Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare
What the pay figures show
- New York comes first for this job on every measure. $96,810 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $67,144 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare, New York's $96,810 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $67,144. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$59,300
People doing it
73,660
Highest paid
$96,810
NY
Best off, really
$67,144
NY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,580
Highest tenth
$98,240
Lowest, really
$37,755
AL
States with data
50
National average
$64,800
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
107.63%
NY, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $37,755 to $67,144.
- Just 73,660 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $59,300 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. New York tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $37,755 to $67,144 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 73,660 are employed nationally in education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,580 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $59,300 |
| Top tenth earn over | $98,240 |
| This salary | $59,300 |
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 Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare
The national median for this job
$59,300around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,580 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $59,300 |
| Top tenth | $98,240 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $41,780 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $96,810 |
| Spread | $55,030 |
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 | $50,840 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $52,318 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NY | $96,810 | $72,264 | $67,144 |
| AK | $75,540 | $61,972 | $60,927 |
| SD | $63,240 | $52,993 | $60,155 |
| NJ | $78,770 | $61,417 | $56,406 |
| DC | $77,850 | $59,949 | $54,103 |
| WA | $70,470 | $58,406 | $53,799 |
| VT | $63,220 | $50,915 | $52,688 |
| WY | $56,170 | $47,313 | $52,079 |
| NV | $60,120 | $50,486 | $52,059 |
| WI | $59,930 | $48,231 | $51,807 |
| IN | $58,740 | $47,674 | $51,716 |
| CO | $64,620 | $51,967 | $51,259 |
| UT | $60,980 | $48,464 | $51,013 |
| MA | $70,320 | $55,104 | $50,910 |
| NE | $56,160 | $45,453 | $50,293 |
| MN | $62,020 | $49,319 | $50,112 |
| KS | $56,970 | $45,065 | $50,092 |
| GA | $60,300 | $48,221 | $49,867 |
| NC | $57,200 | $46,367 | $49,253 |
| ME | $60,090 | $47,726 | $49,153 |
| ND | $51,390 | $43,472 | $49,081 |
| MI | $56,870 | $45,709 | $48,531 |
| MD | $62,520 | $49,809 | $47,909 |
| CA | $67,100 | $53,739 | $47,734 |
| IL | $58,550 | $46,471 | $47,010 |
| HI | $65,080 | $50,969 | $46,929 |
| PA | $56,380 | $45,750 | $46,924 |
| DE | $58,230 | $46,303 | $46,651 |
| FL | $56,750 | $47,779 | $46,184 |
| MS | $49,740 | $40,248 | $46,108 |
| CT | $59,760 | $47,660 | $45,965 |
| SC | $51,200 | $42,240 | $45,333 |
| TN | $49,200 | $41,712 | $45,087 |
| OH | $49,580 | $41,370 | $45,060 |
| RI | $55,290 | $44,952 | $44,326 |
| TX | $50,840 | $43,030 | $44,281 |
| NH | $55,120 | $46,469 | $44,111 |
| IA | $47,480 | $39,138 | $44,090 |
| OR | $60,250 | $45,869 | $43,801 |
| MT | $48,140 | $39,355 | $43,609 |
| LA | $46,030 | $38,170 | $43,206 |
| ID | $48,530 | $39,455 | $43,156 |
| OK | $46,690 | $38,095 | $43,149 |
| MO | $47,940 | $39,384 | $42,920 |
| AR | $44,990 | $37,123 | $42,913 |
| VA | $53,320 | $42,717 | $42,400 |
| WV | $45,660 | $37,607 | $41,892 |
| KY | $44,530 | $36,519 | $40,367 |
| AZ | $48,160 | $40,075 | $39,637 |
| AL | $41,780 | $33,968 | $37,755 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $59,300.
- 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, New York keeps the most at $72,264.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Alabama, on $37,755.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $59,300, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare 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 New York retains the most, $72,264. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare 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; Alabama anchors the distribution at $37,755. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.