Bartenders
What the pay figures show
- Hawaii comes first for bartenders on every measure. $76,490 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $53,652 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For bartenders, Hawaii's $76,490 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $53,652. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$34,340
People doing it
756,390
Highest paid
$76,490
HI
Best off, really
$53,652
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$20,110
Highest tenth
$73,770
Lowest, really
$18,754
SC
States with data
51
National average
$40,790
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.61%
HI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $18,754 up to $53,652.
- 756,390 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $34,340. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $34,340, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- The nominal spread for bartenders approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $18,754 to $53,652, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in bartenders is 756,390 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for bartenders, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Bartenders
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $20,110 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $34,340 |
| Top tenth earn over | $73,770 |
| This salary | $34,340 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Bartenders
The national median for this job
$34,340around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $20,110 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $34,340 |
| Top tenth | $73,770 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Bartenders, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | South Carolina · $19,370 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $76,490 |
| Spread | $57,120 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $22,690 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $23,350 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| HI | $76,490 | $58,271 | $53,652 |
| NY | $61,210 | $48,654 | $45,206 |
| WA | $55,830 | $47,039 | $43,330 |
| ME | $48,920 | $39,505 | $40,686 |
| DC | $53,920 | $43,436 | $39,200 |
| VT | $45,450 | $37,433 | $38,736 |
| VA | $47,070 | $38,055 | $37,772 |
| AZ | $45,070 | $37,669 | $37,258 |
| NM | $36,980 | $31,271 | $34,597 |
| NJ | $44,020 | $36,666 | $33,674 |
| NC | $36,470 | $30,537 | $32,438 |
| MI | $36,780 | $30,420 | $32,299 |
| CO | $38,170 | $31,879 | $31,444 |
| CT | $38,780 | $32,115 | $30,972 |
| DE | $36,840 | $30,303 | $30,531 |
| RI | $36,410 | $30,490 | $30,066 |
| MD | $37,580 | $30,954 | $29,774 |
| FL | $35,150 | $30,423 | $29,408 |
| SD | $29,400 | $25,803 | $29,290 |
| OH | $30,880 | $26,859 | $29,255 |
| OR | $38,900 | $30,583 | $29,204 |
| ND | $29,040 | $25,514 | $28,806 |
| NE | $30,180 | $25,724 | $28,464 |
| MA | $37,440 | $30,711 | $28,374 |
| MO | $30,090 | $25,880 | $28,204 |
| WV | $29,630 | $25,272 | $28,151 |
| UT | $32,150 | $26,582 | $27,980 |
| MS | $28,320 | $23,891 | $27,369 |
| CA | $36,220 | $30,698 | $27,268 |
| KY | $28,780 | $24,415 | $26,987 |
| AK | $30,460 | $26,655 | $26,205 |
| TN | $27,480 | $24,240 | $26,201 |
| IL | $31,200 | $25,850 | $26,149 |
| AL | $27,980 | $23,497 | $26,116 |
| KS | $27,940 | $23,348 | $25,952 |
| ID | $27,240 | $23,452 | $25,651 |
| AR | $25,090 | $21,791 | $25,189 |
| MT | $26,010 | $22,563 | $25,003 |
| NV | $27,460 | $24,223 | $24,978 |
| PA | $28,420 | $24,141 | $24,760 |
| OK | $24,790 | $21,410 | $24,250 |
| NH | $28,800 | $25,321 | $24,036 |
| MN | $26,900 | $23,142 | $23,514 |
| WI | $23,460 | $20,583 | $22,109 |
| WY | $22,030 | $19,752 | $21,741 |
| IA | $21,720 | $19,283 | $21,723 |
| IN | $22,770 | $19,719 | $21,391 |
| LA | $20,850 | $18,541 | $20,987 |
| TX | $22,690 | $20,295 | $20,885 |
| GA | $22,830 | $19,870 | $20,548 |
| SC | $19,370 | $17,474 | $18,754 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for bartenders as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $34,340, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for bartenders. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Hawaii keeps the most at $58,271.
- The price adjustment for bartenders uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — South Carolina anchors the bottom at $18,754. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for bartenders, with a national value of $34,340. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- The household modeled for bartenders is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Hawaii retains the most, $58,271. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for bartenders deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.