Social and Community Service Managers
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays this job the most on paper: $106,700. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Washington in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and South Dakota wins at $79,395. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For social and community service managers, the District of Columbia's $106,700 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Washington; regional price parity then promotes South Dakota, whose $79,395 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$80,390
People doing it
209,330
Highest paid
$106,700
DC
Best off, really
$79,395
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$53,150
Highest tenth
$132,260
Lowest, really
$52,757
AR
States with data
51
National average
$88,880
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, 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 $52,757 up to $79,395.
- Roughly 209,330 people hold this job nationally, earning $80,390 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $80,390, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- The nominal spread for social and community service managers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $52,757 to $79,395, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- 209,330 are employed nationally in social and community service managers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for social and community service managers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Social and Community Service Managers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $53,150 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $80,390 |
| Top tenth earn over | $132,260 |
| This salary | $80,390 |
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 Social and Community Service Managers
The national median for this job
$80,390around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $53,150 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $80,390 |
| Top tenth | $132,260 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Social and Community Service Managers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $56,100 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $106,700 |
| Spread | $50,600 |
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 | $76,520 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $78,745 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $86,870 | $69,943 | $79,395 |
| ND | $86,630 | $69,344 | $78,291 |
| AK | $98,370 | $78,033 | $76,718 |
| TN | $88,240 | $70,907 | $76,644 |
| WA | $103,000 | $81,291 | $74,879 |
| LA | $82,090 | $64,504 | $73,014 |
| CO | $97,440 | $73,800 | $72,794 |
| VA | $94,970 | $70,941 | $70,414 |
| DC | $106,700 | $77,792 | $70,207 |
| NM | $81,290 | $63,363 | $70,102 |
| MI | $85,500 | $65,596 | $69,647 |
| WI | $82,130 | $63,188 | $67,873 |
| KS | $79,260 | $60,455 | $67,199 |
| UT | $83,200 | $63,659 | $67,008 |
| ID | $79,120 | $61,151 | $66,886 |
| KY | $76,960 | $60,395 | $66,759 |
| NY | $95,980 | $71,729 | $66,647 |
| NJ | $95,290 | $71,986 | $66,114 |
| NC | $79,590 | $62,155 | $66,024 |
| OK | $73,720 | $57,875 | $65,554 |
| MN | $84,220 | $63,875 | $64,903 |
| OH | $73,890 | $59,496 | $64,802 |
| VT | $80,760 | $62,425 | $64,599 |
| TX | $76,520 | $62,662 | $64,483 |
| NE | $73,790 | $58,087 | $64,273 |
| MT | $73,640 | $57,836 | $64,088 |
| MD | $87,450 | $66,561 | $64,022 |
| IN | $73,940 | $58,695 | $63,672 |
| NH | $82,290 | $66,721 | $63,336 |
| AL | $72,310 | $56,603 | $62,914 |
| SC | $73,410 | $57,922 | $62,164 |
| MO | $71,970 | $57,016 | $62,134 |
| MS | $67,330 | $53,595 | $61,398 |
| AZ | $77,550 | $61,850 | $61,174 |
| WY | $66,330 | $55,476 | $61,065 |
| PA | $75,280 | $59,478 | $61,003 |
| IL | $78,380 | $60,235 | $60,933 |
| ME | $76,160 | $58,588 | $60,339 |
| FL | $76,050 | $62,331 | $60,251 |
| OR | $87,010 | $62,978 | $60,139 |
| RI | $77,570 | $60,912 | $60,064 |
| IA | $65,940 | $53,269 | $60,010 |
| GA | $73,290 | $57,331 | $59,288 |
| DE | $75,950 | $58,479 | $58,919 |
| MA | $81,380 | $62,332 | $57,588 |
| CA | $83,210 | $63,722 | $56,601 |
| NV | $65,570 | $54,865 | $56,574 |
| CT | $75,520 | $58,555 | $56,471 |
| WV | $62,060 | $50,092 | $55,799 |
| HI | $76,370 | $58,195 | $53,582 |
| AR | $56,100 | $45,639 | $52,757 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job 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 $80,390.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. 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 $81,291.
- 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 — Arkansas sits at the bottom on $52,757.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for social and community service managers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $80,390, 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 social and community service managers 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, $81,291. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to social and community service managers 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 Arkansas at $52,757. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Arkansas anchors the bottom at $52,757 — and the two source series are dated independently.