Computer User Support Specialists

What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is the District of Columbia, at $80,950. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and Wyoming comes out ahead, worth $59,977. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for computer user support specialists: the District of Columbia leads at $80,950 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting Wyoming to $59,977 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
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
$61,860
People doing it
717,190
Highest paid
$80,950
DC
Best off, really
$59,977
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$40,980
Highest tenth
$100,540
Lowest, really
$41,356
HI
States with data
51
National average
$67,330
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, 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 $41,356 and $59,977. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 717,190 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $61,860. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $61,860 in the middle.
- Interstate variation for computer user support specialists is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $41,356 to $59,977. 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 717,190 workers, computer user support specialists 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report computer user support specialists, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Computer User Support Specialists
The national median for this job
| Lowest tenth earn under | $40,980 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $61,860 |
| Top tenth earn over | $100,540 |
| This salary | $61,860 |
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 Computer User Support Specialists
The national median for this job
| Lowest tenth | $40,980 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $61,860 |
| Top tenth | $100,540 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Computer User Support Specialists, state by state
The national median for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $46,360 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $80,950 |
| Spread | $34,590 |
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 | $59,490 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,219 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WY | $65,100 | $54,488 | $59,977 |
| ND | $61,310 | $51,443 | $58,080 |
| WA | $75,220 | $61,747 | $56,877 |
| CO | $71,900 | $56,956 | $56,180 |
| DC | $80,950 | $61,866 | $55,834 |
| CA | $79,570 | $61,500 | $54,627 |
| NE | $60,830 | $48,993 | $54,210 |
| IA | $58,810 | $47,811 | $53,861 |
| MA | $75,070 | $58,208 | $53,778 |
| OH | $59,720 | $49,239 | $53,630 |
| CT | $70,210 | $55,111 | $53,150 |
| MO | $59,770 | $48,333 | $52,672 |
| NY | $72,560 | $56,555 | $52,547 |
| VT | $63,030 | $50,775 | $52,543 |
| MT | $58,460 | $47,162 | $52,260 |
| AK | $63,110 | $52,889 | $51,997 |
| ID | $59,170 | $47,440 | $51,890 |
| KY | $57,850 | $46,755 | $51,682 |
| NC | $60,120 | $48,596 | $51,622 |
| TX | $59,490 | $49,980 | $51,433 |
| MN | $63,630 | $50,503 | $51,316 |
| UT | $61,110 | $48,562 | $51,117 |
| VA | $65,040 | $51,460 | $51,078 |
| TN | $55,990 | $47,168 | $50,984 |
| WI | $58,810 | $47,388 | $50,902 |
| NV | $57,870 | $48,679 | $50,194 |
| WV | $55,350 | $44,984 | $50,109 |
| GA | $60,440 | $48,326 | $49,976 |
| IN | $56,510 | $45,948 | $49,844 |
| AZ | $61,410 | $50,390 | $49,839 |
| RI | $62,510 | $50,483 | $49,780 |
| ME | $60,890 | $48,315 | $49,760 |
| DE | $62,160 | $49,243 | $49,613 |
| MD | $64,750 | $51,495 | $49,531 |
| KS | $56,150 | $44,452 | $49,410 |
| LA | $52,440 | $43,129 | $48,818 |
| PA | $58,670 | $47,520 | $48,739 |
| NH | $60,660 | $50,920 | $48,337 |
| NM | $53,280 | $43,652 | $48,295 |
| MS | $52,230 | $42,150 | $48,286 |
| MI | $56,240 | $45,229 | $48,022 |
| IL | $59,860 | $47,459 | $48,009 |
| OK | $52,040 | $42,153 | $47,746 |
| FL | $58,740 | $49,378 | $47,730 |
| NJ | $64,470 | $51,967 | $47,728 |
| SD | $48,260 | $40,957 | $46,492 |
| SC | $52,080 | $42,889 | $46,030 |
| OR | $62,840 | $47,724 | $45,572 |
| AL | $49,630 | $39,930 | $44,381 |
| AR | $46,360 | $38,174 | $44,127 |
| HI | $56,760 | $44,916 | $41,356 |
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 $61,860 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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, the District of Columbia keeps the most at $61,866.
- The price adjustment for this job 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 — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $41,356. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for computer user support specialists are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $61,860. 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.
- The household modeled for computer user support specialists 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 the District of Columbia retains the most, $61,866. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for computer user support specialists 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.