About Just the Salaries

What this site publishes

Just the Salaries publishes the pay that U.S. government statistics report for each occupation: in the U.S. as a whole, in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and in metro areas. Every figure comes from an official source and carries that source and its year. This site does not alter, interpret or round an official figure: the only numbers that are not copied from a source are calculations you can check, such as a difference, a cost-of-living adjustment or a position in a ranking. How each one is calculated is explained below.

There is one page per occupation code of the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, and a page for an occupation in a place exists only if BLS publishes a median wage for it there. Pages are added in stages. A page links only to other pages that are already published: nearby states or metro areas, and up to six related occupations.

Sources

Wages and employment: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025. Projected employment growth and typical education: BLS Employment Projections, 2025–35, published for the U.S. only. Cost of living: BEA Regional Price Parities, 2024. Related occupations and specialties: the O*NET® 31.0 Database. Metro area definitions: OMB Bulletin 23-01 and the BLS area definitions for May 2025. Neighboring states and the distances between places: U.S. Census Bureau, 2024.

This site does not use salary websites, job boards or surveys of its own. Every source, with its license, is listed on the Attributions page.

Comparison with the U.S.

On a state or metro area page, the median is compared with the U.S. median for the same occupation, in the same unit: annual with annual, hourly with hourly. When both annual and hourly medians are published in both places, the comparison is annual. The difference is shown in dollars and as a percentage of the U.S. median, with one decimal; a half is rounded away from zero.

There is no comparison when BLS publishes the two medians in different units (this site does not convert hourly pay into annual pay or the other way round), or when either median is published only as a lower bound (≥ $239,200), because then the difference is not exact.

How the cost-of-living adjustment works

The BLS figure always comes first, exactly as published. Next to it, a state or metro area page shows the same figure adjusted for the cost of living there:

adjusted salary = salary ÷ RPP × 100

RPP is the Regional Price Parity that the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes for each state and metro area. It gives the price level of a place as a percentage of the U.S. price level, which is 100: an RPP of 112.500 means that prices there are 12.5% above the U.S. level. The page uses the latest year BEA has published and shows the RPP with its three decimals. Because the two sources are published at different times, every page says both years.

For example, this is the calculation for Registered Nurse in Texas, with the figures shown on its page:

$95,970 ÷ 97.057 × 100 = $98,880

Annual adjusted figures are rounded to the nearest dollar, and hourly ones to the nearest cent; a half is rounded up. When BLS publishes a median only as a lower bound (≥ $239,200), its adjusted figure is a minimum: it is always rounded down, so that the «≥» stays true.

If BEA does not publish an RPP for a place, its page has no adjusted figure and says so; this site does not borrow the RPP of another place. The U.S. page has no adjustment, because the U.S. RPP is 100 by definition.

Rankings

A state or metro area page shows where that place stands among the places of the same kind (states, or metro areas) for which BLS publishes a median for the occupation, and the full ranking is one link away. The ranking uses annual medians; for occupations for which BLS publishes only hourly medians, it uses hourly ones. A place that lacks the ranking's unit is not in it, and its page says so.

The adjusted rank orders the same places by their adjusted figure as published, to the dollar or to the cent, so two adjusted figures that show the same amount are tied. A place whose median is a lower bound has only a minimum adjusted figure, so it has no adjusted rank (—); neither has a place for which BEA publishes no RPP. Neither is counted in the adjusted total.

"Not published"

BLS does not publish every figure for every place: it withholds a figure when that figure does not meet its standards. Where a figure is withheld, this site shows «Not published» and a sentence that says so. It never fills the gap with another published figure, a figure calculated by this site or a conversion between hourly and annual pay.

A page is published only if BLS publishes a median for that occupation in that place. Percentiles and employment are shown when BLS publishes them.

Metro areas and cities

BLS publishes wage data for metropolitan statistical areas, not for each city. A metro area page is named after the cities in the area's official name and lists the principal cities and counties of the area, according to OMB Bulletin 23-01 and the BLS area definitions for May 2025. Its figures are those of the whole metro area, not of any one city in it. There are no pages for nonmetropolitan areas, Puerto Rico, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Updates

Every page shows the date it was last updated and the years of its sources. When BLS or BEA publishes a new year of data, the pages are recalculated from the new files, without manual edits.