California Salaries

The California labor market shows up in BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data across 793 reported occupations; the top- and bottom-paying tiers shown on this page (75 occupations) cover roughly 1,143,850 workers in that sample. The May 2025 OEWS release captures base pay, mean pay, and percentile bands for each SOC code that has enough state-level employment to report without confidentiality suppression. Averaging the medians of the top 50 highest-paying occupations gives $209,696 per year, the upper-tier benchmark, NOT a state-wide median (BLS does not publish that aggregate; specialty roles skew this number significantly higher than what a typical worker earns).

At the top of the ranking, Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric pays a California median of $400,150, the highest-paying reported occupation in the state. The number-two spot goes to Neurologists at $357,080, followed by Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers at $353,900. At the bottom of the reported range, Dishwashers pays $37,870 - the 10.6× spread between top and bottom is characteristic of U.S. state labor markets, where specialized professional roles and entry-level service work coexist within the same regional economy. BLS reports wage data for 28 metropolitan statistical areas inside California, letting you drill below state averages into city-by-city variation.

State-level wages reflect three compounding forces: local industry mix (a state with heavy finance, tech, or oil-and-gas concentration shows higher medians than one dominated by retail and hospitality), cost of living (expensive states pay nominally more to attract talent), and employer competition (areas with few large employers for a given specialty pay below average regardless of state prestige). Before treating any median on this page as a personal benchmark, drill into the specific metro within California where you work, pair it with rent and cost-of-living indices to see real purchasing power, and remember OEWS figures exclude benefits, bonuses, and overtime. Every occupation row links to the full occupation profile so you can see the 10th-to-90th percentile spread and compare California to the national median for that specific role. See our methodology for exactly how these figures are sourced, computed, and verified.