Best States for Compliance Officers: California Leads, but Northeast States Pay More

Across the top 10 LaborCove states for compliance officers, no single metric—salary, employment, or Geography Score—dominates the rest. California leads the rankings overall and has the largest employment count among these states, yet Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut all have higher median salaries than California while ranking lower. Texas and Florida stand out for larger employment totals but offer lower median pay than the national median. Nationally, compliance officers have a median annual salary of $80,730 and national employment of 417,070, with a projected national employment growth rate of 3.0%. The top states in this ranking sit at different points relative to those national benchmarks, underscoring the trade‑offs between higher salaries, larger employment counts, and overall LaborCove Geography Scores. The sections below walk through those trade‑offs in more detail—starting with how the highest‑ranked geography compares to other top states, then looking at salary leaders, employment scale, and variations in Geography Scores within the top 10.

California holds the #1 spot in LaborCove’s state rankings for compliance officers, with a Geography Score of 82.92. It also has a median annual salary of $96,980 and an employment count of 49,880, which is the largest among the top 10 states. Massachusetts, ranked #2, trails California in the LaborCove Geography Score at 64.12 but has a higher median salary of $102,060. New Jersey, ranked #3 with a Geography Score of 61.05, also has a higher median salary than California at $100,000 and a smaller employment count of 13,310 compared with California’s 49,880. New York’s #4 ranking comes with a Geography Score of 59.62, a median salary of $90,080, and employment of 23,500. Compared with New York, California has a higher Geography Score, a higher median salary, and a larger employment count. Texas, ranked #5, has a Geography Score of 56.33, a median salary of $75,370, and employment of 42,900, giving it a smaller employment count and lower Geography Score than California.

The national median annual salary for compliance officers is $80,730. Within the top 10 states, several locations have higher median salaries than this national figure. California’s median salary of $96,980 is above the national median. Massachusetts, at $102,060, and New Jersey, at $100,000, both have higher median salaries than California. New York’s median salary of $90,080, Washington’s $88,790, Pennsylvania’s $85,580, Maryland’s $84,720, and Connecticut’s $91,810 are also above the national median. By contrast, Texas and Florida sit below the national median salary. Texas has a median salary of $75,370 and Florida has a median salary of $74,920, both trailing the $80,730 national benchmark. This places them in a different salary tier from the other eight top‑ranked states, which all exceed the national median. Connecticut presents an interesting comparison: it ranks #10 overall, with a Geography Score of 42.88, yet its median salary of $91,810 is higher than the national median and falls between New York’s $90,080 and California’s $96,980. This shows that a lower LaborCove rank does not automatically correspond to lower pay within the top group of states.

National employment for compliance officers stands at 417,070. Within the top 10 LaborCove states, California has the largest employment count at 49,880. Texas follows with 42,900, and Florida has 29,680, all smaller than the national employment total but representing the higher end of state‑level employment among this group. New York and Pennsylvania are mid‑range among the top 10 on employment, with 23,500 and 19,810 positions respectively. Massachusetts and New Jersey each have employment counts of 13,190 and 13,310, which are smaller than California’s 49,880 and Texas’s 42,900. Washington, Maryland, and Connecticut have the smallest employment counts in this top‑10 set, with 11,130, 10,100, and 3,610 respectively. These smaller counts contrast with California’s 49,880 and Florida’s 29,680 but still occur within states that score in LaborCove’s top 10 for this occupation.

LaborCove’s Geography Scores show a wide range even within the top 10. California’s score of 82.92 is the highest among these states. The next two states, Massachusetts and New Jersey, score 64.12 and 61.05 respectively, both lower than California’s score despite their higher median salaries. New York and Texas, ranked #4 and #5, have Geography Scores of 59.62 and 56.33, which are below the scores for Massachusetts and New Jersey. Pennsylvania, at #6, has a score of 51.15, while Washington and Maryland, ranked #7 and #8, have scores of 49.34 and 44.59. Florida’s score of 44.24 at #9 is slightly below Maryland’s. Connecticut rounds out the top 10 with a Geography Score of 42.88, which is lower than every other state listed in this ranking. Yet Connecticut’s median salary of $91,810 is higher than the national median and also higher than the salaries in Texas and Florida, underscoring that Geography Scores and salaries do not move in lockstep.

At the national level, compliance officers have employment of 417,070 and a projected national employment growth rate of 3.0%. This growth rate applies to the occupation nationally and is not broken out by state or metro in the supplied evidence, so it should be interpreted as broad national context rather than as a forecast for any specific state. Because national median salary is $80,730, all but two of the top 10 states—Texas at $75,370 and Florida at $74,920—have higher median salaries than the national benchmark. At the same time, some of those higher‑salary states, such as Connecticut with employment of 3,610, have smaller employment counts than larger markets like California and Texas. When using these rankings, it can be helpful to consider how each state’s median salary, employment count, and Geography Score align with your own priorities. LaborCove’s data highlights numeric differences between locations, but decisions about where to work or relocate will also depend on many personal and professional factors outside the scope of this dataset.

LaborCove builds these rankings from authoritative U.S. labor‑market data combined with its own Geography Score methodology. For compliance officers (occupation code 13-1041), national salary and employment figures, as well as the state‑level median salaries and employment counts used here, are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations with a reference period of May 2025. The ReportYear 2026 indicates the product year for this dataset, not the underlying observation date. National projected employment growth of 3.0% for compliance officers is a separate national‑level projection and is not an OEWS observation. No state‑level or metro‑level projected growth rates are supplied in this evidence, so this article discusses growth only at the national level. LaborCove’s Geography Scores summarize how each state compares on the metrics available to LaborCove. The exact weighting of components within the score is proprietary and not detailed in this article, so we do not attribute a state’s rank to any single factor. Instead, we interpret the scores alongside median salary and employment counts. These rankings are one input to career and relocation decisions and should be considered together with personal circumstances and preferences that fall outside the scope of the data.