Insurance Underwriters
What the pay figures show
- Massachusetts pays insurance underwriters the most on paper: $106,640. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts New Hampshire in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and Nevada wins at $82,690. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For insurance underwriters, Massachusetts's $106,640 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote New Hampshire; regional price parity then promotes Nevada, whose $82,690 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
$81,370
People doing it
105,420
Highest paid
$106,640
MA
Best off, really
$82,690
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$55,530
Highest tenth
$145,160
Lowest, really
$51,786
HI
States with data
49
National average
$93,700
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $51,786 and $82,690. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 105,420 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $81,370. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $81,370. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Massachusetts pays most.
- Wages for insurance underwriters cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $51,786 to $82,690. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in insurance underwriters is 105,420 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for insurance underwriters in 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Insurance Underwriters
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $55,530 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $81,370 |
| Top tenth earn over | $145,160 |
| This salary | $81,370 |
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 Insurance Underwriters
The national median for this job
$81,370around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $55,530 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $81,370 |
| Top tenth | $145,160 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Insurance Underwriters, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $59,250 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Massachusetts · $106,640 |
| Spread | $47,390 |
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 | $78,890 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $81,183 |
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 | $101,440 | $80,193 | $82,690 |
| WI | $97,370 | $73,004 | $78,417 |
| NH | $103,940 | $81,952 | $77,794 |
| SD | $83,130 | $67,312 | $76,408 |
| CO | $100,640 | $75,910 | $74,876 |
| AR | $82,130 | $64,028 | $74,014 |
| ME | $95,510 | $70,835 | $72,952 |
| MA | $106,640 | $78,839 | $72,839 |
| WA | $99,400 | $78,758 | $72,546 |
| CT | $100,690 | $74,874 | $72,210 |
| TN | $78,840 | $64,294 | $69,496 |
| KY | $79,830 | $62,314 | $68,880 |
| LA | $76,540 | $60,766 | $68,783 |
| OH | $79,260 | $63,126 | $68,756 |
| ND | $74,130 | $60,794 | $68,638 |
| IL | $89,620 | $67,586 | $68,369 |
| MO | $80,040 | $62,314 | $67,908 |
| GA | $85,980 | $65,625 | $67,866 |
| NY | $97,450 | $72,677 | $67,527 |
| IA | $75,160 | $59,461 | $66,985 |
| MD | $92,120 | $69,624 | $66,969 |
| NJ | $96,220 | $72,582 | $66,660 |
| SC | $79,570 | $61,847 | $66,376 |
| IN | $77,440 | $61,054 | $66,231 |
| TX | $78,890 | $64,329 | $66,199 |
| KS | $77,070 | $59,037 | $65,622 |
| NE | $75,120 | $58,963 | $65,241 |
| AK | $81,620 | $66,250 | $65,133 |
| RI | $84,720 | $65,674 | $64,759 |
| NC | $77,120 | $60,516 | $64,283 |
| MI | $77,380 | $60,229 | $63,948 |
| PA | $78,950 | $61,948 | $63,536 |
| CA | $95,320 | $71,115 | $63,168 |
| VT | $77,990 | $60,659 | $62,771 |
| MN | $80,700 | $61,638 | $62,630 |
| FL | $78,720 | $64,210 | $62,067 |
| VA | $81,870 | $62,479 | $62,014 |
| AZ | $77,740 | $61,979 | $61,302 |
| OK | $66,770 | $53,299 | $60,370 |
| UT | $72,730 | $56,759 | $59,745 |
| WY | $62,290 | $52,230 | $57,492 |
| NM | $64,000 | $51,762 | $57,267 |
| DC | $82,070 | $62,559 | $56,459 |
| MT | $63,140 | $50,702 | $56,183 |
| OR | $79,200 | $58,167 | $55,545 |
| AL | $62,220 | $49,492 | $55,010 |
| ID | $62,530 | $49,962 | $54,648 |
| MS | $59,250 | $47,509 | $54,426 |
| HI | $73,260 | $56,244 | $51,786 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for insurance underwriters as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $81,370, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for insurance underwriters, 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 New Hampshire, at $81,952.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for insurance underwriters. 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 $51,786.
- These are distribution medians for insurance underwriters, with a national value of $81,370. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for insurance underwriters 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 $81,952, which leads in New Hampshire.
- Real-terms results for insurance underwriters 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 $51,786. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.