Community Health Workers
What the pay figures show
- New Hampshire pays community health workers the most, $66,680. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and North Dakota wins, at $56,538. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For community health workers, New Hampshire leads both nominally at $66,680 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts North Dakota first at $56,538. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
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
$51,850
People doing it
61,660
Highest paid
$66,680
NH
Best off, really
$56,538
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,810
Highest tenth
$77,180
Lowest, really
$35,305
WV
States with data
51
National average
$56,180
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $35,305 and $56,538. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Only 61,660 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $51,850. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for community health workers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $35,305 to $56,538. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in community health workers is 61,660. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- Coverage for community health workers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Community Health Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,810 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $51,850 |
| Top tenth earn over | $77,180 |
| This salary | $51,850 |
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 Community Health Workers
The national median for this job
$51,850around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,810 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $51,850 |
| Top tenth | $77,180 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Community Health Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $37,950 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Hampshire · $66,680 |
| Spread | $28,730 |
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 | $48,720 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,136 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $59,610 | $50,077 | $56,538 |
| NH | $66,680 | $55,739 | $52,911 |
| WY | $54,020 | $45,585 | $50,177 |
| NV | $57,730 | $48,566 | $50,078 |
| NM | $54,830 | $44,825 | $49,592 |
| CO | $59,260 | $47,896 | $47,243 |
| UT | $55,700 | $44,456 | $46,795 |
| NE | $51,780 | $42,133 | $46,619 |
| ID | $52,050 | $42,097 | $46,045 |
| OH | $50,650 | $42,201 | $45,964 |
| MT | $49,780 | $40,595 | $44,984 |
| DC | $62,510 | $49,790 | $44,935 |
| DE | $55,850 | $44,523 | $44,858 |
| WI | $51,210 | $41,656 | $44,745 |
| IA | $47,780 | $39,367 | $44,349 |
| WA | $57,070 | $48,036 | $44,247 |
| SD | $45,700 | $38,900 | $44,157 |
| MO | $48,770 | $40,012 | $43,604 |
| LA | $46,450 | $38,495 | $43,574 |
| VT | $51,500 | $42,091 | $43,557 |
| KY | $48,230 | $39,362 | $43,510 |
| AK | $52,000 | $43,962 | $43,221 |
| NY | $58,130 | $46,345 | $43,062 |
| AR | $44,890 | $37,047 | $42,825 |
| SC | $47,970 | $39,859 | $42,778 |
| RI | $53,100 | $43,275 | $42,672 |
| IN | $47,960 | $39,331 | $42,665 |
| TX | $48,720 | $41,327 | $42,528 |
| HI | $58,450 | $46,146 | $42,488 |
| MI | $49,380 | $40,009 | $42,480 |
| PA | $50,710 | $41,369 | $42,429 |
| OK | $45,790 | $37,412 | $42,376 |
| GA | $50,680 | $40,971 | $42,370 |
| KS | $47,300 | $37,835 | $42,055 |
| CA | $58,050 | $47,148 | $41,879 |
| NJ | $55,790 | $45,473 | $41,763 |
| CT | $53,560 | $43,020 | $41,489 |
| NC | $47,560 | $39,006 | $41,434 |
| MA | $55,560 | $44,364 | $40,988 |
| ME | $48,670 | $39,321 | $40,497 |
| AZ | $48,950 | $40,690 | $40,245 |
| IL | $49,240 | $39,452 | $39,909 |
| MN | $47,560 | $38,669 | $39,291 |
| MD | $50,550 | $40,759 | $39,205 |
| VA | $48,910 | $39,427 | $39,134 |
| TN | $42,310 | $36,176 | $39,103 |
| OR | $53,350 | $40,929 | $39,084 |
| AL | $43,340 | $35,153 | $39,072 |
| FL | $45,420 | $38,675 | $37,384 |
| MS | $39,520 | $32,446 | $37,169 |
| WV | $37,950 | $31,694 | $35,305 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for community health workers, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $51,850 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- Take-home figures for community health workers 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 New Hampshire, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $55,739.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for community health workers. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits West Virginia, on $35,305.
- All wage figures for community health workers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $51,850. 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 community health workers 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 $55,739, in New Hampshire. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for community health workers rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; West Virginia anchors the distribution at $35,305. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.