Human Resources 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 Human Resources Managers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $105,590. 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

BLS counted 215,520 Human Resources Managers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.14% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in District of Columbia, where the location quotient is 2.29, meaning the occupation holds 2.29 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 27,680 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 27.0% of the national total.

BLS top-codes or suppresses part of this occupation's national ladder, so the published center is the median of $140,030 and the mean of $160,480. The state table below is the more useful negotiating document: it shows how far the same job title travels across the 51 states with published estimates.

Pay by state

The state spread for Human Resources Managers runs from the $176,510 median in Massachusetts down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (27,680 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Human Resources Managers stands number 154 by employment and number 40 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 2.0% of the group's 10,966,830 jobs. In 13 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $140,030, 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 17,240 jobs, 8.0% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 357 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $87,580 a year, against $214,610 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

The median annual wage of $140,030 works out to $11,669 a month before taxes, $5,386 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,693 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($105,590) to the 75th ($189,960) is worth $84,370 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 $154,033 would sit between the median ($140,030) and the 75th percentile ($189,960), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $105,590, is $34,440 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Financial Managers, Computer and Information Systems Managers, Managers, All Other, Sales Managers, Medical and Health Services Managers, Marketing Managers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.