Salary Survey Extra: Average salary for certified IT workers by U.S. state
Posted on
October 21, 2021
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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 These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

How much do certified IT professionals earn in the U.S. state where you live?

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 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 $120,270. So how does that look when you compare individual states?

Out of the more than 4,000 certified IT professionals to take the survey at the end of last year, 53 percent live mostly in 43 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. (We got dramatically limited participation from eight states — Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming — and the territory of Puerto Rico.)

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. Respondents Who Are from this State
1 New York $141,000 3.8 percent
2 Maryland $137,350 4.6 percent
3 Washington $136,080 2.4 percent
4 Virginia $134,090 7.2 percent
5 California $132,960 9.5 percent
6 Arizona $128,880 2.4 percent
7 Colorado $127,320 3.9 percent
8 Massachusetts $125,990 2.2 percent
9 Texas $124,040 8.5 percent
10 Utah $121,490 1.6 percent
11 Illinois $121,090 3.7 percent
12 North Carolina $118,590 3.8 percent
13 Missouri $117,630 1.6 percent
14 Florida $115,650 6.1 percent
15 Iowa $115,360 1.1 percent
16 Tennessee $114,640 1.9 percent
17 South Carolina $114,170 1 percent
18 Alabama $113,020 2.5 percent
19 Michigan $111,650 1.8 percent
20 Minnesota $111,140 1.7 percent
21 Ohio $111,010 3.9 percent
22 New Jersey $108,930 3.3 percent
23 Oklahoma $107,410 1.1 percent
24 Georgia $107,080 4.5 percent
25 Pennsylvania $106,430 4.3 percent
26 Indiana $96,820 1.6 percent

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 Connecticut $129,166 0.3 percent
2 Alaska $120,750 0.4 percent
3 Kansas $117,660 0.6 percent
4 Nebraska $113,470 0.7 percent
5 Oregon $113,040 0.6 percent
6 Wisconsin $112,750 0.8 percent
7 Nevada $109,960 0.7 percent
8 Maine $108,440 0.7 percent
9 New Mexico $106,250 0.5 percent
10 Washington, D.C. $106,130 0.8 percent
11 Idaho $96,750 0.4 percent
12 Rhode Island $91,000 0.4 percent
13 Mississippi $82,500 0.4 percent
14 Kentucky $81,360 0.8 percent
15 Arkansas $75,630 0.3 percent
16 Louisiana $72,190 0.3 percent
17 West Virginia $56,250 0.4 percent

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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