Published by Salary by Metro · Updated October 12, 2026
Median pay and mean pay
The median is the middle wage. The mean is the average, and high wages can pull it up.
BLS publishes both a median and a mean for most occupations. The median is the 50th percentile: half of workers earn less, half earn more. The mean is the arithmetic average, total wages divided by the number of workers in the estimate. One very high wage moves the mean. It does not move the median unless it crosses the middle of the line.
Across all occupations in May 2025, the national median annual wage is $50,980 and the mean is $69,770. The gap is about $18,790. The 90th percentile is $128,560, far enough above the middle that the average sits well above the median. That pattern is the usual one in wage data. A smaller number of high wages lifts the mean.
The gap is not the same size in every occupation
Registered nurses are a large, licensed occupation with a national median of $97,550 and a mean of $101,420. The average is higher than the middle, but not by much. Software developers have a national median of $135,980 and a mean of $148,100. The average is pulled harder. Fast food and counter workers, with a national median of $31,200, sit at the other end of the scale. The shape of the gap is part of the description of the occupation.
When a page on this site has both figures, it states the mean next to the median. If the mean is above the median, the high end of the published distribution is doing the usual work of lifting the average. If the mean is below the median, the lower half is heavier. Neither sentence says anything about a particular employer.
Which one to quote
Quote the median when you want the center of the distribution. Quote the mean when you want the average payroll cost of the occupation, which is what a total-wage calculation answers. Quoting the mean as if it were a typical worker's wage overstates the middle whenever the mean sits above the median, which is the national pattern in this release.
Both numbers can be unpublished even when employment is published. In that case the page does not invent an average from the national mean or from hourly pay. The cell stays blank and is marked not available.