680,750 | $35,050 | $37,150 |
National figures, BLS OEWS May 2025. Click a column to sort.
How to cite this page
Ready to paste for the page:
PayCrunch (2026). Median Salary by Occupation Group (2026). Aggregated from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://paycrunch.co/stats/salary-by-occupation-group-statistics.html (accessed 14 October 2026).
Ready to paste for the lead figure on this page:
Management Occupations pay a US median of $126,520, the highest of the 22 major job groups (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch).
Method
Source
Every wage and employment figure on this page comes from the national file of the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release of May 2025, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. No wage here is a PayCrunch estimate. Rankings, ratios and shares are PayCrunch calculations from that file and are labelled as such.
What is counted
Each row is one SOC major group as BLS publishes it, with that group's employment, median annual wage and mean annual wage. Highest, lowest and largest are read off those published figures. The count of groups above the all-occupations median compares each group's published median with the total-row median.
Rows left out
An occupation with no published annual median or percentile is left out of any ranking that needs that figure. In this release that is a handful of occupations for which BLS publishes an hourly wage only. The all-occupations median, and the all-occupations 10th and 90th percentiles, are the single total row in the file. That row describes workers. It is not the median of the occupation-level medians, which is a different statistic and is published on the average salary statistics page.
Rebuilding these numbers
The script that computes every figure on this page is .github/stats-gen/gen_national_stats_pages.py. It reads data/open/national_M2025_dl.xlsx and regenerates this page. Nothing on this page is typed by hand.
Limitations
- OEWS is a survey. Every figure carries sampling error, and the error is largest where the occupation is smallest.
- Wage and salary employment only. OEWS excludes the self-employed, so occupations with many independent workers are under-covered.
- The 90th percentile is not a maximum. It is a point on a wage distribution. Pay above it exists.
- No cost-of-living adjustment. All figures are nominal annual wages.
- SOC titles are classification labels, not job titles as employers use them, and one SOC code can cover several distinct jobs.
- One release only. These are May 2025 figures; OEWS releases are not straightforwardly comparable across years.
Frequently asked questions
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