Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($56,970) to the 90th ($203,990). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 16,230 Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in District of Columbia, where the location quotient is 4.02, meaning the occupation holds 4.02 times its national share of local jobs. New York employs the most people outright, 1,390 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 20.0% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $203,990, which is 3.6 times the $56,970 at the 10th, a difference of $147,020 annually. Because the mean wage ($122,620) sits above the median ($115,230), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers runs from the $181,060 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in New York (1,390 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers stands number 597 by employment and number 78 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Legal Occupations, the group median wage is $68,760 across 8 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 68% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.3% of the group's 1,273,410 jobs. In 19 of the 44 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $115,230, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,220 jobs, 7.5% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $124,320 a year, against $146,290 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $9,602 a month before tax, $4,432 biweekly, $2,216 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($76,920) to the 75th ($161,290) is worth $84,370 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $126,753 would sit between the median ($115,230) and the 75th percentile ($161,290), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $76,920, is $38,310 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Legal Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Lawyers, Paralegals and Legal Assistants, Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers, Legal Support Workers, All Other, Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates, Judicial Law Clerks. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.