Project Management Specialists
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for project management specialists. Best paid: Washington, at $124,160. Tax does not change that. Best off: New Mexico, at $88,700 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Washington's $124,160 median for project management specialists survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: New Mexico takes the top position at $88,700. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
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
$102,320
People doing it
1,066,670
Highest paid
$124,160
WA
Best off, really
$88,700
NM, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$61,580
Highest tenth
$167,970
Lowest, really
$54,524
HI
States with data
51
National average
$110,740
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.39%
NM, 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 $54,524 to $88,700. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Set the geography aside for a moment. The striking thing about this job is how many people do it: 1,066,670. When the numbers on this page move, they move for a great many households at once.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $102,320 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in project management specialists is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $54,524 through $88,700. 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 project management specialists is 1,066,670, placing it among the largest occupations by headcount. Policy changes touching this occupation's effective tax or its regional wage structure therefore have unusually broad incidence.
- 51 jurisdictions report project management specialists, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Project Management Specialists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $61,580 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $102,320 |
| Top tenth earn over | $167,970 |
| This salary | $102,320 |
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 Project Management Specialists
The national median for this job
$102,320around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $61,580 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $102,320 |
| Top tenth | $167,970 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Project Management Specialists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $77,170 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $124,160 |
| Spread | $46,990 |
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 | $98,440 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $101,302 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | $106,970 | $80,173 | $88,700 |
| DE | $122,190 | $87,949 | $88,611 |
| WA | $124,160 | $96,129 | $88,548 |
| VA | $120,840 | $87,653 | $87,002 |
| ND | $96,160 | $75,863 | $85,651 |
| AL | $100,820 | $75,548 | $83,971 |
| IA | $96,540 | $73,689 | $83,014 |
| WY | $94,080 | $75,015 | $82,572 |
| NJ | $122,980 | $89,679 | $82,363 |
| KS | $100,010 | $73,895 | $82,138 |
| NV | $99,940 | $79,138 | $81,602 |
| NY | $121,040 | $87,728 | $81,512 |
| CO | $110,050 | $82,116 | $80,997 |
| NC | $100,820 | $76,243 | $80,990 |
| OH | $95,770 | $74,287 | $80,912 |
| MI | $100,970 | $75,822 | $80,504 |
| TX | $98,440 | $78,083 | $80,352 |
| IN | $95,020 | $72,903 | $79,084 |
| GA | $102,140 | $76,188 | $78,788 |
| ID | $95,630 | $71,891 | $78,633 |
| WI | $97,580 | $73,139 | $78,563 |
| MO | $94,660 | $71,912 | $78,368 |
| PA | $100,150 | $76,211 | $78,165 |
| WV | $91,780 | $70,083 | $78,068 |
| RI | $104,680 | $78,853 | $77,755 |
| AK | $99,580 | $78,885 | $77,554 |
| IL | $103,470 | $76,644 | $77,532 |
| MA | $114,190 | $83,773 | $77,397 |
| ME | $101,830 | $74,829 | $77,066 |
| CA | $120,910 | $86,738 | $77,045 |
| SC | $95,040 | $71,705 | $76,956 |
| UT | $96,720 | $72,568 | $76,386 |
| SD | $82,250 | $66,693 | $75,706 |
| AZ | $99,050 | $76,438 | $75,603 |
| FL | $98,070 | $77,822 | $75,225 |
| LA | $84,850 | $66,363 | $75,118 |
| CT | $105,240 | $77,802 | $75,034 |
| OK | $86,240 | $66,120 | $74,892 |
| TN | $85,890 | $69,254 | $74,857 |
| MD | $104,040 | $77,368 | $74,417 |
| MT | $87,890 | $67,056 | $74,305 |
| MN | $97,860 | $72,543 | $73,710 |
| OR | $105,480 | $74,356 | $71,004 |
| KY | $81,700 | $63,564 | $70,261 |
| AR | $77,170 | $60,722 | $70,193 |
| MS | $78,870 | $61,252 | $70,169 |
| DC | $104,900 | $76,679 | $69,203 |
| NH | $90,890 | $72,771 | $69,079 |
| NE | $80,150 | $62,272 | $68,904 |
| VT | $80,800 | $62,450 | $64,625 |
| HI | $78,000 | $59,218 | $54,524 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of project management specialists earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $102,320.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for project management specialists. 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, Washington keeps the most at $96,129.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for project management specialists. 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 $54,524.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for project management specialists, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $102,320, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for project management specialists 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 Washington retains the most, $96,129. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for project management 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; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $54,524. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.