Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: the District of Columbia, at $101,150. Tax does not change that. Best off: South Dakota, at $73,030 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- The District of Columbia's $101,150 median for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: South Dakota takes the top position at $73,030. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$78,000
People doing it
324,230
Highest paid
$101,150
DC
Best off, really
$73,030
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,850
Highest tenth
$117,040
Lowest, really
$52,688
AZ
States with data
51
National average
$80,470
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $52,688 and $73,030. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 324,230 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $78,000. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $78,000. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $52,688 to $73,030. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- With 324,230 workers, claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,850 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $78,000 |
| Top tenth earn over | $117,040 |
| This salary | $78,000 |
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 Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators
The national median for this job
$78,000around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,850 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $78,000 |
| Top tenth | $117,040 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Nevada · $62,730 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $101,150 |
| Spread | $38,420 |
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 | $78,800 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $81,091 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $78,900 | $64,336 | $73,030 |
| AK | $87,670 | $70,506 | $69,317 |
| MD | $95,560 | $71,881 | $69,140 |
| WY | $76,400 | $62,577 | $68,881 |
| TN | $78,010 | $63,710 | $68,865 |
| MS | $77,100 | $60,078 | $68,824 |
| AL | $79,710 | $61,521 | $68,379 |
| AR | $73,920 | $58,556 | $67,689 |
| DC | $101,150 | $74,360 | $67,109 |
| VT | $83,970 | $64,471 | $66,716 |
| NJ | $95,690 | $72,242 | $66,349 |
| TX | $78,800 | $64,266 | $66,134 |
| RI | $86,520 | $66,872 | $65,941 |
| KS | $77,290 | $59,179 | $65,780 |
| NE | $75,830 | $59,430 | $65,758 |
| ID | $77,340 | $59,993 | $65,620 |
| WI | $78,160 | $60,630 | $65,126 |
| IA | $72,640 | $57,784 | $65,096 |
| MI | $78,850 | $61,201 | $64,980 |
| MO | $75,840 | $59,556 | $64,903 |
| CT | $88,330 | $66,862 | $64,483 |
| KY | $73,840 | $58,310 | $64,453 |
| NH | $83,890 | $67,847 | $64,404 |
| OK | $71,260 | $56,255 | $63,719 |
| SC | $75,370 | $59,171 | $63,504 |
| IN | $73,560 | $58,439 | $63,394 |
| NC | $75,310 | $59,314 | $63,007 |
| PA | $77,290 | $60,831 | $62,390 |
| ME | $78,590 | $60,133 | $61,931 |
| ND | $65,460 | $54,760 | $61,825 |
| NY | $87,130 | $66,018 | $61,340 |
| CA | $91,790 | $68,960 | $61,254 |
| MN | $78,350 | $60,145 | $61,112 |
| FL | $76,920 | $62,943 | $60,843 |
| OH | $67,990 | $55,508 | $60,458 |
| WA | $80,700 | $65,602 | $60,429 |
| NM | $67,930 | $54,592 | $60,398 |
| WV | $67,290 | $53,976 | $60,125 |
| IL | $77,010 | $59,339 | $60,027 |
| LA | $65,220 | $53,014 | $60,008 |
| CO | $77,620 | $60,729 | $59,901 |
| GA | $73,320 | $57,351 | $59,309 |
| MA | $83,740 | $63,874 | $59,013 |
| UT | $69,000 | $54,301 | $57,158 |
| VA | $74,240 | $57,550 | $57,122 |
| OR | $81,640 | $59,670 | $56,980 |
| MT | $63,860 | $51,244 | $56,784 |
| DE | $72,370 | $56,197 | $56,620 |
| HI | $79,080 | $59,896 | $55,148 |
| NV | $62,730 | $52,584 | $54,221 |
| AZ | $65,110 | $53,271 | $52,688 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $78,000 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In the District of Columbia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $74,360.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Arizona sits at the bottom on $52,688.
- All wage figures for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $78,000. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Take-home calculations for claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $74,360, in the District of Columbia. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to claims adjusters, examiners, and investigators uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Arizona at $52,688. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Arizona anchors the bottom at $52,688 — and the two source series are dated independently.