Human Resources Managers
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays human resources managers the most on paper: $184,350. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Massachusetts in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and North Dakota wins at $118,383. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For human resources managers, the District of Columbia's $184,350 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Massachusetts; regional price parity then promotes North Dakota, whose $118,383 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
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
$149,280
People doing it
220,660
Highest paid
$184,350
DC
Best off, really
$118,383
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$88,200
Highest tenth
$267,810
Lowest, really
$83,807
HI
States with data
51
National average
$164,230
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $83,807 to $118,383. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 220,660 people hold this job nationally, earning $149,280 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $149,280, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in human resources managers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $83,807 through $118,383. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 220,660 are employed nationally in human resources managers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for human resources managers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Human Resources Managers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $88,200 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $149,280 |
| Top tenth earn over | $267,810 |
| This salary | $149,280 |
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 Human Resources Managers
The national median for this job
$149,280around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $88,200 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $149,280 |
| Top tenth | $267,810 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Human Resources Managers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $106,100 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $184,350 |
| Spread | $78,250 |
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 | $136,500 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $140,468 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $139,050 | $104,854 | $118,383 |
| RI | $167,110 | $118,900 | $117,245 |
| MA | $181,780 | $126,744 | $117,097 |
| CO | $166,400 | $118,387 | $116,773 |
| VA | $165,980 | $115,930 | $115,068 |
| WA | $165,530 | $124,406 | $114,594 |
| NY | $176,650 | $122,056 | $113,407 |
| DC | $184,350 | $124,568 | $112,422 |
| CT | $165,930 | $115,973 | $111,847 |
| GA | $150,700 | $107,348 | $111,013 |
| NJ | $172,440 | $120,334 | $110,517 |
| NC | $142,990 | $103,803 | $110,266 |
| TN | $131,760 | $101,324 | $109,522 |
| MN | $153,770 | $107,130 | $108,853 |
| IL | $151,370 | $107,379 | $108,623 |
| WY | $127,520 | $98,426 | $108,341 |
| DE | $153,890 | $107,524 | $108,333 |
| TX | $136,500 | $104,564 | $107,604 |
| MI | $138,930 | $100,571 | $106,781 |
| KS | $134,470 | $95,961 | $106,665 |
| OH | $130,480 | $97,577 | $106,279 |
| IA | $126,370 | $93,450 | $105,275 |
| IN | $130,340 | $96,538 | $104,723 |
| NE | $129,460 | $94,565 | $104,635 |
| MD | $152,770 | $108,455 | $104,319 |
| SD | $117,930 | $91,794 | $104,199 |
| MO | $130,680 | $95,381 | $103,944 |
| WI | $133,490 | $96,037 | $103,158 |
| CA | $170,080 | $115,790 | $102,851 |
| AZ | $139,820 | $103,740 | $102,606 |
| NV | $128,550 | $99,130 | $102,217 |
| FL | $137,790 | $105,445 | $101,927 |
| PA | $133,060 | $98,128 | $100,644 |
| UT | $131,380 | $95,218 | $100,227 |
| KY | $121,460 | $90,144 | $99,641 |
| WV | $120,020 | $88,656 | $98,757 |
| NH | $135,000 | $103,539 | $98,285 |
| VT | $132,050 | $94,870 | $98,174 |
| AK | $129,570 | $99,827 | $98,144 |
| SC | $124,290 | $90,709 | $97,351 |
| OK | $116,080 | $85,769 | $97,149 |
| NM | $118,070 | $87,438 | $96,738 |
| ID | $119,990 | $87,737 | $95,966 |
| ME | $129,720 | $92,297 | $95,056 |
| AR | $108,580 | $81,657 | $94,393 |
| MT | $115,280 | $84,777 | $93,942 |
| AL | $113,210 | $83,782 | $93,122 |
| LA | $107,880 | $81,873 | $92,675 |
| OR | $140,570 | $95,448 | $91,145 |
| MS | $106,100 | $79,319 | $90,867 |
| HI | $128,910 | $91,022 | $83,807 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of human resources 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 $149,280.
- Take-home figures for human resources managers 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 Massachusetts, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $126,744.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for human resources managers. 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 Hawaii, on $83,807.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for human resources managers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $149,280, 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.
- Take-home calculations for human resources managers 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 $126,744, in Massachusetts. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for human resources managers 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; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $83,807. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.