Loan Officers 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 Loan Officers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $50,460. 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

May 2024 employment stood at 290,530, or 0.19% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 27,420 jobs; the top three states sum to 24.5% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: South Dakota posts a location quotient of 2.26, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $38,490 or less, and one in ten earns $145,780 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 3.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $107,290. The mean ($86,020) versus median ($74,180) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Loan Officers runs from the $102,200 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (27,420 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Loan Officers stands number 125 by employment and number 258 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 5% less than its group median, and it supplies 2.8% of the group's 10,351,430 jobs. In 25 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $74,180, 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 11,250 jobs, 3.9% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

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, $42,720 a year, against $135,040 in Dayton-Kettering-Beavercreek, OH. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Loan Officers paycheck, gross, is $2,853 every two weeks on an annual $74,180, which is $6,182 a month and $1,427 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($50,460) to the 75th ($101,920) is worth $51,460 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 $81,598 would sit between the median ($74,180) and the 75th percentile ($101,920), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $50,460, is $23,720 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: Project Management Specialists, Human Resources Specialists, Management Analysts, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Training and Development Specialists. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.