Financial and Investment Analysts
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Wyoming pays this job best, at $187,090. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $153,336 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for financial and investment analysts is also the real leader: Wyoming at $187,090, holding through tax and through price deflation to $153,336. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
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
$102,740
People doing it
361,980
Highest paid
$187,090
WY
Best off, really
$153,336
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$63,720
Highest tenth
$180,860
Lowest, really
$61,400
WV
States with data
51
National average
$116,800
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, 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 $61,400 to $153,336.
- Roughly 361,980 people hold this job nationally, earning $102,740 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $102,740, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in financial and investment analysts 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 $61,400 to $153,336 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 361,980 are employed nationally in financial and investment analysts, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for financial and investment analysts, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Financial and Investment Analysts
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $63,720 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $102,740 |
| Top tenth earn over | $180,860 |
| This salary | $102,740 |
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 Financial and Investment Analysts
The national median for this job
$102,740around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $63,720 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $102,740 |
| Top tenth | $180,860 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Financial and Investment Analysts, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $69,030 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Wyoming · $187,090 |
| Spread | $118,060 |
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 | $99,150 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $102,032 |
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 | $187,090 | $139,303 | $153,336 |
| SD | $99,150 | $78,582 | $89,201 |
| NY | $127,930 | $91,968 | $85,452 |
| MT | $99,190 | $74,367 | $82,406 |
| ID | $100,830 | $75,273 | $82,333 |
| NC | $102,390 | $77,285 | $82,096 |
| MO | $98,420 | $74,380 | $81,058 |
| TX | $99,150 | $78,582 | $80,866 |
| TN | $92,990 | $74,248 | $80,256 |
| OR | $120,590 | $83,664 | $79,892 |
| IA | $92,370 | $70,914 | $79,888 |
| OH | $94,280 | $73,280 | $79,815 |
| AK | $102,240 | $80,756 | $79,394 |
| CT | $109,500 | $80,543 | $77,678 |
| WA | $107,210 | $84,252 | $77,607 |
| WI | $95,570 | $71,845 | $77,172 |
| VA | $105,490 | $77,737 | $77,159 |
| MN | $102,990 | $75,804 | $77,023 |
| CO | $103,850 | $78,027 | $76,964 |
| GA | $99,420 | $74,410 | $76,950 |
| AL | $91,290 | $69,216 | $76,932 |
| VT | $99,090 | $74,110 | $76,691 |
| MI | $95,420 | $72,153 | $76,609 |
| SC | $93,670 | $70,832 | $76,019 |
| IL | $101,180 | $75,147 | $76,017 |
| DE | $101,800 | $74,959 | $75,523 |
| MA | $111,040 | $81,715 | $75,495 |
| RI | $100,550 | $76,143 | $75,083 |
| NM | $87,630 | $67,515 | $74,696 |
| NJ | $108,610 | $80,509 | $73,940 |
| AR | $81,110 | $63,348 | $73,228 |
| FL | $94,490 | $75,304 | $72,791 |
| UT | $91,370 | $69,043 | $72,675 |
| NE | $85,320 | $65,674 | $72,668 |
| MD | $100,370 | $74,960 | $72,102 |
| AZ | $93,540 | $72,699 | $71,905 |
| ND | $78,170 | $63,557 | $71,758 |
| KS | $84,860 | $64,082 | $71,230 |
| MS | $79,580 | $61,723 | $70,709 |
| CA | $109,110 | $79,534 | $70,646 |
| KY | $81,660 | $63,537 | $70,232 |
| OK | $79,640 | $61,773 | $69,970 |
| DC | $105,780 | $77,223 | $69,694 |
| NV | $83,430 | $67,523 | $69,626 |
| IN | $81,760 | $63,966 | $69,389 |
| ME | $88,320 | $66,290 | $68,272 |
| LA | $75,680 | $60,187 | $68,127 |
| PA | $84,460 | $65,655 | $67,338 |
| HI | $94,640 | $69,660 | $64,138 |
| NH | $82,520 | $66,883 | $63,489 |
| WV | $69,030 | $55,120 | $61,400 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $102,740, 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.
- 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, Wyoming keeps the most at $139,303.
- 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 West Virginia, on $61,400.
- These are distribution medians for financial and investment analysts, with a national value of $102,740. 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.
- The household modeled for financial and investment analysts 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 Wyoming retains the most, $139,303. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for financial and investment analysts 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; West Virginia anchors the distribution at $61,400. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.