Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? Massachusetts, at $101,810. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Washington is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Delaware wins — the money there behaves like $75,182. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for market research analysts and marketing specialists is Massachusetts at $101,810, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Washington; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Delaware at $75,182 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$78,760
People doing it
899,580
Highest paid
$101,810
MA
Best off, really
$75,182
DE, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$43,390
Highest tenth
$155,480
Lowest, really
$43,117
HI
States with data
51
National average
$89,490
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
99.25%
DE, 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 $43,117 to $75,182.
- 899,580 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $78,760. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $78,760, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in market research analysts and marketing specialists 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 $43,117 to $75,182 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- National employment in market research analysts and marketing specialists is 899,580 — 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.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for market research analysts and marketing specialists, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $43,390 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $78,760 |
| Top tenth earn over | $155,480 |
| This salary | $78,760 |
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 Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists
The national median for this job
$78,760around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $43,390 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $78,760 |
| Top tenth | $155,480 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $52,340 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Massachusetts · $101,810 |
| Spread | $49,470 |
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 | $72,520 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $74,628 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DE | $101,270 | $74,621 | $75,182 |
| CO | $93,050 | $70,905 | $69,938 |
| MA | $101,810 | $75,683 | $69,923 |
| WA | $95,120 | $75,747 | $69,773 |
| NY | $98,580 | $73,405 | $68,204 |
| MN | $87,510 | $65,966 | $67,027 |
| RI | $86,240 | $66,686 | $65,757 |
| DC | $98,090 | $72,467 | $65,401 |
| NC | $78,410 | $61,372 | $65,193 |
| OH | $72,790 | $58,752 | $63,992 |
| CA | $94,700 | $70,736 | $62,832 |
| TN | $69,790 | $57,927 | $62,614 |
| NJ | $88,190 | $67,444 | $61,942 |
| TX | $72,520 | $59,848 | $61,588 |
| IL | $79,120 | $60,719 | $61,423 |
| NV | $71,840 | $59,369 | $61,218 |
| AR | $65,430 | $52,791 | $61,024 |
| GA | $75,850 | $59,004 | $61,019 |
| KS | $70,430 | $54,736 | $60,842 |
| MO | $70,140 | $55,814 | $60,825 |
| VT | $74,880 | $58,676 | $60,720 |
| IA | $66,390 | $53,613 | $60,398 |
| SD | $63,490 | $53,194 | $60,383 |
| MT | $68,080 | $54,239 | $60,102 |
| FL | $75,450 | $61,909 | $59,843 |
| SC | $69,440 | $55,393 | $59,449 |
| VA | $76,980 | $59,320 | $58,879 |
| ND | $61,580 | $51,660 | $58,325 |
| CT | $77,740 | $59,994 | $57,860 |
| ME | $71,980 | $55,929 | $57,602 |
| AZ | $71,940 | $58,044 | $57,409 |
| MD | $76,370 | $59,292 | $57,031 |
| MI | $66,780 | $53,222 | $56,509 |
| PA | $68,760 | $55,092 | $56,504 |
| WY | $60,990 | $51,185 | $56,342 |
| OK | $61,940 | $49,662 | $56,251 |
| IN | $63,700 | $51,513 | $55,881 |
| WI | $64,800 | $51,855 | $55,699 |
| NM | $61,950 | $50,211 | $55,552 |
| OR | $79,150 | $58,137 | $55,516 |
| LA | $59,690 | $48,736 | $55,166 |
| AK | $66,710 | $55,760 | $54,820 |
| KY | $61,480 | $49,545 | $54,765 |
| NE | $60,000 | $48,364 | $53,514 |
| ID | $60,970 | $48,791 | $53,368 |
| AL | $59,530 | $47,449 | $52,739 |
| UT | $62,630 | $49,716 | $52,332 |
| MS | $56,640 | $45,517 | $52,143 |
| NH | $64,570 | $54,062 | $51,319 |
| WV | $52,340 | $42,692 | $47,556 |
| HI | $59,390 | $46,829 | $43,117 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $78,760, 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 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 Washington, at $75,747.
- Levelling out prices for this job 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 $43,117.
- These are distribution medians for market research analysts and marketing specialists, with a national value of $78,760. 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 market research analysts and marketing specialists 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 $75,747, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to market research analysts and marketing specialists 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 $43,117. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $43,117 — and the two source series are dated independently.