Compensation and Benefits Managers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Washington pays this job best, at $199,190. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $136,625 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for compensation and benefits managers is also the real leader: Washington at $199,190, holding through tax and through price deflation to $136,625. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$149,230
People doing it
22,940
Highest paid
$199,190
WA
Best off, really
$136,625
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$89,160
Highest tenth
$256,570
Lowest, really
$73,082
HI
States with data
45
National average
$162,640
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $73,082 to $136,625.
- This is a small job: about 22,940 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 45 jurisdictions, averaging $149,230 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Washington leads the published set.
- Interstate variation in compensation and benefits managers pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $73,082 to $136,625, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 22,940 workers, compensation and benefits managers is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- Coverage for compensation and benefits managers runs to 45 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Compensation and Benefits Managers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $89,160 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $149,230 |
| Top tenth earn over | $256,570 |
| This salary | $149,230 |
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 Compensation and Benefits Managers
The national median for this job
$149,230around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $89,160 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $149,230 |
| Top tenth | $256,570 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Compensation and Benefits Managers, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $89,250 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $199,190 |
| Spread | $109,940 |
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 | $136,930 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $140,911 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $199,190 | $148,323 | $136,625 |
| CT | $197,970 | $136,785 | $131,919 |
| GA | $163,060 | $115,180 | $119,111 |
| MA | $184,070 | $128,194 | $118,437 |
| CO | $165,770 | $117,984 | $116,376 |
| DE | $166,070 | $115,045 | $115,911 |
| MI | $151,620 | $108,705 | $115,418 |
| MN | $163,390 | $112,950 | $114,767 |
| OH | $141,920 | $105,082 | $114,453 |
| NY | $175,620 | $121,413 | $112,810 |
| TN | $132,780 | $102,021 | $110,275 |
| IL | $151,730 | $107,608 | $108,854 |
| NJ | $168,370 | $117,812 | $108,200 |
| TX | $136,930 | $104,858 | $107,906 |
| VA | $153,660 | $108,218 | $107,413 |
| RI | $149,340 | $107,599 | $106,101 |
| NC | $135,240 | $98,815 | $104,967 |
| PA | $139,040 | $102,031 | $104,647 |
| OR | $161,470 | $107,664 | $102,811 |
| NM | $124,390 | $91,522 | $101,257 |
| CA | $166,730 | $113,812 | $101,094 |
| UT | $132,620 | $96,010 | $101,061 |
| DC | $160,990 | $110,587 | $99,804 |
| NH | $136,950 | $104,871 | $99,550 |
| WI | $127,920 | $92,560 | $99,423 |
| IA | $118,250 | $88,137 | $99,290 |
| NE | $121,630 | $89,566 | $99,104 |
| AL | $118,470 | $87,277 | $97,007 |
| MD | $139,860 | $100,351 | $96,523 |
| AZ | $129,890 | $97,201 | $96,139 |
| IN | $118,180 | $88,513 | $96,018 |
| FL | $127,960 | $98,727 | $95,432 |
| ME | $129,690 | $92,279 | $95,037 |
| KY | $114,290 | $85,350 | $94,343 |
| AK | $122,490 | $94,988 | $93,386 |
| NV | $115,180 | $89,859 | $92,657 |
| KS | $114,070 | $83,002 | $92,260 |
| OK | $107,760 | $80,290 | $90,944 |
| AR | $100,810 | $76,478 | $88,406 |
| MO | $106,490 | $79,678 | $86,831 |
| LA | $99,840 | $76,458 | $86,545 |
| SC | $99,630 | $74,695 | $80,165 |
| MS | $89,250 | $68,139 | $78,059 |
| ID | $90,020 | $68,241 | $74,642 |
| HI | $110,120 | $79,374 | $73,082 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $149,230, 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 this job. 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, Washington keeps the most at $148,323.
- 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 — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $73,082.
- These are distribution medians for compensation and benefits managers, with a national value of $149,230. 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 compensation and benefits managers 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 Washington retains the most, $148,323. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to compensation and benefits managers 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 Hawaii at $73,082. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $73,082 — and the two source series are dated independently.