Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other
What the pay figures show
- Virginia comes first for this job on every measure. $140,670 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $99,342 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For social scientists and related workers, all other, Virginia's $140,670 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $99,342. 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
$101,110
People doing it
37,100
Highest paid
$140,670
VA
Best off, really
$99,342
VA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$66,120
Highest tenth
$160,300
Lowest, really
$58,872
ME
States with data
49
National average
$107,690
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
100.75%
VA, 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 $58,872 up to $99,342.
- Only 37,100 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $101,110 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Virginia leads the published set.
- The nominal spread for social scientists and related workers, all other approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $58,872 to $99,342, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in social scientists and related workers, all other is 37,100. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- Coverage for social scientists and related workers, all other 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: Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $66,120 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $101,110 |
| Top tenth earn over | $160,300 |
| This salary | $101,110 |
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 Scientists and Related Workers, All Other
The national median for this job
$101,110around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $66,120 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $101,110 |
| Top tenth | $160,300 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Maine · $73,920 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Virginia · $140,670 |
| Spread | $66,750 |
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 | $101,800 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $104,759 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| VA | $140,670 | $100,086 | $99,342 |
| MD | $131,810 | $95,271 | $91,638 |
| NE | $104,420 | $78,242 | $86,574 |
| OH | $98,630 | $76,220 | $83,018 |
| TX | $101,800 | $80,446 | $82,785 |
| DC | $128,440 | $91,106 | $82,223 |
| WV | $94,520 | $71,885 | $80,075 |
| AL | $95,370 | $71,927 | $79,945 |
| LA | $91,170 | $70,619 | $79,936 |
| IA | $91,560 | $70,375 | $79,281 |
| SD | $86,260 | $69,514 | $78,908 |
| NV | $95,620 | $76,099 | $78,468 |
| WY | $88,610 | $71,167 | $78,336 |
| CO | $105,390 | $79,043 | $77,966 |
| NM | $91,170 | $69,832 | $77,259 |
| MN | $103,330 | $76,020 | $77,242 |
| OK | $88,610 | $67,680 | $76,660 |
| PA | $97,640 | $74,522 | $76,433 |
| AZ | $99,320 | $76,621 | $75,784 |
| MS | $85,550 | $65,684 | $75,247 |
| IN | $89,440 | $69,142 | $75,004 |
| WA | $102,920 | $81,234 | $74,827 |
| IL | $99,050 | $73,753 | $74,608 |
| ID | $88,610 | $67,324 | $73,639 |
| UT | $91,560 | $69,168 | $72,807 |
| WI | $88,830 | $67,503 | $72,508 |
| MA | $105,640 | $78,186 | $72,235 |
| NY | $104,770 | $77,395 | $71,911 |
| KS | $85,160 | $64,277 | $71,446 |
| GA | $91,210 | $69,044 | $71,401 |
| TN | $80,860 | $65,715 | $71,032 |
| ND | $76,400 | $62,347 | $70,391 |
| MT | $82,380 | $63,491 | $70,355 |
| NJ | $101,260 | $75,806 | $69,622 |
| AR | $76,400 | $60,209 | $69,600 |
| DE | $92,330 | $68,921 | $69,440 |
| SC | $83,780 | $64,530 | $69,255 |
| MI | $84,260 | $64,777 | $68,777 |
| MO | $80,850 | $62,845 | $68,487 |
| RI | $89,960 | $69,163 | $68,200 |
| KY | $78,850 | $61,659 | $68,155 |
| NC | $81,420 | $63,369 | $67,314 |
| NH | $86,530 | $69,704 | $66,167 |
| OR | $95,900 | $68,455 | $65,369 |
| FL | $83,460 | $67,544 | $65,290 |
| CA | $97,900 | $72,690 | $64,567 |
| VT | $79,450 | $61,590 | $63,734 |
| HI | $92,520 | $68,330 | $62,913 |
| ME | $73,920 | $57,163 | $58,872 |
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 $101,110.
- 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 Virginia, at $100,086.
- 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 — Maine sits at the bottom on $58,872.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for social scientists and related workers, all other, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $101,110, 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.
- Retained-pay figures for social scientists and related workers, all other 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 $100,086, which leads in Virginia.
- The price deflation applied to social scientists and related workers, all other 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 Maine at $58,872. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Maine anchors the bottom at $58,872 — and the two source series are dated independently.