Writers and Authors 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 Writers and Authors ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $52,890. 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 47,800 Writers and Authors 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 5.62, meaning the occupation holds 5.62 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 8,950 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 36.3% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $52,890 at the 25th percentile, $72,270 at the middle, $98,320 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $92,600, a ratio of 3.3 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $121,160, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Writers and Authors stands number 397 by employment and number 271 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% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.4% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 11 of the 46 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $72,270, 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 6,240 jobs, 13.1% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $71,130 a year, against $115,400 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $72,270 works out to $6,022 a month before taxes, $2,780 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,390 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($52,890) to the 75th ($98,320) is worth $45,430 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $79,497 would sit between the median ($72,270) and the 75th percentile ($98,320), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $52,890, is $19,380 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners, Music Directors and Composers, Set and Exhibit Designers, Lighting Technicians, Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators, Designers, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.