Financial Managers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. New York pays financial managers best, at $219,880. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $140,215 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for financial managers is also the real leader: New York at $219,880, holding through tax and through price deflation to $140,215. 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$166,570
People doing it
841,710
Highest paid
$219,880
NY
Best off, really
$140,215
NY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$94,310
Highest tenth
$323,270
Lowest, really
$86,758
HI
States with data
51
National average
$186,910
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 $86,758 to $140,215.
- Roughly 841,710 people hold this job nationally, earning $166,570 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $166,570, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in financial managers 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 $86,758 to $140,215 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 841,710 are employed nationally in financial managers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for financial managers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Financial Managers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $94,310 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $166,570 |
| Top tenth earn over | $323,270 |
| This salary | $166,570 |
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 Managers
The national median for this job
$166,570around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $94,310 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $166,570 |
| Top tenth | $323,270 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Financial Managers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $111,390 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $219,880 |
| Spread | $108,490 |
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 | $164,860 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $169,653 |
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 | $219,880 | $150,907 | $140,215 |
| SD | $159,700 | $120,421 | $136,694 |
| MA | $206,760 | $143,888 | $132,936 |
| TX | $164,860 | $123,948 | $127,551 |
| VA | $185,220 | $128,019 | $127,067 |
| CO | $182,690 | $128,805 | $127,049 |
| NJ | $199,110 | $137,770 | $126,530 |
| NC | $166,780 | $119,114 | $126,530 |
| DE | $181,580 | $124,623 | $125,561 |
| KS | $159,380 | $111,597 | $124,045 |
| GA | $166,790 | $117,543 | $121,555 |
| WA | $174,840 | $130,769 | $120,456 |
| IL | $165,880 | $116,579 | $117,929 |
| CT | $174,830 | $121,523 | $117,199 |
| RI | $166,940 | $118,792 | $117,138 |
| TN | $141,010 | $107,646 | $116,356 |
| ND | $135,890 | $102,756 | $116,014 |
| DC | $188,880 | $127,551 | $115,114 |
| MN | $163,410 | $112,962 | $114,779 |
| OH | $140,870 | $104,393 | $113,703 |
| UT | $150,450 | $107,404 | $113,054 |
| AL | $140,500 | $101,560 | $112,883 |
| MO | $143,460 | $103,516 | $112,809 |
| NE | $140,360 | $101,519 | $112,330 |
| FL | $153,280 | $116,033 | $112,161 |
| IA | $133,320 | $97,936 | $110,329 |
| OK | $132,460 | $96,342 | $109,125 |
| PA | $145,610 | $106,320 | $109,046 |
| IN | $135,840 | $100,135 | $108,625 |
| CA | $180,770 | $122,103 | $108,458 |
| MD | $158,750 | $112,215 | $107,935 |
| NM | $133,700 | $97,430 | $107,793 |
| WI | $139,720 | $99,946 | $107,357 |
| MI | $139,370 | $100,853 | $107,081 |
| LA | $126,800 | $94,516 | $106,985 |
| WY | $124,910 | $96,642 | $106,378 |
| KY | $130,650 | $96,110 | $106,237 |
| SC | $136,160 | $98,203 | $105,394 |
| MT | $131,060 | $94,802 | $105,050 |
| NV | $132,490 | $101,823 | $104,994 |
| NH | $144,730 | $110,189 | $104,598 |
| AZ | $139,830 | $103,747 | $102,613 |
| ID | $127,210 | $92,325 | $100,985 |
| AR | $116,570 | $86,982 | $100,548 |
| OR | $156,460 | $104,736 | $100,014 |
| ME | $133,610 | $94,678 | $97,508 |
| AK | $127,030 | $98,091 | $96,437 |
| VT | $128,690 | $92,829 | $96,062 |
| MS | $111,390 | $82,829 | $94,888 |
| WV | $113,140 | $84,131 | $93,717 |
| HI | $134,210 | $94,227 | $86,758 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of financial managers 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 $166,570.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for financial managers. 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 $150,907.
- Levelling out prices for financial managers 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 — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $86,758.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for financial managers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $166,570, 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 financial managers 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, $150,907. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to financial managers 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 Hawaii at $86,758. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $86,758 — and the two source series are dated independently.