The Largest-Employment US Occupations and What They Pay (2026)

WageDex ranks US occupations by total employment from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, then pairs each with its national median wage. Updated from the maintained May 2025 release.

Published: · Data reference period: May 2025

Compiled by WageDex on 2026-07-29

Research question

Which detailed occupations have the largest BLS OEWS employment estimates, what are their published median wages, and how do those medians compare with an explicitly defined employment-weighted benchmark?

Methodology

We ranked every detailed occupation in the maintained May 2025 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) release by its published total employment estimate, then paired each row with its national median annual wage and Standard Occupational Classification major group. The headline table returns the ten occupations with the largest employment estimates. Figures update when WageDex refreshes the maintained source snapshot.

Two context queries accompany the ranking. The first sums the published employment estimates and computes an employment-weighted average of the occupation-level median wages. That benchmark gives larger occupations more influence than smaller ones, but it is not a worker-level median and cannot tell us what the median worker earns. The second isolates the highest published median wages among occupations with at least one million estimated jobs. Employment counts are establishment-survey estimates and exclude the self-employed; the limitations panel below defines the boundary.

The BLS OEWS program overview says the May 2025 estimates combine six semiannual survey panels, a full sample of about 1.1 million establishments, and use the MB3 model-based estimation method. BLS benchmarks the survey to Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages employment and adjusts earlier-panel wages to the May 2025 reference date. WageDex preserves the agency's published occupation estimates and rounds only for display.

See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, OEWS source vintage, and field definitions behind every WageDex wage figure.

Key findings

  • Home Health and Personal Care Aides has the largest published detailed-occupation employment estimate in the May 2025 OEWS release at 4,305,810 jobs, with a national median annual wage of $35,800.
  • The ten largest detailed occupations account for 21% of the 155,358,060 summed occupation-level employment estimates with complete wage data in this analysis.
  • 8 of the ten largest occupations have published medians below the $64,250 employment-weighted average of occupation medians.
  • The aggregate calculation covers 825 detailed occupations with both employment and median-wage estimates; it is an average of occupation medians, not a worker-level median.
  • Software Developers has the highest published median wage among occupations with at least one million estimated jobs, at $135,980 per year.

Ten largest US occupations by employment

Estimated jobs in covered establishments, nationally

estimated jobs
Source U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS As of May 2025

The ten largest occupations

10 detailed occupations with the largest published employment estimates in the maintained May 2025 release.

Swipe the table horizontally to compare employment and median wage.

# Occupation Major group Estimated jobs Median wage
1 Home Health and Personal Care Aides Healthcare Support Occupations 4,305,810 $35,800
2 Retail Salespersons Sales and Related Occupations 3,897,860 $35,410
3 Fast Food and Counter Workers Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations 3,854,050 $31,200
4 General and Operations Managers Management Occupations 3,503,020 $105,770
5 Registered Nurses Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations 3,379,720 $97,550
6 Cashiers Sales and Related Occupations 3,089,410 $32,880
7 Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand Transportation and Material Moving Occupations 2,950,280 $40,240
8 Stockers and Order Fillers Transportation and Material Moving Occupations 2,833,810 $37,330
9 Customer Service Representatives Office and Administrative Support Occupations 2,595,750 $44,770
10 Office Clerks, General Office and Administrative Support Occupations 2,464,940 $45,010

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national occupation estimates.

Findings

The ten largest occupations cover 21% of the observed employment total

The largest published detailed-occupation estimate is Home Health and Personal Care Aides, at roughly 4,305,810 jobs, with a national median wage of $35,800. The ten rows in the table account for about 21% of the summed employment estimates across the 825 qualifying detailed occupations. This share describes the rows in the maintained OEWS snapshot; it does not include work outside the survey's scope.

8 of the ten largest occupations fall below the weighted benchmark

Across all qualifying rows, the employment-weighted average of occupation median wages is about $64,250. 8 of the ten largest occupations have a published median below that benchmark, while 2 are at or above it. This comparison is descriptive only: averaging occupation medians does not reconstruct the wage distribution across individual workers.

The rare exceptions: big and well-paid

Among occupations with at least one million estimated jobs, the highest published medians belong to Software Developers at $135,980 and General and Operations Managers at $105,770. The chart below applies only those two explicit filters: at least one million estimated jobs and a published national median wage.

What this ranking supports

The page supports a bounded comparison of published employment estimates and occupation-level median wages in the May 2025 release. It does not establish why an occupation is large, why its wage sits where it does, how its workforce changed over time, or what a pay change would do to households. Each table row links to the corresponding WageDex profile for the same occupation's published state and local-area wage estimates.

What this analysis cannot tell us

BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics covers wage-and-salary jobs in nonfarm establishments. Its scope excludes self-employed workers, most agricultural workers, private household workers, unpaid family workers, and military-specific occupations. The estimates combine six semiannual survey panels and are adjusted to the May 2025 reference period; they are estimates, not a direct census of every worker. Occupations without both a published employment estimate and median wage are excluded rather than assigned a value. The employment-weighted benchmark on this page averages occupation-level medians and therefore is not the median wage of all workers.

Highest median wages among occupations with at least 1 million estimated jobs

Published national median wage, filtered to occupations with employment estimates of 1 million or more

median wage
Source U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS As of May 2025

Related data

Sources