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

Posted on

November 2, 2023

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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 These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.‍

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How much money do certified IT professionals earn in different U.S. states?

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 the global COVID-19 pandemic has recently 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. Certainly that's the case across the current pandemic-scrambled employment landscape.

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 Salary Survey participants who are certified IT professionals and live in the United States last year was $107,880. So how does that look when you compare individual states?

Out of the more nearly 8,000 certified IT professionals to take the survey at the end of last year, 57.6 percent live mostly in 44 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. (We got dramatically limited participation from six states — New Hampshire, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — and the territories of American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and Guam.)

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?‍

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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. Respondents Who Are from this State
1	Washington	$149,180	2.8 percent
2	Maryland	$141,470	3.6 percent
3	New Jersey	$131,960	1.3 percent
4	Virginia	$129,740	5.8 percent
5	Minnesota	$123,040	1.1 percent
6	Ohio	$121,660	2.7 percent
7 (Tie)	Texas	$120,940	6.4 percent
7 (Tie)	North Carolina	$120,940	2.5 percent
9	Massachusetts	$118,500	1.8 percent
10	Michigan	$116,750	1.5 percent
11	Pennsylvania	$115,420	2.1 percent
12	Florida	$108,850	6.6 percent
13	Colorado	$108,660	4.7 percent
14	Tennessee	$106,170	1.2 percent
15	Oklahoma	$105,820	1.1 percent
16	Illinois	$103,900	2.9 percent
17	California	$103,700	9.7 percent
18	Georgia	$102,750	2.5 percent
19	Iowa	$102,710	1 percent
20	Indiana	$101,400	1.1 percent
21	Connecticut	$101,010	1.8 percent
22	New York	$99,870	5.4 percent
23	Delaware	$86,500	1.6 percent
24	District of Columbia	$85,630	6.4 percent
25	Alabama	$83,340	3.2 percent
26	Arkansas	$82,530	1.3 percent
27	Arizona	$75,990	3.9 percent
28	Alaska	$68,270	1.9 percent

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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. Respondents Who Are from this State
1	South Carolina	$130,100	0.9 percent
2	Utah	$124,240	0.9 percent
3	Wisconsin	$120,560	0.8 percent
4	New Mexico	$119,200	0.3 percent
5	Kentucky	$114,920	0.4 percent
6	Maine	$113,540	0.3 percent
7	Oregon	$110,090	0.7 percent
8	West Virginia	$105,080	0.3 percent
9	Nevada	$104,350	0.7 percent
10	Missouri	$103,750	0.6 percent
11	Hawaii	$103,230	0.8 percent
12	Mississippi	$97,400	0.3 percent
13	Louisiana	$96,960	0.6 percent
14	Kansas	$96,830	0.7 percent
15	Nebraska	$92,880	0.9 percent
16	Idaho	$92,460	0.4 percent
17	Rhode Island	$85,570	0.3 percent

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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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