Salary Survey Extra: Average salary for certified IT workers by U.S. state

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July 25, 2019

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Salary Survey Extra is a series of periodic dispatches that give added insight into the findings of our most recent Salary Survey. These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

Hey, U.S. IT professionals! What state do you live in? And how does your salary stack up next to our averages?

There are IT jobs in every U.S. state. If you have the right "very particular set of skills" — our apologies to Liam Neeson — and probably especially if those skills are backed by a certification, then you're likely to find work just about wherever you look for it. Not only that, but many IT jobs are work-from-home gigs that don't require your presence at a physical office.

Given the manner in which IT employment has redrawn traditional workplace boundaries, there may not be as much to gain from a state-by-state comparison of IT salaries as there once was. Workers in general, and IT workers in particular, aren't as tied to a single physical location as used to be the case.

On the other hand, it's always interesting to see where, on average, the highest IT earners tend to be clustered. And in drawing that data out of our most recent annual Salary Survey, we also detected the possible presence of IT hotspots: states that produced the largest numbers of survey respondents.

As noted elsewhere in our survey findings, the average annual salary across all certified IT professionals in the United States last year was $107,250. So how does that look when you compare individual states?

Out of the more than 4,900 certified IT professionals to take the survey at the end of last year, 55 percent live mostly in 43 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. (We got dramatically limited participation from seven states: Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.)

In sketching the IT employment landscape of America, we've ranked every state that supplied at least 1 percent of our total U.S. survey population. The remaining states are given in a separate list, with the caution that smaller samples produce less reliable data. Call this divide our A-List, and our B-List.

With all that said, where in America did we end up in our search for the most robust average annual salary figures?

U.S. STATES BY AVERAGE ANNUAL SALARY (A-List)

Note: Total of surveyed individuals from each of these states is equal to or greater than 1 percent of the total number of U.S. survey respondents.

Rank	State	Average Annual Salary	Percentage of All U.S. Survey Respondents Who Are from this State
1	Maryland	$132,920	4.8 percent
2	Massachusetts	$128,790	2.2 percent
3	Virginia	$124,970	6.4 percent
4	California	$122,020	9.4 percent
5	Kansas	$112,970	1.1 percent
6	Minnesota	$112,430	1.2 percent
7	Illinois	$112,020	4 percent
8	New Jersey	$111,780	2.8 percent
9	Ohio	$109,690	3.6 percent
10	Colorado	$109,240	3.3 percent
11	New York	$108,280	3.9 percent
12	Arizona	$107,320	2.9 percent
13	Georgia	$106,460	2.9 percent
14	Washington	$105,280	2.2 percent
15	Missouri	$105,000	2.5 percent
16	Alabama	$105,000	2 percent
17	Oklahoma	$104,850	1.2 percent
18	North Carolina	$104,570	3.8 percent
19	Pennsylvania	$104,080	3.2 percent
20	Texas	$103,760	8.8 percent
21	Florida	$98,550	6.2 percent
22	Tennessee	$94,900	1.8 percent
23	Michigan	$94,350	1.7 percent
24	South Carolina	$88,240	1.9 percent
25	Utah	$82,960	1.3 percent
26	Indiana	$80,240	2.2 percent
27	Idaho	$60,640	1.2 percent

2019 Salary Data

U.S. STATES BY AVERAGE ANNUAL SALARY (B-List)

Note: Total of surveyed individuals from each of these states is less than 1 percent of the total number of U.S. survey respondents.

Rank	State	Average Annual Salary	Percentage of All U.S. Survey Respondents Who Are from this State
1	Connecticut	$123,180	0.8 percent
2	New Hampshire	$121,890	0.7 percent
3	Hawaii	$121,000	0.3 percent
4	Washington, D.C.	$115,100	0.8 percent
5	Rhode Island	$109,110	0.5 percent
6	Nebraska	$107,500	0.8 percent
7	Iowa	$104,620	0.7 percent
8	Delaware	$103,250	0.3 percent
9	Alaska	$102,190	0.3 percent
10	Wisconsin	$95,420	0.6 percent
11	Oregon	$86,350	0.8 percent
12	Arkansas	$84,380	0.7 percent
13	Kentucky	$82,390	0.8 percent
14	New Mexico	$81,430	0.5 percent
15	Nevada	$80,080	0.8 percent
16	Louisiana	$62,810	0.8 percent
17	Mississippi	$48,040	0.3 percent

2019 Salary Data

About the Author

Certification Magazine was launched in 1999 and remained in print until mid-2008. Publication was restarted on a quarterly basis in February 2014. Subscribe to CertMag here.

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