Tech Salary Statistics 2026
Software developers in the United States earn a national median wage of $135,980 a year. Across the 21 computer and mathematical occupations the median is $105,650, and every one of them pays above the median of all 824 occupational medians, $61,340.
Wage estimates: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Group medians, ratios and counts are PayCrunch calculations from those estimates. OEWS covers wage and salary employment and excludes equity compensation.
Pay across the 21 computer and mathematical occupations in the Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS release of May 2025 — the group that covers software, data, security, networks and mathematics.
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.
- Software developers in the United States earn a national median wage of $135,980 a year.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The median of the 21 computer and mathematical occupation medians is $105,650 a year.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- All 21 computer and mathematical occupations pay a median above the median of all 824 occupational medians, $61,340.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- 15 of the 21 computer and mathematical occupations pay a national median of $100,000 or more.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The highest-paid occupation in the group is computer and information research scientists, at a national median of $140,300 a year.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The lowest-paid occupation in the group is computer user support specialists, at a national median of $61,860 a year.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Information security analysts earn a national median of $129,180 a year.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Data scientists earn a national median of $120,230 a year.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Software developer pay at the 90th percentile is $214,670 a year, against $82,460 at the 10th.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- The best-paying state for software developers is California, where the 90th-percentile wage is $272,670 and OEWS reports 284,390 software developers employed.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
- Computer and mathematical occupations have the second-highest group median of the 22 SOC major groups, at $105,650, behind management at $114,130.Source: PayCrunch calculation from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025.
Every computer and mathematical occupation
OEWS reports 21 occupations in the computer and mathematical major group, SOC 15. The group median of $105,650 is the second highest of the 22 SOC major groups, behind management. Every one of the 21 occupations has a median above the median of all 824 occupational medians, $61,340 — no other major group of comparable size manages that. 15 of the 21 pay a median of $100,000 or more.
| Occupation▲ | SOC▲ | Entry (10th pct)▲ | Median▲ | Top of range (90th pct)▲ | Best-paying state▲ | 90th pct there▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computer and Information Research Scientists | 15-1221 | $82,200 | $140,300 | $230,630 | Oregon | $351,690 |
| Database Architects | 15-1243 | $86,240 | $139,500 | $204,000 | California | $227,900 |
| Software Developers | 15-1252 | $82,460 | $135,980 | $214,670 | California | $272,670 |
| Computer Network Architects | 15-1241 | $79,900 | $134,050 | $202,680 | California | $224,930 |
| Actuaries | 15-2011 | $78,570 | $130,000 | $215,100 | New York | $277,800 |
| Information Security Analysts | 15-1212 | $75,090 | $129,180 | $199,850 | Tennessee | $250,590 |
| Mathematicians | 15-2021 | $69,240 | $126,710 | $195,190 | national figure | $195,190 |
| Data Scientists | 15-2051 | $67,240 | $120,230 | $199,130 | California | $224,920 |
| Computer Occupations, All Other | 15-1299 | $55,940 | $116,580 | $188,470 | California | $222,690 |
| Computer Systems Analysts | 15-1211 | $67,340 | $105,850 | $167,710 | Colorado | $209,090 |
| Statisticians | 15-2041 | $64,000 | $105,650 | $174,050 | Michigan | $213,610 |
| Database Administrators | 15-1242 | $60,230 | $104,620 | $163,320 | New York | $178,580 |
| Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers | 15-1253 | $61,440 | $104,300 | $167,010 | Washington | $202,730 |
| Web and Digital Interface Designers | 15-1255 | $53,750 | $104,000 | $201,550 | California | $219,750 |
| Computer Programmers | 15-1251 | $57,710 | $100,390 | $160,460 | Oklahoma | $249,600 |
| Network and Computer Systems Administrators | 15-1244 | $62,640 | $99,130 | $155,050 | Maryland | $177,720 |
| Web Developers | 15-1254 | $48,100 | $92,650 | $162,290 | California | $202,850 |
| Operations Research Analysts | 15-2031 | $57,060 | $88,940 | $159,910 | District of Columbia | $195,190 |
| Mathematical Science Occupations, All Other | 15-2099 | $47,980 | $81,490 | $154,580 | Illinois | $147,070 |
| Computer Network Support Specialists | 15-1231 | $47,120 | $76,220 | $127,780 | Washington | $171,300 |
| Computer User Support Specialists | 15-1232 | $40,980 | $61,860 | $100,540 | Washington | $128,470 |
National figures, BLS OEWS May 2025. Best-paying state uses the 500-employee floor.
Software developers in detail
Software developers have a national median of $135,980, a 10th percentile of $82,460 and a 90th percentile of $214,670 — a range of $132,210. The best-paying state is California, where the 90th-percentile wage is $272,670, the state median is $174,410 and OEWS reports 284,390 software developers employed. Information security analysts are at a median of $129,180 and data scientists at $120,230.
The spread inside tech
The group is not uniform. The highest median, computer and information research scientists at $140,300, is 2.3 times the lowest, computer user support specialists at $61,860. Support roles anchor the bottom of the group and research and architecture roles the top. The median top-of-range figure across the 21 occupations is $174,050 and the median entry figure $62,640.
How to cite this page
Ready to paste:
PayCrunch (2026). Tech Salary Statistics 2026. Aggregated from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://paycrunch.co/stats/tech-salary-statistics.html (accessed 31 August 2026).
For a single figure, name the occupation and the release — for example: “registered nurses earned a median of $97,550 a year (BLS, OEWS May 2025, via PayCrunch)”. Please credit the Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as PayCrunch: the wage estimates are theirs, and the aggregation is ours. Figures on this page were last recomputed on 31 August 2026 from the May 2025 release.
Method
Source
Every wage figure on this page comes from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics release of May 2025, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. No figure here is a PayCrunch estimate. What PayCrunch contributes is the aggregation: the counts, medians, means and rankings across occupations are computed from that release and are labelled as PayCrunch calculations wherever they appear.
What the three figures mean
Entry is the annual 10th percentile wage for the occupation nationally. Median is the 50th percentile. Top of range is the annual 90th percentile — the wage level below which 90 percent of the estimated wage distribution for that occupation falls. None of the three is a ceiling, a promise, or a statement about any individual.
The state figures
Where a state is named as best-paying, it is the state with the highest annual 90th-percentile wage among states that OEWS reports employing at least 500 people in that occupation. That employment floor is PayCrunch's rule, not the BLS's; it exists because unfiltered state estimates are frequently drawn from very small samples. The best-paying states dataset documents the floor in full and publishes the unfiltered answer alongside the filtered one for every occupation.
Rebuilding these numbers
The script that computes every figure on this page is .github/stats-engine/build_stats.py in the PayCrunch repository. It reads two files, /data/open/best-paying-states.json and the occupation page dataset, and regenerates all eight statistics pages. 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. BLS publishes relative standard errors alongside the estimates.
- These are occupational aggregates, not worker aggregates. Statistics here summarise the 824 occupation-level estimates, giving each occupation equal weight. They are not employment-weighted, so they do not describe the average American worker and should not be quoted as if they did.
- 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.
- Wage and salary employment only. OEWS excludes the self-employed, so occupations with many independent workers are under-covered.
- 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
Pay for individual occupations
PayCrunch pages for technology occupations. Several job titles map to the same SOC code, which each page states.
The full dataset behind these figures is on the best-paying states page, and every occupation is queryable through the PayCrunch API. All occupation pages →