Insurance Underwriters 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 Insurance Underwriters ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $63,070. 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 107,820 Insurance Underwriters jobs in May 2024, which is 0.07% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Connecticut, where the location quotient is 2.27, meaning the occupation holds 2.27 times its national share of local jobs. Illinois employs the most people outright, 8,480 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 22.4% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $138,020, which is 2.7 times the $51,640 at the 10th, a difference of $86,380 annually. Because the mean wage ($90,830) sits above the median ($79,880), 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 Insurance Underwriters runs from the $106,790 median in Vermont down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Illinois (8,480 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Insurance Underwriters stands number 258 by employment and number 210 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% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.0% of the group's 10,351,430 jobs. In 20 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $79,880, 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 7,530 jobs, 7.0% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 142 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, $44,370 a year, against $123,590 in Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO. 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 $79,880 works out to $6,657 a month before taxes, $3,072 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,536 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($63,070) to the 75th ($104,820) is worth $41,750 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 $87,868 would sit between the median ($79,880) and the 75th percentile ($104,820), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $63,070, is $16,810 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: Labor Relations Specialists, Financial Examiners, Property Appraisers and Assessors, Financial Risk Specialists, Tax Examiners and Collectors, and Revenue Agents, Budget Analysts. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.