Cost Estimators 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 ($46,330) to the 90th ($128,640). 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

May 2024 employment stood at 219,530, or 0.14% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 25,580 jobs; the top three states sum to 28.3% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Missouri posts a location quotient of 1.68, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $82,310 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($128,640) is 2.8 times the 10th percentile ($46,330), a gap of $82,310 a year. The mean of $83,160 sitting above the median of $77,070 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Cost Estimators runs from the $102,680 median in Massachusetts down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (25,580 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Cost Estimators stands number 151 by employment and number 238 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Business and Financial Operations Occupations, the group median wage is $78,420 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 2% less than its group median, and it supplies 2.1% of the group's 10,351,430 jobs. In 18 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $77,070, 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 9,770 jobs, 4.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 377 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $59,710 a year, against $111,870 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $6,422 a month before tax, $2,964 biweekly, $1,482 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($59,830) to the 75th ($99,630) is worth $39,800 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 $84,777 would sit between the median ($77,070) and the 75th percentile ($99,630), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $59,830, is $17,240 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Business and Financial Operations Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Training and Development Specialists, Compliance Officers, Financial and Investment Analysts, Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.