Dietitians and Nutritionists
What the pay figures show
- California pays dietitians and nutritionists the most, $98,850. 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 West Virginia wins, at $76,353. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For dietitians and nutritionists, California leads both nominally at $98,850 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 West Virginia first at $76,353. 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$76,400
People doing it
77,570
Highest paid
$98,850
CA
Best off, really
$76,353
WV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$49,090
Highest tenth
$103,720
Lowest, really
$52,149
AZ
States with data
51
National average
$77,130
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
89.77%
WV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $52,149 to $76,353. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- This is a small job: about 77,570 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $76,400 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in dietitians and nutritionists is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $52,149 through $76,353. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- With 77,570 workers, dietitians and nutritionists 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report dietitians and nutritionists, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Dietitians and Nutritionists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $49,090 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $76,400 |
| Top tenth earn over | $103,720 |
| This salary | $76,400 |
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 Dietitians and Nutritionists
The national median for this job
$76,400around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $49,090 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $76,400 |
| Top tenth | $103,720 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Dietitians and Nutritionists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $63,700 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $98,850 |
| Spread | $35,150 |
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 | $74,440 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $76,604 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WV | $89,440 | $68,544 | $76,353 |
| AK | $87,980 | $70,724 | $69,531 |
| ND | $70,040 | $57,997 | $65,480 |
| NM | $74,730 | $59,056 | $65,337 |
| IA | $72,690 | $57,817 | $65,133 |
| CA | $98,850 | $73,270 | $65,082 |
| LA | $70,460 | $56,671 | $64,147 |
| TX | $74,440 | $61,199 | $62,978 |
| WI | $74,930 | $58,550 | $62,891 |
| WA | $84,220 | $68,079 | $62,710 |
| MT | $71,580 | $56,503 | $62,612 |
| OK | $69,560 | $55,136 | $62,451 |
| VT | $77,450 | $60,315 | $62,415 |
| SD | $64,890 | $54,319 | $61,660 |
| NE | $70,160 | $55,699 | $61,630 |
| OH | $69,530 | $56,549 | $61,592 |
| ID | $71,610 | $56,266 | $61,543 |
| KY | $69,520 | $55,422 | $61,261 |
| AR | $65,540 | $52,875 | $61,122 |
| TN | $67,620 | $56,401 | $60,964 |
| MN | $77,540 | $59,630 | $60,589 |
| DE | $78,060 | $59,824 | $60,275 |
| FL | $76,050 | $62,331 | $60,251 |
| SC | $69,970 | $55,730 | $59,811 |
| NJ | $84,450 | $65,051 | $59,744 |
| CT | $80,600 | $61,849 | $59,649 |
| WY | $64,370 | $53,901 | $59,331 |
| GA | $73,200 | $57,272 | $59,227 |
| NV | $69,030 | $57,393 | $59,180 |
| VA | $77,380 | $59,578 | $59,135 |
| NY | $82,480 | $62,998 | $58,534 |
| CO | $75,510 | $59,337 | $58,528 |
| OR | $84,180 | $61,235 | $58,474 |
| AL | $66,190 | $52,507 | $58,361 |
| MS | $63,700 | $50,907 | $58,318 |
| KS | $66,830 | $52,404 | $58,250 |
| IN | $66,450 | $53,642 | $58,190 |
| MD | $77,800 | $60,230 | $57,933 |
| IL | $73,520 | $57,057 | $57,718 |
| NC | $67,560 | $54,172 | $57,544 |
| MO | $65,450 | $52,630 | $57,355 |
| HI | $81,920 | $61,678 | $56,789 |
| MI | $66,850 | $53,269 | $56,558 |
| DC | $82,150 | $62,608 | $56,504 |
| NH | $71,840 | $59,369 | $56,357 |
| RI | $71,300 | $56,736 | $55,946 |
| PA | $67,410 | $54,183 | $55,573 |
| MA | $76,660 | $59,247 | $54,738 |
| UT | $65,310 | $51,750 | $54,473 |
| ME | $64,610 | $51,053 | $52,579 |
| AZ | $64,410 | $52,726 | $52,149 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for dietitians and nutritionists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $76,400, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for dietitians and nutritionists, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is California, at $73,270.
- The price adjustment for dietitians and nutritionists 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 — Arizona anchors the bottom at $52,149. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for dietitians and nutritionists, with a national value of $76,400. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for dietitians and nutritionists model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $73,270, which leads in California.
- Real-terms figures for dietitians and nutritionists 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.