Labor Relations Specialists 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 Labor Relations Specialists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $67,670. 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 64,590 Labor Relations Specialists jobs in May 2024, which is 0.04% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Rhode Island, where the location quotient is 2.19, meaning the occupation holds 2.19 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 9,170 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 31.3% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $49,880 or less, and one in ten earns $153,440 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 3.1 to 1 and the annual gap is $103,560. The mean ($97,130) versus median ($93,500) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 51 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is District of Columbia at $124,930; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Labor Relations Specialists stands number 344 by employment and number 153 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 19% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.6% of the group's 10,351,430 jobs. In 20 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $93,500, 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 6,550 jobs, 10.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 190 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, Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $79,400 a year, against $144,650 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, 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: $7,792 a month before tax, $3,596 biweekly, $1,798 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($67,670) to the 75th ($123,090) is worth $55,420 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 $102,850 would sit between the median ($93,500) and the 75th percentile ($123,090), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $67,670, is $25,830 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

Sibling occupations in Business and Financial Operations Occupations: Training and Development Specialists, Compliance Officers, Financial and Investment Analysts, Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators, Loan Officers, Personal Financial Advisors. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.