Producers and Directors
What the pay figures show
- California comes first for producers and directors on every measure. $129,790 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $81,718 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For producers and directors, California's $129,790 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $81,718. 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
$90,360
People doing it
143,120
Highest paid
$129,790
CA
Best off, really
$81,718
CA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$45,780
Highest tenth
$198,540
Lowest, really
$37,446
AR
States with data
50
National average
$113,300
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
112.58%
CA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $37,446 up to $81,718.
- Roughly 143,120 people hold this job nationally, earning $90,360 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $90,360 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. California leads the published set.
- The nominal spread for producers and directors approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $37,446 to $81,718, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- 143,120 are employed nationally in producers and directors, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for producers and directors runs to 50 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: Producers and Directors
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $45,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $90,360 |
| Top tenth earn over | $198,540 |
| This salary | $90,360 |
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 Producers and Directors
The national median for this job
$90,360around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $45,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $90,360 |
| Top tenth | $198,540 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Producers and Directors, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $38,820 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $129,790 |
| Spread | $90,970 |
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 | $71,710 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $73,795 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA | $129,790 | $91,999 | $81,718 |
| NJ | $119,840 | $87,694 | $80,539 |
| NY | $107,550 | $79,186 | $73,575 |
| DC | $104,270 | $76,289 | $68,851 |
| NV | $78,480 | $64,041 | $66,035 |
| TN | $73,020 | $60,200 | $65,070 |
| RI | $84,250 | $65,360 | $64,450 |
| CT | $88,260 | $66,817 | $64,439 |
| GA | $79,950 | $61,684 | $63,790 |
| FL | $79,920 | $65,054 | $62,883 |
| IL | $81,080 | $62,001 | $62,719 |
| UT | $76,350 | $59,145 | $62,256 |
| OH | $69,350 | $56,427 | $61,459 |
| PA | $75,460 | $59,599 | $61,128 |
| TX | $71,710 | $59,278 | $61,001 |
| WA | $81,550 | $66,200 | $60,979 |
| OR | $87,460 | $63,256 | $60,404 |
| CO | $78,060 | $61,019 | $60,187 |
| MN | $76,360 | $58,880 | $59,827 |
| MD | $79,350 | $61,247 | $58,911 |
| MO | $66,460 | $53,394 | $58,188 |
| LA | $62,920 | $51,235 | $57,994 |
| SD | $60,260 | $50,599 | $57,437 |
| MA | $80,970 | $62,064 | $57,340 |
| ME | $71,320 | $55,510 | $57,169 |
| WI | $66,390 | $53,038 | $56,970 |
| DE | $72,650 | $56,375 | $56,800 |
| OK | $61,600 | $49,404 | $55,959 |
| AL | $63,340 | $50,343 | $55,955 |
| WY | $60,420 | $50,727 | $55,838 |
| MI | $65,720 | $52,444 | $55,682 |
| ND | $57,870 | $48,679 | $54,959 |
| NC | $63,700 | $51,330 | $54,526 |
| AZ | $67,320 | $54,909 | $54,309 |
| IA | $58,550 | $47,612 | $53,637 |
| ID | $61,150 | $48,926 | $53,515 |
| KS | $60,600 | $47,779 | $53,109 |
| IN | $59,870 | $48,549 | $52,665 |
| VA | $65,900 | $52,102 | $51,715 |
| SC | $56,030 | $45,801 | $49,155 |
| NH | $61,560 | $51,643 | $49,023 |
| KY | $54,550 | $44,219 | $48,878 |
| HI | $66,190 | $51,776 | $47,672 |
| MT | $52,580 | $42,713 | $47,331 |
| NE | $52,580 | $42,739 | $47,290 |
| VT | $55,660 | $45,294 | $46,872 |
| AK | $54,060 | $45,617 | $44,848 |
| MS | $48,100 | $38,996 | $44,673 |
| WV | $46,660 | $38,368 | $42,740 |
| AR | $38,820 | $32,394 | $37,446 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for producers and directors, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $90,360 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for producers and directors. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, California keeps the most at $91,999.
- The price adjustment for producers and directors uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Arkansas anchors the bottom at $37,446. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for producers and directors are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $90,360. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- The household modeled for producers and directors is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis California retains the most, $91,999. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for producers and directors deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.