Best States for Compensation, Benefits, and Job Analysis Specialists: California Leads, High Pay Extends Beyond the Coasts

Across states, LaborCove’s data shows that no single metric—salary, employment, or Geography Score—fully determines how a state ranks for compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists. Some states, like California, combine a relatively high median salary with the largest reported employment count in the dataset. Others, like Delaware, appear in the top ten on the strength of a very high median salary despite a much smaller reported employment count. The national context matters as well. Nationally, compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists have a median annual salary of $78,210 and total employment of 112,380. National projected employment growth is 5.3%, which provides an overall backdrop for the occupation but does not indicate how individual states or metros might change. Within the top ten states, median salaries range from close to the national level to substantially above it. Geography Scores also vary, indicating that LaborCove’s rankings reflect more than salary alone. For example, Massachusetts has the highest median salary among the top ten but does not hold the top rank, while California leads the rankings with a lower median salary than Massachusetts. These kinds of contrasts highlight why it is useful to look at multiple metrics together rather than focusing on a single figure when evaluating locations.

Nationally, compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists have a median annual salary of $78,210. Each of LaborCove’s top ten states has a higher median salary than this national figure. Among the ranked states, Massachusetts reports the highest median salary at $95,890, followed by Delaware at $99,560 and Colorado at $92,560. California’s median salary of $91,410 is also well above the national median, as are the median salaries in Washington ($86,630), New Jersey ($85,040), New York ($83,200), and Virginia ($81,190). Minnesota’s supplied median salary of $78,770 is only modestly above the national median, while Texas, at $74,800, is the only top-ten state with a median salary below the national level. These differences show that top-ten rankings do not automatically mean uniformly high pay relative to the national benchmark. Some states, such as Massachusetts and Delaware, sit well above the national median, while others in the same top-ten cohort, such as Texas and Minnesota, are much closer to— and in Texas’s case below— the national figure.

California holds the #1 LaborCove ranking for compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists, with a Geography Score of 81.94. Its median annual salary of $91,410 is higher than the national median of $78,210, and the state’s reported employment count of 13,430 is the largest supplied employment figure in the dataset. New York, ranked #2, has a Geography Score of 70.87, a median salary of $83,200, and a reported employment count of 11,470. Both California and New York combine median salaries above the national median with relatively high employment counts. California’s Geography Score is higher than New York’s, and its supplied employment count exceeds New York’s as well. Massachusetts, ranked #3 with a Geography Score of 61.36, has a median salary of $95,890, which is higher than California’s $91,410. However, Massachusetts has a smaller reported employment count of 3,390 compared with California’s 13,430 and New York’s 11,470. The fact that Massachusetts has the highest median salary among these three but a lower Geography Score illustrates that LaborCove’s rankings reflect more than salary alone.

Several top-ten states stand out for particularly high median salaries relative to both the national level and other ranked states. Delaware, ranked #9 with a Geography Score of 49.50, reports a median salary of $99,560. This is higher than the median salaries in California ($91,410), New York ($83,200), and Massachusetts ($95,890). Colorado, ranked #4, also has a high median salary of $92,560. Delaware’s reported employment count of 290 is much smaller than the counts supplied for California (13,430), New York (11,470), Massachusetts (3,390), Washington (3,350), New Jersey (3,150), and Virginia (3,500). Colorado’s reported employment count of 1,980 is smaller than the employment figures in California and New York but larger than Delaware’s. These comparisons underscore that some states appear in the top ten primarily in the context of very high salary levels rather than large employment counts. Delaware, in particular, combines the highest reported median salary among the top ten with one of the smallest supplied employment counts.

Washington, New Jersey, and Virginia occupy the middle to lower end of the top-ten ranking but still offer median salaries above the national level. Washington, ranked #5 with a Geography Score of 53.34, has a median salary of $86,630 and a reported employment count of 3,350. New Jersey, ranked #8 with a Geography Score of 52.14, reports a median salary of $85,040 and employment of 3,150. Virginia, ranked #10 with a Geography Score of 48.53, has a median salary of $81,190 and a reported employment count of 3,500. Compared with California and New York, these three states have lower reported employment counts. California’s 13,430 jobs and New York’s 11,470 jobs both exceed the employment figures in Washington, New Jersey, and Virginia. However, Washington’s and New Jersey’s median salaries remain notably higher than the national median of $78,210, and Virginia’s median salary also sits above the national level. The Geography Scores for Washington, New Jersey, and Virginia are lower than those of the top four states, but they remain within a relatively narrow band just below Colorado. This suggests that within the top ten, mid-ranked states can pair solid salary levels with moderate employment counts and still place well in LaborCove’s scoring framework.

Texas and Minnesota show how a state can reach the top ten in LaborCove’s ranking even when its median salary is close to the national median. Texas, ranked #6 with a Geography Score of 52.66, has a median salary of $74,800, which is below the national median of $78,210. Minnesota, ranked #7 with a Geography Score of 52.65, reports a median salary of $78,770, which is only slightly above the national median. For both Texas and Minnesota, employment counts are not supplied in this dataset. That means their employment scale cannot be directly compared with the other top-ten states where employment data is available. What can be said from the data is that each state attains a Geography Score slightly above those of New Jersey (52.14) and just below Colorado (54.18), even though their median salaries are below or only marginally above the national benchmark. Taken together, these two states illustrate that LaborCove’s Geography Score can place a state within the top ten even when its median pay does not stand out to the same extent as in high-salary states like Delaware, Massachusetts, or California. For users comparing locations, this highlights the value of examining both salary and Geography Score rather than relying on one metric alone.

LaborCove builds its rankings using structured labor-market data combined with the proprietary LaborCove Geography Score. For this article, we analyze compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists (occupation code 13-1141) across states. Median annual salary and employment figures are drawn from Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations referring to May 2025. National projected employment growth reflects a separate national-level occupational projection, not an OEWS observation. All growth figures discussed here apply only at the national level; state and metro growth projections are not supplied in this dataset. The LaborCove Geography Score aggregates multiple factors into a single value for each geography. The specific components and their weights are not disclosed, so this article treats the Geography Score as a summary indicator rather than attributing it to any one metric such as salary or employment. Rankings should be considered alongside individual career priorities, including preferred industries, specific employers, and personal circumstances that are outside the scope of the available data.