Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: the District of Columbia, at $74,080. Tax does not change that. Best off: Michigan, at $56,544 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- The District of Columbia's $74,080 median for eligibility interviewers, government programs survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Michigan takes the top position at $56,544. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
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
$54,210
People doing it
154,800
Highest paid
$74,080
DC
Best off, really
$56,544
MI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,900
Highest tenth
$74,690
Lowest, really
$31,023
FL
States with data
50
National average
$56,090
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
94.18%
MI, 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 $31,023 to $56,544.
- About 154,800 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $54,210. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $54,210 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. The District of Columbia tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation in eligibility interviewers, government programs 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 $31,023 to $56,544, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 154,800 workers, eligibility interviewers, government programs 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.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for eligibility interviewers, government programs. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,900 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $54,210 |
| Top tenth earn over | $74,690 |
| This salary | $54,210 |
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 Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs
The national median for this job
$54,210around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,900 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $54,210 |
| Top tenth | $74,690 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $36,840 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $74,080 |
| Spread | $37,240 |
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 | $46,860 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $48,222 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MI | $66,830 | $53,255 | $56,544 |
| IA | $61,340 | $49,748 | $56,043 |
| CT | $71,940 | $56,233 | $54,232 |
| MT | $59,180 | $47,706 | $52,864 |
| DC | $74,080 | $57,577 | $51,963 |
| RI | $64,560 | $52,053 | $51,328 |
| WA | $66,330 | $55,476 | $51,101 |
| AK | $61,840 | $51,868 | $50,994 |
| MN | $62,820 | $49,908 | $50,710 |
| SD | $52,350 | $44,243 | $50,222 |
| IL | $61,840 | $48,952 | $49,519 |
| ND | $51,810 | $43,809 | $49,462 |
| VT | $58,530 | $47,456 | $49,109 |
| PA | $59,070 | $47,829 | $49,056 |
| AL | $54,040 | $43,279 | $48,104 |
| NM | $53,000 | $43,440 | $48,061 |
| NV | $55,160 | $46,501 | $47,949 |
| MA | $64,750 | $51,289 | $47,386 |
| CO | $58,750 | $47,509 | $46,861 |
| KY | $52,020 | $42,275 | $46,729 |
| ID | $52,670 | $42,562 | $46,554 |
| NH | $57,300 | $48,221 | $45,774 |
| CA | $63,520 | $51,209 | $45,486 |
| OH | $50,070 | $41,751 | $45,474 |
| NE | $50,320 | $41,026 | $45,395 |
| OK | $49,090 | $39,915 | $45,211 |
| LA | $48,260 | $39,895 | $45,159 |
| TN | $49,230 | $41,736 | $45,113 |
| WI | $51,480 | $41,860 | $44,964 |
| UT | $52,790 | $42,248 | $44,470 |
| MD | $57,160 | $45,757 | $44,012 |
| KS | $49,650 | $39,592 | $44,008 |
| AR | $45,340 | $37,392 | $43,223 |
| ME | $50,860 | $40,933 | $42,157 |
| NC | $47,350 | $38,845 | $41,264 |
| TX | $46,860 | $39,832 | $40,990 |
| OR | $55,660 | $42,583 | $40,663 |
| VA | $50,960 | $40,957 | $40,652 |
| WV | $44,150 | $36,457 | $40,611 |
| HI | $54,970 | $43,614 | $40,157 |
| NY | $53,430 | $42,823 | $39,789 |
| NJ | $51,380 | $42,173 | $38,732 |
| MO | $42,850 | $35,533 | $38,723 |
| GA | $44,620 | $36,404 | $37,647 |
| IN | $40,160 | $33,293 | $36,116 |
| SC | $38,670 | $32,780 | $35,181 |
| DE | $42,900 | $34,836 | $35,098 |
| MS | $36,840 | $30,399 | $34,825 |
| AZ | $41,690 | $35,038 | $34,655 |
| FL | $37,230 | $32,094 | $31,023 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $54,210, 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.
- Take-home figures for this job 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 the District of Columbia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $57,577.
- 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 — Florida sits at the bottom on $31,023.
- These are distribution medians for eligibility interviewers, government programs, with a national value of $54,210. 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.
- Take-home calculations for eligibility interviewers, government programs 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 $57,577, in the District of Columbia. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to eligibility interviewers, government programs 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 Florida at $31,023. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Florida anchors the bottom at $31,023 — and the two source series are dated independently.