Legislators Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Legislators offer sit among all 26,510 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 26,510 jobs nationally, Legislators make up 0.02% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 2,470 of those jobs, the top three states hold 22.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in West Virginia (location quotient 6.21, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $20,380 or less, and one in ten earns $137,820 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 6.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $117,440. The mean ($67,390) versus median ($44,810) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Legislators runs from the $109,390 median in Washington down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (2,470 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Legislators stands number 501 by employment and number 645 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 58% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 10,966,830 jobs. In 19 of the 33 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $44,810, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 640 jobs, 2.4% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 128 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, St. Louis, MO-IL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $48,100 a year, against $95,980 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

The median Legislators paycheck, gross, is $1,723 every two weeks on an annual $44,810, which is $3,734 a month and $862 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($29,120) to the 75th ($80,350) is worth $51,230 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $49,291 would sit between the median ($44,810) and the 75th percentile ($80,350), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $29,120, is $15,690 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: Construction Managers, Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary, Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers, Administrative Services Managers, Food Service Managers, Industrial Production Managers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.