Occupational Health and Safety Specialists
What the pay figures show
- A job board will not tell you this about this job. The best headline number is the District of Columbia, at $111,530. State taxes differ, so Washington leaves you more. Prices differ too, so North Dakota leaves you better off again — $83,404 once levelled out. Moving for the biggest salary can leave you worse off.
- Wage data for occupational health and safety specialists places the District of Columbia first at $111,530. That position is not robust: state income tax alone reorders it to Washington, and regional price parity reorders it again to North Dakota at $83,404. Because published comparisons almost universally stop at the nominal median, the state that appears best for this occupation is routinely not the state where a worker's income goes furthest.
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
$90,150
People doing it
140,610
Highest paid
$111,530
DC
Best off, really
$83,404
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$55,000
Highest tenth
$134,950
Lowest, really
$62,240
DE
States with data
51
National average
$93,860
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 $62,240 to $83,404. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- 140,610 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $90,150. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $90,150. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in occupational health and safety specialists is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $62,240 through $83,404. 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.
- National employment in occupational health and safety specialists is 140,610 — 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.
- Coverage for occupational health and safety specialists is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Occupational Health and Safety Specialists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $55,000 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $90,150 |
| Top tenth earn over | $134,950 |
| This salary | $90,150 |
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 Occupational Health and Safety Specialists
The national median for this job
$90,150around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $55,000 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $90,150 |
| Top tenth | $134,950 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Occupational Health and Safety Specialists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $73,130 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $111,530 |
| Spread | $38,400 |
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 | $79,660 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $81,976 |
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 | $93,250 | $73,872 | $83,404 |
| WY | $94,030 | $74,980 | $82,534 |
| SD | $88,610 | $71,167 | $80,785 |
| LA | $89,560 | $69,535 | $78,708 |
| OH | $91,460 | $71,373 | $77,739 |
| NV | $94,360 | $75,212 | $77,554 |
| AK | $99,270 | $78,666 | $77,340 |
| IA | $87,830 | $67,893 | $76,484 |
| NH | $101,260 | $80,066 | $76,004 |
| RI | $101,740 | $76,924 | $75,853 |
| CO | $101,400 | $76,412 | $75,370 |
| WA | $102,920 | $81,234 | $74,827 |
| MS | $84,490 | $64,981 | $74,441 |
| ME | $97,640 | $72,181 | $74,339 |
| WV | $86,560 | $66,650 | $74,243 |
| IL | $98,270 | $73,243 | $74,092 |
| MN | $96,990 | $71,991 | $73,148 |
| DC | $111,530 | $80,780 | $72,903 |
| NM | $84,510 | $65,473 | $72,437 |
| ID | $86,920 | $66,225 | $72,436 |
| KS | $86,300 | $65,015 | $72,267 |
| SC | $88,080 | $67,270 | $72,196 |
| UT | $90,200 | $68,272 | $71,864 |
| KY | $83,730 | $64,921 | $71,761 |
| NE | $83,990 | $64,799 | $71,699 |
| TN | $81,190 | $65,947 | $71,283 |
| MA | $103,970 | $77,094 | $71,227 |
| NC | $86,650 | $66,840 | $71,001 |
| IN | $83,470 | $65,118 | $70,639 |
| AL | $82,260 | $63,215 | $70,263 |
| OK | $79,890 | $61,938 | $70,156 |
| MO | $83,090 | $64,316 | $70,090 |
| WI | $84,750 | $64,875 | $69,686 |
| MT | $81,330 | $62,811 | $69,602 |
| CT | $96,110 | $71,907 | $69,349 |
| AZ | $89,480 | $69,945 | $69,180 |
| PA | $87,050 | $67,397 | $69,125 |
| FL | $88,820 | $71,315 | $68,935 |
| VT | $87,210 | $66,537 | $68,854 |
| MI | $84,080 | $64,658 | $68,650 |
| VA | $90,800 | $68,247 | $67,740 |
| GA | $85,450 | $65,279 | $67,507 |
| CA | $102,840 | $75,706 | $67,246 |
| AR | $73,130 | $58,030 | $67,080 |
| MD | $91,820 | $69,428 | $66,780 |
| TX | $79,660 | $64,871 | $66,757 |
| NY | $95,720 | $71,562 | $66,491 |
| OR | $95,240 | $68,048 | $64,980 |
| HI | $94,840 | $69,785 | $64,254 |
| NJ | $90,610 | $68,992 | $63,364 |
| DE | $81,120 | $61,775 | $62,240 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $90,150, 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 $81,234.
- 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 Delaware, on $62,240.
- These are distribution medians for occupational health and safety specialists, with a national value of $90,150. 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 occupational health and safety 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 $81,234, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for occupational health and safety specialists 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; Delaware anchors the distribution at $62,240. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.