Best States for Facilities Managers: California Tops List as New York and Washington Pay More

Among the 50 states included in LaborCove’s facilities manager dataset, the top 10 Geography Score results show several distinct patterns. California leads the ranking, while New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and New Jersey round out the top five, each combining six‑figure median salaries with varying employment counts and scores. Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Delaware, and Virginia complete the top 10 with different trade‑offs between pay, scale, and overall scores. Nationally, facilities managers have a median annual salary of $106,660 and a projected employment growth rate of 3.8%. Compared with that national benchmark, several of the top‑ranked states show higher median salaries, while others cluster close to the national figure. Employment counts vary more widely, from hundreds of positions in some states to more than twenty thousand in California. Because LaborCove’s Geography Score blends multiple factors, high pay alone does not guarantee a top rank. New York and Washington report higher median salaries than California, but California still holds the #1 Geography Score and the largest supplied employment count. This highlights how our state rankings reflect a combination of metrics rather than a single dimension like salary.

At the national level, facilities managers have a median annual salary of $106,660. This is the benchmark LaborCove uses when comparing state pay levels in this article. National employment for facilities managers stands at 156,180. This employment count reflects the number of workers in the occupation nationally, not job openings or employers. LaborCove’s evidence also includes a national projected employment growth rate of 3.8% for facilities managers. This projection applies to the occupation across the entire country and is not a state or metro forecast. It provides broad context for the occupation’s outlook while the rest of this article focuses on state-level differences in pay, employment, and Geography Scores.

California holds the #1 position in LaborCove’s state rankings for facilities managers, with a Geography Score of 72.89. This is the highest Geography Score among the 10 states listed in the supplied results. California’s median annual salary for facilities managers is $118,620, which is higher than the national median of $106,660. California also has an employment count of 20,550 facilities managers, the largest employment figure reported among the top 10 states. The combination of a Geography Score of 72.89, a median salary above the national benchmark, and the largest reported employment count helps explain why California sits at the top of LaborCove’s state list for this occupation.

Several states in the top 10 list report median salaries above both California and the national benchmark, while ranking below California in LaborCove’s Geography Score. This illustrates that a higher salary does not automatically translate into a higher overall ranking. New York, ranked #2, has a median salary of $131,350 for facilities managers, which is higher than both California’s $118,620 and the national median of $106,660. New York’s employment count is 9,580, and its LaborCove Geography Score is 64.34, which is lower than California’s 72.89. Washington, ranked #3, has the highest median salary among the top 10 states listed, at $139,990. This salary is higher than both California’s $118,620 and the national median of $106,660. Washington’s employment count is 2,790, and its Geography Score of 58.65 is lower than the scores for both California and New York. Massachusetts and New Jersey, ranked #4 and #5 respectively, also show six-figure median salaries. Massachusetts reports a median salary of $124,100 and New Jersey reports $124,110, and both values are higher than the national median of $106,660. Their Geography Scores, 54.26 for Massachusetts and 52.42 for New Jersey, are lower than the scores for California, New York, and Washington in the current top 10 list.

Among the top 10 states, some stand out for their larger employment counts for facilities managers. These employment figures quantify how many workers hold this occupation in each state within the supplied data. California has 20,550 employed facilities managers, which is the largest employment count reported among the 10 states listed. Texas, ranked #6, has an employment count of 13,140, which is smaller than California’s but larger than the employment counts reported for New York, Washington, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Delaware, and Virginia. New York, ranked #2, reports 9,580 employed facilities managers, while Illinois, ranked #8, reports 9,180. Both states have larger employment counts than Washington (2,790), Massachusetts (6,070), New Jersey (5,690), Colorado (2,150), Delaware (240), and Virginia (2,950) within the supplied top 10 set. These differences show that the LaborCove rankings reflect more than just the scale of employment in a state.

The remaining states in the top 10—Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Delaware, and Virginia—illustrate different combinations of Geography Scores, salaries, and employment counts. Texas, ranked #6 with a Geography Score of 45.89, reports a median salary of $99,430 for facilities managers, which is below the national median of $106,660. Its employment count of 13,140 is the second-largest among the listed states. Colorado, ranked #7 with a Geography Score of 45.67, has a median salary of $122,510, which is higher than the national median, and an employment count of 2,150. Illinois, ranked #8, has a Geography Score of 42.43. Its median salary of $106,980 is slightly higher than the national median of $106,660, and its employment count is 9,180. Delaware, ranked #9, has the smallest employment count in the top 10 at 240, but a relatively high median salary of $129,260, which is higher than the national median. Virginia, ranked #10 with a Geography Score of 41.43, reports a median salary of $116,540, which is also higher than the national median, and an employment count of 2,950. Taken together, these results show that within LaborCove’s top 10 states for facilities managers, higher scores, salaries, and employment counts do not always align. Facilities managers comparing locations can see clear numerical differences among these states but should weigh those figures against their own priorities and constraints.

LaborCove rankings for facilities managers are based on structured labor‑market data and LaborCove’s proprietary Geography Score. For this article, we used national and state-level data for occupation 11-3013, including median annual salary, employment counts, and LaborCove Geography Scores. Occupational pay and employment figures reflect Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations for May 2025. The report year 2026 refers to LaborCove’s product and reporting cycle, not the underlying OEWS observation date. National projected employment growth of 3.8% is a separate occupational projection and applies to facilities managers nationally, not to any specific state or metro area. Geography Scores are LaborCove’s synthesized view of how each state performs for a given occupation based on the metrics available to our platform. The score values and ranks shown here are taken directly from our structured dataset. Because individual circumstances vary, these rankings should be considered alongside personal factors such as preferred industries, commuting range, and non-work priorities rather than as prescriptive relocation advice.