Photographers
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia comes first for photographers on every measure. $110,970 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $72,591 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For photographers, the District of Columbia's $110,970 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $72,591. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$44,660
People doing it
51,760
Highest paid
$110,970
DC
Best off, really
$72,591
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,820
Highest tenth
$91,810
Lowest, really
$30,245
IL
States with data
49
National average
$55,410
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, 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 $30,245 to $72,591.
- Just 51,760 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $44,660 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. The District of Columbia leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in photographers 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 $30,245 to $72,591 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 51,760 are employed nationally in photographers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- Coverage for photographers runs to 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Photographers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,820 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $44,660 |
| Top tenth earn over | $91,810 |
| This salary | $44,660 |
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 Photographers
The national median for this job
$44,660around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,820 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $44,660 |
| Top tenth | $91,810 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Photographers, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $32,810 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $110,970 |
| Spread | $78,160 |
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 | $41,280 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $42,480 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $110,970 | $80,433 | $72,591 |
| NY | $60,050 | $47,784 | $44,399 |
| UT | $52,140 | $41,754 | $43,951 |
| NM | $48,090 | $39,720 | $43,945 |
| SD | $45,330 | $38,603 | $43,819 |
| MS | $45,860 | $37,286 | $42,714 |
| MA | $57,990 | $46,195 | $42,680 |
| KY | $47,170 | $38,548 | $42,609 |
| DE | $50,100 | $40,222 | $40,524 |
| OR | $53,630 | $41,129 | $39,275 |
| ME | $46,680 | $37,857 | $38,988 |
| CT | $49,790 | $40,196 | $38,766 |
| MN | $46,470 | $37,851 | $38,460 |
| NE | $41,920 | $34,659 | $38,350 |
| CO | $47,070 | $38,638 | $38,111 |
| WA | $48,050 | $40,788 | $37,571 |
| VA | $46,550 | $37,667 | $37,387 |
| WI | $42,060 | $34,755 | $37,332 |
| WY | $39,330 | $33,782 | $37,185 |
| GA | $43,770 | $35,764 | $36,985 |
| MT | $39,900 | $33,121 | $36,702 |
| ND | $37,410 | $32,239 | $36,399 |
| TX | $41,280 | $35,348 | $36,376 |
| NH | $44,780 | $38,161 | $36,225 |
| MD | $46,450 | $37,660 | $36,224 |
| IA | $38,290 | $32,103 | $36,165 |
| MO | $39,170 | $32,749 | $35,690 |
| OH | $38,470 | $32,749 | $35,670 |
| TN | $37,950 | $32,673 | $35,316 |
| FL | $42,640 | $36,441 | $35,225 |
| LA | $36,830 | $31,054 | $35,151 |
| CA | $47,840 | $39,557 | $35,136 |
| OK | $36,750 | $30,555 | $34,610 |
| SC | $37,890 | $32,169 | $34,525 |
| PA | $40,520 | $33,494 | $34,353 |
| KS | $37,790 | $30,724 | $34,151 |
| HI | $45,960 | $37,033 | $34,098 |
| WV | $36,110 | $30,274 | $33,723 |
| NV | $37,460 | $32,279 | $33,284 |
| AK | $39,190 | $33,669 | $33,101 |
| AL | $36,130 | $29,677 | $32,985 |
| NC | $37,120 | $31,034 | $32,966 |
| IN | $35,960 | $30,043 | $32,590 |
| AR | $32,810 | $27,787 | $32,121 |
| NJ | $40,520 | $34,037 | $31,260 |
| AZ | $36,970 | $31,364 | $31,021 |
| RI | $37,300 | $31,172 | $30,738 |
| ID | $33,320 | $28,040 | $30,670 |
| IL | $36,570 | $29,899 | $30,245 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for photographers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $44,660, 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.
- Take-home figures for photographers 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 the District of Columbia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $80,433.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for photographers. 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 Illinois, on $30,245.
- These are distribution medians for photographers, with a national value of $44,660. 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.
- Take-home calculations for photographers 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 $80,433, in the District of Columbia. 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 photographers 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; Illinois anchors the distribution at $30,245. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.