Posted on 09/28/2025 9:05:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Looks pretty uniform. The high-tax states have the highest incomes.
DC should never be a state.
If you kick out the outliers (highest - Wash D.C. and lowest - Mississippi), the median is $60,300 - $1,700 less than with the outliers left in.
The northeast states minus Maine plus California, Virginia (Fed Gov) and Alaska, top the list. What surprises me is Florida ranks fairly low, with only six states ranked lower. Ohio is right at the median.
1 District of Columbia $102,970
2 Massachusetts $79,113
3 Washington $76,323
4 Maryland $74,982
5 New Jersey $74,164
6 Connecticut $72,834
7 Colorado $72,028
8 New York $70,254
9 California $70,031
10 New Hampshire $69,275
11 Alaska $69,063
12 Virginia $67,309
13 Rhode Island $67,142
14 Minnesota $66,932
15 Illinois $65,513
16 Oregon $65,360
17 Vermont $64,971
18 Utah $62,249
19 Pennsylvania $61,973
20 Delaware $61,651
21 Maine $60,948
22 Hawaii $60,836
23 Wisconsin $60,803
24 Michigan $60,613
25 Arizona $60,459
26 Ohio $60,300
27 North Dakota $60,170
28 Georgia $59,240
29 Texas $58,650
30 Idaho $58,476
31 North Carolina $57,727
32 Iowa $57,716
33 Kansas $57,418
34 Wyoming $57,343
35 Indiana $57,303
36 Nebraska $56,723
37 Missouri $56,210
38 Montana $55,992
39 South Dakota $55,708
40 South Carolina $55,325
41 Tennessee $55,313
42 Nevada $54,800
43 Florida $54,311
44 New Mexico $54,000
45 Kentucky $53,824
46 Alabama $53,459
47 Louisiana $52,959
48 West Virginia $52,080
49 Oklahoma $51,676
50 Arkansas $50,899
51 Mississippi $50,120
Salary alone is useless data.
Income needs to be compared to cost of living (food, car, housing, gas, utilities, etc) for a meaningful comparison.
I am working on a spreadsheet comparison of ranking by median salary and ranking by cost of living. Have to go to bed.
In general I am thinking that if a state ranks higher in cost of living than it does by median salary, then the median salary is not making up for the cost of living. This could even be occurring in some of the states among the higher ranked median salaries, their cost of living could be even higher. I’ll finish the comparison tomorrow.
DC’s obscene.
Otherwise the range isn’t all that great.
Florida’s retired.
“Florida’s retired.”
Yea - retired, snow birds (income out of state) and tourists income out of state). Makes sense.
I think also there is a lot of income in Florida that is likely not counted/mapped in median salaries, because it’s in capital gains in real estate. All states have a certain level of real estate bought and/or sold for investment purposes, and I think Florida ranks high in that regard. I know quite a few Northeast snow birds with second or investment residences in Florida.
Agree 100%. Places like where I come from in Iowa (Alaska now) has an extremely low cost of living. You don’t have to make much to be doing fine.
What’s missing from these data is the cost of living. The cost of living reflects differences in housing costs (which are astronomical in certain places), heating and air conditioning costs, and auto insurance rates, among other things. With my cost of living-adjusted figures, compare CA or NY to TX.
I got the cost of living by state from: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/cost-of-living-index-by-state#title
Cost of Living Median Salary (000s) Real Median Salary
AK 123.8 69.1 57.8
AL 88.0 53.5 63.0
AR 88.7 50.9 59.5
AZ 111.5 60.5 56.2
CA 144.8 70.0 50.1
CO 102.0 72.0 73.1
CT 112.3 72.8 67.2
DC 141.9 103.0 75.2
DE 100.8 61.7 63.4
FL 102.8 54.2 54.6
GA 91.3 59.2 67.2
HI 186.9 60.8 33.7
IA 89.7 57.7 66.6
ID 102.0 58.5 59.4
IL 94.4 65.5 71.9
IN 90.5 57.3 65.6
KS 87.0 57.4 68.4
KY 93.0 53.8 59.9
LA 92.2 53.0 59.6
MA 145.9 79.1 56.2
MD 115.3 75.0 67.4
ME 112.1 60.9 56.3
MI 90.4 60.6 69.4
MN 95.1 66.9 72.9
MO 88.7 56.2 65.6
MS 87.9 50.1 59.0
MT 94.4 56.0 61.5
NC 97.8 57.7 61.1
ND 91.9 60.2 67.9
NE 93.1 56.7 63.1
NH 112.6 69.3 63.8
NM 93.3 54.0 60.0
NV 101.3 54.8 56.0
NY 123.3 70.3 59.1
OH 94.2 60.3 66.3
OK 85.7 51.7 62.5
OR 112.0 65.4 60.5
PA 95.1 62.0 67.5
RI 112.2 67.1 62.0
SC 95.9 55.3 59.7
SD 92.2 55.7 62.6
TN 90.5 55.3 63.3
TX 92.7 58.7 65.6
UT 104.9 62.2 61.4
VA 100.7 67.3 69.2
VT 114.4 65.0 58.9
WA 114.2 76.3 69.2
WI 97.0 60.8 64.9
WV 84.1 52.1 64.2
WY 95.5 57.3 62.2
Ping me on that, please.
“I am working on a spreadsheet comparison of ranking by median salary and ranking by cost of living.”
That would be great! I am extremely interested if you don’t mind pinging me.
But you guys are right... How much you get to keep of that gross after costs is even more important.
I have argued this for a long time now. “Good” folks do not want to move from Ca to Az because they will make $2 less an hour in their line of work. But the reality is, even though they make less an hour in Az the lower costs of living offsets that and they actually end up breaking even with Ca or even more extra at the end of every month after their costs. Depending where they land in Az of course.
I mean just the lower electricity rate, gasoline prices, and costs of homes alone make a HUGE difference, more than that $2 an hour...
That profit/loss math comparison is extremely important... That making more in Ca can be just an illusion...
The median of the states is not the median of the entire country.
The median of any set, including of the states, is unchanged by eliminating an equal number of members from the top or bottom, and always exactly equal to the member in the middle, in this case # 26 Ohio, at $60,300. The U.S. median is based on ranking all full time workers, so New York and California have more influence than DC.
The famous example is that the average first year income of students graduating with geography degrees from North Carolina in 1991 was $60 million. There were five of them. One of them was Michael Jordan. The median salary was $30,000.
DC still holds the lead, but MA takes a big step down.
It says full-time, employed, retired does not play a part in this.
Florida is an agricultural/cattle state, wages are not high in those industries.
Even still they make more than those poor people in Mississippi. I can’t see how someone even in Mississippi with lower costs can survive on that. I’m in a low price county in Florida and prices for everything has gone up significantly. I am 30K over average and it’s still amazing how much bills have gone up in 10 years.
DC has a lot of high prestige law firms and 535 politicians who up the percentage.
“DC has a lot of high prestige law firms”
aka lobbyists and fixers.
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