News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists worker at that point in the distribution, so $97,460 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 41,550 News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists jobs in May 2024, which is 0.03% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in District of Columbia, where the location quotient is 10.80, meaning the occupation holds 10.80 times its national share of local jobs. New York employs the most people outright, 5,220 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 31.1% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $162,430, which is 4.7 times the $34,590 at the 10th, a difference of $127,840 annually. Because the mean wage ($106,030) sits above the median ($60,280), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts New York first at 5,220 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, New York would lead at $103,810. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists stands number 420 by employment and number 406 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations, the group median wage is $66,220 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 9% less than its group median, and it supplies 2.1% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 11 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,280, 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 5,060 jobs, 12.2% 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, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $55,590 a year, against $300,200 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $5,023 a month before tax, $2,318 biweekly, $1,159 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($40,420) to the 75th ($97,460) is worth $57,040 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 $66,308 would sit between the median ($60,280) and the 75th percentile ($97,460), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $40,420, is $19,860 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Broadcast Announcers and Radio Disc Jockeys, Media and Communication Workers, All Other, Special Effects Artists and Animators, Broadcast Technicians, Fashion Designers, Umpires, Referees, and Other Sports Officials. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.