Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates 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 Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $86,060. 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 25,580 people in May 2024, 0.02% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 2,610 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 29.6% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in West Virginia, whose location quotient of 2.97 says this work is 2.97 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $170,020 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($216,540) is 4.7 times the 10th percentile ($46,520), a gap of $170,020 a year. The mean of $143,110 sitting near the median of $156,210 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 41 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Massachusetts at $221,710; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates stands number 507 by employment and number 32 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 127% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.0% of the group's 1,273,410 jobs. In 16 of the 36 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $156,210, 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 1,390 jobs, 5.4% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 107 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, Cleveland, OH posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $103,000 a year, against $171,510 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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

As a household number, $156,210 a year is $13,018 a month gross, $6,008 every two weeks, $3,004 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($86,060) to the 75th ($189,890) is worth $103,830 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $13,018 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $171,831 would sit between the median ($156,210) and the 75th percentile ($189,890), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $86,060, is $70,150 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Legal Occupations

Sibling occupations in Legal Occupations: Lawyers, Paralegals and Legal Assistants, Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers, Legal Support Workers, All Other, Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers, Judicial Law Clerks. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.