Compensation and Benefits Managers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Compensation and Benefits Managers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $105,210. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 20,070 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 2,840 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 32.6% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in District of Columbia, whose location quotient of 1.66 says this work is 1.66 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

BLS top-codes or suppresses part of this occupation's national ladder, so the published center is the median of $140,360 and the mean of $156,230. The state table below is the more useful negotiating document: it shows how far the same job title travels across the 44 states with published estimates.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 2,840 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $206,320. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Compensation and Benefits Managers stands number 561 by employment and number 39 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Management Occupations, the group median wage is $106,980 across 38 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 31% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 10,966,830 jobs. In 16 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $140,360, 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 1,960 jobs, 9.8% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $153,710 a year, against $200,630 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $140,360 works out to $11,697 a month before taxes, $5,398 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,699 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($105,210) to the 75th ($190,890) is worth $85,680 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $154,396 would sit between the median ($140,360) and the 75th percentile ($190,890), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $105,210, is $35,150 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Management Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare, Education Administrators, All Other, Training and Development Managers, Lodging Managers, Fundraising Managers, Entertainment and Recreation Managers, Except Gambling. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.