WageDex guide
Entry-Level vs. Experienced Pay
How to read BLS wage percentiles to understand how much experience really matters for your occupation.
The short answer
BLS data has no "years of experience" field, but the percentile spread is the next best proxy: the 10th percentile approximates entry pay, the 90th approximates senior pay. Among recognizable roles, General and Operations Managers reward experience most, with the 90th percentile earning 5.1× the 10th ($50,090 to $253,390).
- 5.1×
- General and Operations Managers (widest)
- $50,090
- Entry (10th pct)
- $253,390
- Experienced (90th pct)
A wide spread means the occupation rewards experience heavily; a narrow spread means pay is relatively flat across a career.
What Percentiles Tell You About Experience
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports wages at six percentile points: 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th, 90th, and mean. These percentiles are not directly tied to experience, they reflect the full distribution of pay across all workers in an occupation. However, experience is the strongest predictor of where a worker falls in this distribution.
A 10th-percentile software developer making $65,000 is likely in their first or second year. A 90th-percentile developer making $170,000 has typically accumulated 10+ years of expertise, works in a high-cost market, or holds a senior title. The percentile range tells you the earnings trajectory that experience typically creates within that occupation.
WageDex shows the full percentile breakdown for every occupation. Start with the careers directory to compare spreads across fields.
Wide Spreads vs. Narrow Spreads
The ratio between the 10th and 90th percentile wages, the "pay spread" - reveals how much an occupation rewards experience and expertise:
How much does experience pay?
90th-percentile wage as a multiple of the 10th percentile, by occupation, BLS OEWS
- General and Operations Man…
General and Operations Managers
5.1 × entry pay
- Lawyers
Lawyers
4.5 × entry pay
- Financial Managers
Financial Managers
3.4 × entry pay
- Marketing Managers
Marketing Managers
3.3 × entry pay
- Software Developers
Software Developers
2.6 × entry pay
- Accountants and Auditors
Accountants and Auditors
2.6 × entry pay
- Electricians
Electricians
2.5 × entry pay
- Registered Nurses 2
Registered Nurses
2 × entry pay
- Wide spreads (3x+ ratio): Occupations like physicians, lawyers, financial managers, and software architects. The gap between entry-level and senior pay is enormous, reflecting steep learning curves and high value placed on expertise.
- Moderate spreads (2-3x): Occupations like registered nurses, accountants, and electricians. Solid wage growth with experience, but not the dramatic multipliers seen in the widest-spread fields.
- Narrow spreads (1.5-2x): Occupations like retail salespersons, food service workers, and office clerks. Pay is relatively compressed, even experienced workers earn only modestly more than new hires. Wage growth in these fields typically requires moving into management or changing occupations.
Understanding which category your occupation falls into helps set realistic expectations for how much your salary will grow over a career, even before negotiation or job changes.
Geographic Variation Often Exceeds Experience Variation
For many occupations, where you work matters more than how long you have worked. A 25th-percentile registered nurse in San Francisco ($95,000) earns more than a 75th-percentile registered nurse in rural Mississippi ($70,000). Geography and experience interact: moving to a higher-paying market can achieve the same salary boost as years of experience.
WageDex shows wages by state and metro area to help you compare. When evaluating a job offer, check the median for your occupation in that specific geography, a "below median" offer in San Francisco may still exceed the 90th percentile in a smaller market.
Using Percentile Data for Career Planning
The full percentile distribution is more useful than a single salary number for several career decisions:
- Choosing a career: Compare 50th and 90th percentiles across occupations you are considering. The 90th percentile shows the realistic ceiling after years of experience.
- Negotiating salary: If you are offered a salary at the 25th percentile but have 5+ years of experience, the data supports asking for closer to the median. Use our salary negotiation guide for specifics.
- Planning a relocation: Compare percentiles in your current and target markets. The salary vs. cost of living guide explains how to adjust for purchasing power.
- Evaluating a career change: If your current occupation has a narrow spread, switching to one with a wider spread may offer more lifetime earnings growth, even if the starting pay is similar.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do the 10th and 90th percentile wages represent?
The 10th percentile represents entry-level or the lowest-paid workers, 90% of workers in that occupation earn more. The 90th percentile represents top earners, only 10% make more. The spread between these two numbers shows how much wages vary within an occupation. A narrow spread means pay is relatively uniform regardless of experience; a wide spread means experience, location, and employer matter enormously.
Why do some occupations have a wider pay range than others?
Pay ranges reflect several factors: how much productivity increases with experience (surgeons improve dramatically, cashiers less so), how much geographic location affects pay (software developers in San Francisco earn far more than in rural areas), how much employer type matters (private sector vs. government vs. nonprofit), and whether the occupation has commission or bonus structures. Knowledge-intensive occupations tend to have wider ranges because experience compounds expertise.
How can I estimate what I would earn as an entry-level worker?
The 10th to 25th percentile range is the best proxy for entry-level wages in most occupations. BLS data does not include a direct "years of experience" variable, but lower percentiles generally correspond to less experienced workers. For a more precise estimate, also filter by state or metro area, since geographic variation is often larger than experience variation. WageDex shows all percentiles for every occupation.
Does the BLS data account for education level within an occupation?
Not directly. BLS OEWS data reports wages for all workers in an occupation regardless of education level. However, the BLS Employment Projections program provides "typical entry-level education" for each occupation, which WageDex shows in career card and job detail pages. Within an occupation, workers with higher education may cluster in higher percentiles, but the OEWS survey does not break wages down by education level.
How quickly do wages grow with experience?
The gap between the 10th and 50th percentile is a rough proxy for early-career wage growth, it shows how much more the median worker earns compared to entry-level. For fast-progressing occupations like software development or financial analysis, the 50th percentile is often 60-80% higher than the 10th. For occupations with flat trajectories like retail sales or food service, the gap may be only 20-30%. The 50th to 90th gap indicates how much senior-level expertise or specialization can further increase earnings.
Should I compare wages across occupations using the median or the full range?
Both. The median tells you what a typical worker earns, but the full range reveals the ceiling and floor. An occupation with a lower median but a very high 90th percentile may offer better long-term earnings potential than one with a higher median but a compressed range. For example, sales occupations often have moderate medians but very high 90th percentiles due to commission structures. Compare the full distribution on WageDex before making career decisions.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS survey, current as of May 2025, is the source: WageDex tracks 831 occupations across 582 U.S. states and metro areas, comprising 36,367 state-level wage records, according to the same federal survey.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025
- BLS Employment Projections, Typical Entry-Level Education by Occupation
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Salary data should be one factor among many in career decisions.
Understanding the Data
The information presented throughout this guide is informed by publicly available public records published by federal and state government agencies. Our database aggregates and standardizes these records to make them more accessible and easier to interpret for general audiences. When we reference specific statistics or trends, they are drawn directly from these authoritative sources unless explicitly noted otherwise.
It is important to understand the limitations of any large-scale data dataset. Records may contain errors from the original data collection process, some fields may be incomplete for older entries, and classification systems may have changed over time. Our analysis accounts for these factors by clearly labeling data vintage, flagging records with missing critical fields, and noting when temporal comparisons span methodology changes in the source data.
For readers who want to conduct their own research, we recommend going directly to the source whenever possible. the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides detailed documentation on the OEWS survey's collection methodology, sampling frames, and known data quality issues. Our goal is not to replace primary sources but to make them more approachable and to highlight patterns that may not be immediately obvious when browsing raw records.
How We Analyze Data Records
Our pipeline pulls the raw OEWS release, standardizes occupation and area names against a fixed taxonomy so the same job title matches across editions, and computes derived figures (percentile bands, metro-vs-national ratios, year-over-year change) that BLS publishes as separate files but most readers want to see side by side.
The metrics we track for every occupation include median and mean annual wage, employment counts, and percentile wage bands (10th through 90th percentile). These figures let you see not just what an occupation pays nationally, but how that compares across metro areas, states, and neighboring occupations, since a single national average can hide wide regional and role-level variation.