Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
What the pay figures show
- A job board will not tell you this about this job. The best headline number is Colorado, at $77,600. State taxes differ, so Alaska leaves you more. Prices differ too, so West Virginia leaves you better off again — $67,408 once levelled out. Moving for the biggest salary can leave you worse off.
- Wage data for title examiners, abstractors, and searchers places Colorado first at $77,600. That position is not robust: state income tax alone reorders it to Alaska, and regional price parity reorders it again to West Virginia at $67,408. Because published comparisons almost universally stop at the nominal median, the state that appears best for this occupation is routinely not the state where a worker's income goes furthest.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$58,650
People doing it
48,580
Highest paid
$77,600
CO
Best off, really
$67,408
WV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,170
Highest tenth
$90,830
Lowest, really
$36,587
LA
States with data
47
National average
$62,350
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
89.77%
WV, 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 $36,587 to $67,408.
- Just 48,580 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 47 jurisdictions, averaging $58,650 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Colorado leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in title examiners, abstractors, and searchers 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 $36,587 to $67,408 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 48,580 are employed nationally in title examiners, abstractors, and searchers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- Coverage for title examiners, abstractors, and searchers runs to 47 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: Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,170 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,650 |
| Top tenth earn over | $90,830 |
| This salary | $58,650 |
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 Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
The national median for this job
$58,650around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,170 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,650 |
| Top tenth | $90,830 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers, state by state
The national median for this job
47states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $38,470 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Colorado · $77,600 |
| Spread | $39,130 |
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 | $60,120 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,868 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WV | $77,230 | $60,513 | $67,408 |
| AK | $75,960 | $62,268 | $61,218 |
| NV | $71,050 | $58,814 | $60,645 |
| CO | $77,600 | $60,716 | $59,888 |
| ND | $59,980 | $50,374 | $56,873 |
| SD | $59,300 | $49,828 | $56,561 |
| AL | $61,330 | $48,816 | $54,258 |
| OR | $76,930 | $56,769 | $54,210 |
| ID | $61,730 | $49,362 | $53,991 |
| NM | $57,940 | $47,177 | $52,195 |
| UT | $62,210 | $49,397 | $51,996 |
| TX | $60,120 | $50,486 | $51,954 |
| DE | $65,270 | $51,548 | $51,936 |
| WA | $66,440 | $55,565 | $51,182 |
| OH | $56,680 | $46,880 | $51,061 |
| RI | $63,300 | $51,088 | $50,376 |
| MA | $69,100 | $54,307 | $50,174 |
| NH | $62,090 | $52,069 | $49,427 |
| CT | $62,940 | $50,041 | $48,260 |
| KS | $54,640 | $43,323 | $48,155 |
| CA | $67,230 | $53,820 | $47,806 |
| FL | $58,450 | $49,145 | $47,505 |
| KY | $52,860 | $42,921 | $47,443 |
| MN | $58,250 | $46,546 | $47,295 |
| OK | $50,270 | $40,810 | $46,225 |
| TN | $50,240 | $42,548 | $45,990 |
| NJ | $61,930 | $50,067 | $45,982 |
| WY | $48,710 | $41,318 | $45,481 |
| NY | $61,380 | $48,781 | $45,325 |
| AR | $47,510 | $39,055 | $45,146 |
| NE | $48,880 | $39,935 | $44,187 |
| NC | $50,500 | $41,251 | $43,819 |
| MS | $47,060 | $38,202 | $43,764 |
| PA | $52,220 | $42,536 | $43,626 |
| MO | $48,190 | $39,573 | $43,126 |
| IA | $46,330 | $38,257 | $43,099 |
| VA | $54,230 | $43,396 | $43,074 |
| MD | $55,460 | $44,471 | $42,775 |
| MI | $49,540 | $40,131 | $42,609 |
| WI | $48,070 | $39,288 | $42,201 |
| SC | $46,740 | $38,953 | $41,805 |
| IN | $46,150 | $37,930 | $41,146 |
| AZ | $49,580 | $41,181 | $40,730 |
| ME | $48,900 | $39,490 | $40,671 |
| GA | $48,320 | $39,193 | $40,531 |
| IL | $49,990 | $40,017 | $40,481 |
| LA | $38,470 | $32,323 | $36,587 |
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 $58,650.
- 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 Alaska, at $62,268.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Louisiana, on $36,587.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for title examiners, abstractors, and searchers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $58,650, 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 title examiners, abstractors, and searchers 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 $62,268, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for title examiners, abstractors, and searchers 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; Louisiana anchors the distribution at $36,587. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.