Salary Survey Extra: What's the average IT salary in your (U.S.) state?
Posted on
April 20, 2017
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 These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

How much do certified IT professional make in each U.S. state?

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 $108,790. So how does that look when you compare individuals states?

Out of the more than 6,100 certified IT professionals to take the survey at the end of last year, 66 percent live in 45 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. (We got no responses at all from two states, Wyoming and North Dakota, and dramatically limited participation from three others: Mississippi, Montana and Vermont.)

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 individual 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 Virginia $132,180 9.3 percent
2 Maryland $130,570 6.1 percent
3 Washington $129,470 2.4 percent
4 New Jersey $125,780 3.2 percent
5 Georgia $125,670 3.5 percent
6 California $125,580 7.6 percent
7 Massachusetts $119,070 3 percent
8 New York $117,660 3.8 percent
9 Arizona $114,310 2.6 percent
10 Kansas $113,680 1.2 percent
11 North Carolina $111,400 2.2 percent
12 Connecticut $110,640 1 percent
13 Pennsylvania $109,200 3 percent
14 Alabama $109,150 1.2 percent
15 Minnesota $109,100 1.8 percent
16 Colorado $108,880 4.1 percent
17 Texas $108,130 8.7 percent
18 Florida $105,330 6.6 percent
19 Illinois $105,050 3.5 percent
20 Michigan $102,540 2 percent
21 Ohio $101,770 3 percent
22 Missouri $99,500 2.1 percent
23 Wisconsin $98,900 1.1 percent
24 Tennessee $93,460 1.9 percent
25 Utah $90,620 2 percent
26 Kentucky $87,230 1.1 percent
27 Indiana $85,180 2 percent

2016 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 Hawaii $114,380 0.6 percent
2 West Virginia $114,210 0.5 percent
3 Oregon $114,190 0.9 percent
4 New Hampshire $113,170 0.4 percent
5 Nebraska $108,070 0.5 percent
6 Nevada $106,390 0.6 percent
7 Oklahoma $106,170 0.2 percent
8 South Carolina $102,960 0.9 percent
9 Washington, D.C. $101,610 0.6 percent
10 Delaware $100,250 0.2 percent
11 Arizona $97,360 0.5 percent
12 Rhode Island $95,880 0.6 percent
13 Arkansas $94,000 0.2 percent
14 Iowa $91,830 0.4 percent
15 New Mexico $86,380 0.6 percent
16 Maine $82,100 0.4 percent
17 South Dakota $74,170 0.2 percent
18 Louisiana $65,750 0.6 percent
19 Idaho $64,100 0.4 percent

2016 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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