Salary Survey Extra: Average salary for certified IT workers by U.S. state
Posted on
July 25, 2019
by

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 These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.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.

Posted to topic:
Jobs and Salary

Important Update: We have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

CompTIA IT Project Management - Project+ - Advance Your IT Career by adding IT Project Manager to your resume - Learn More