Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors
What the pay figures show
- Massachusetts pays this job the most, $64,620. 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 Nevada wins, at $50,269. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For exercise trainers and group fitness instructors, Massachusetts leads both nominally at $64,620 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 Nevada first at $50,269. 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
$47,160
People doing it
322,930
Highest paid
$64,620
MA
Best off, really
$50,269
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$28,800
Highest tenth
$83,100
Lowest, really
$29,315
MS
States with data
51
National average
$52,420
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, 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 $29,315 to $50,269.
- Roughly 322,930 people hold this job nationally, earning $47,160 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $47,160, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in exercise trainers and group fitness instructors 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 $29,315 to $50,269 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 322,930 are employed nationally in exercise trainers and group fitness instructors, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for exercise trainers and group fitness instructors, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $28,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $47,160 |
| Top tenth earn over | $83,100 |
| This salary | $47,160 |
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 Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors
The national median for this job
$47,160around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $28,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $47,160 |
| Top tenth | $83,100 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $30,540 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Massachusetts · $64,620 |
| Spread | $34,080 |
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 | $40,880 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $42,068 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $57,960 | $48,751 | $50,269 |
| VT | $57,300 | $46,549 | $48,170 |
| MA | $64,620 | $51,191 | $47,295 |
| CT | $61,580 | $49,023 | $47,279 |
| WY | $50,250 | $42,556 | $46,843 |
| NJ | $59,870 | $48,525 | $44,567 |
| ID | $49,780 | $40,393 | $44,182 |
| TN | $47,380 | $40,250 | $43,506 |
| OR | $58,510 | $44,623 | $42,612 |
| CA | $57,990 | $47,103 | $41,839 |
| LA | $44,410 | $36,917 | $41,788 |
| OK | $44,520 | $36,449 | $41,285 |
| NM | $44,680 | $37,126 | $41,075 |
| KY | $45,280 | $37,095 | $41,004 |
| NC | $46,450 | $38,158 | $40,534 |
| AR | $42,140 | $34,939 | $40,388 |
| CO | $49,900 | $40,787 | $40,231 |
| MT | $43,940 | $36,177 | $40,088 |
| NH | $49,360 | $41,841 | $39,718 |
| WA | $50,830 | $43,022 | $39,629 |
| GA | $47,150 | $38,311 | $39,619 |
| AZ | $47,980 | $39,935 | $39,498 |
| MI | $45,520 | $37,071 | $39,361 |
| SC | $43,630 | $36,647 | $39,331 |
| ME | $47,060 | $38,136 | $39,276 |
| WI | $44,200 | $36,369 | $39,066 |
| SD | $40,070 | $34,376 | $39,022 |
| AK | $46,210 | $39,310 | $38,647 |
| PA | $45,250 | $37,149 | $38,102 |
| UT | $44,800 | $36,183 | $38,087 |
| IL | $46,800 | $37,612 | $38,048 |
| RI | $45,640 | $37,560 | $37,037 |
| MD | $47,420 | $38,393 | $36,929 |
| ND | $37,760 | $32,520 | $36,716 |
| MN | $43,620 | $35,714 | $36,288 |
| DE | $44,340 | $35,913 | $36,183 |
| TX | $40,880 | $35,027 | $36,045 |
| HI | $48,290 | $38,738 | $35,667 |
| AL | $39,180 | $31,993 | $35,560 |
| WV | $38,120 | $31,826 | $35,452 |
| NY | $47,090 | $38,071 | $35,373 |
| IA | $36,160 | $30,472 | $34,328 |
| OH | $36,370 | $31,119 | $33,895 |
| MO | $36,450 | $30,692 | $33,447 |
| VA | $40,820 | $33,392 | $33,144 |
| KS | $35,900 | $29,311 | $32,580 |
| FL | $38,800 | $33,356 | $32,243 |
| IN | $34,960 | $29,269 | $31,750 |
| NE | $31,440 | $26,693 | $29,535 |
| DC | $39,210 | $32,499 | $29,330 |
| MS | $30,540 | $25,589 | $29,315 |
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 $47,160.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, 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 Massachusetts, at $51,191.
- 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 — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $29,315. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for exercise trainers and group fitness instructors, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $47,160, 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.
- Retained-pay figures for exercise trainers and group fitness instructors 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 $51,191, which leads in Massachusetts.
- Real-terms figures for exercise trainers and group fitness instructors 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.