Best States for Financial Managers: New York, California, and Other Top-Paying Markets Ranked

Across the top 10 LaborCove states for financial managers, no single metric dominates the rankings. New York leads the list with the highest Geography Score and the highest median salary among these states, while California’s slightly lower salary is paired with the largest employment count. Several states have median salaries well above the national median but smaller employment counts, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey. Others, like Florida and Illinois, sit closer to the national median pay level while posting mid-range employment totals. For financial managers comparing states, the data shows that higher salaries, larger employment counts, and higher Geography Scores do not always align in the same locations. Nationally, the occupation’s projected employment growth of 14.8% provides broad context for financial managers considering moves between states, but LaborCove’s evidence here focuses on how the top-ranked states currently compare on pay, employment, and Geography Score rather than on future state-level growth.

LaborCove’s national data for financial managers provides an anchor for comparing state results. Nationally, the median annual salary for financial managers is $166,570, with employment of 841,710. The national projected employment growth rate for this occupation is 14.8%, which describes how employment is expected to change across the United States as a whole. When state data is available, comparing state median salaries with the national median helps show where pay is higher or lower than the national benchmark. Comparing state employment counts with the national total indicates how large each state’s financial manager workforce is relative to the entire U.S. occupation, though it does not describe the number of job openings. The top 10 LaborCove-ranked states all have Geography Scores above 44, indicating that within the LaborCove scoring system they stand out relative to other states in the dataset, but those scores do not translate directly into hiring probabilities for individual job seekers.

New York holds the #1 LaborCove rank for financial managers, with a Geography Score of 82.35. California ranks #2, with a Geography Score of 74.86. New York’s median annual salary for financial managers is $219,880, while California’s median salary is $180,770. Both exceed the national median salary of $166,570, and New York’s median is higher than California’s by the raw figures. On employment, California has 93,310 financial manager jobs, compared with 80,810 in New York. Both states account for large financial manager workforces relative to the other states in the top 10, and California’s employment count is the largest value identified in the geographic evidence. These contrasts show that New York’s top rank aligns with both the highest Geography Score and a higher median salary than California, while California pairs a slightly lower Geography Score and median salary with the highest reported employment count.

Massachusetts and New Jersey both appear in the top five LaborCove states for financial managers and combine high median salaries with mid-sized employment counts. Massachusetts ranks #3 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 60.45 and a median annual salary of $206,760. New Jersey ranks #5 with a Geography Score of 58.75 and a median salary of $199,110. Both states have median salaries above the national median of $166,570. On employment, Massachusetts reports 26,150 financial manager jobs, while New Jersey reports 32,510. Both values are below California’s 93,310 and New York’s 80,810, but above the lower end of the top-10 employment range, such as Colorado’s 10,640 and Washington’s 12,930. These figures indicate that Massachusetts and New Jersey combine high compensation with employment counts in the middle of the top-10 distribution rather than at its extremes.

Three top-10 states—Texas, Illinois, and Florida—pair relatively large employment counts with median salaries that sit closer to the national benchmark than the very highest-paying states. Texas ranks #4 with a Geography Score of 59.79, a median salary of $164,860, and employment of 71,870 financial managers. Illinois ranks #6 with a Geography Score of 51.14, a median salary of $165,880, and employment of 52,720. Florida ranks #9 with a Geography Score of 44.98, a median salary of $153,280, and employment of 48,910. All three states have financial manager employment counts below California’s 93,310 and New York’s 80,810 but above those of states like Colorado (10,640) and Washington (12,930). In salary terms, Texas and Illinois have median pay slightly below the national median of $166,570, while Florida’s median salary is further below that national benchmark. These combinations illustrate that substantial employment counts for financial managers can coexist with median salaries near, slightly below, or below the national median, while still yielding top-10 Geography Scores in the LaborCove rankings.

Virginia, Colorado, and Washington round out the top 10, each with a Geography Score above 44 and smaller employment counts than the largest states in the list. Virginia ranks #7 with a Geography Score of 48.71, a median salary of $185,220, and employment of 20,850 financial managers. Colorado ranks #8 with a Geography Score of 45.92, a median salary of $182,690, and employment of 10,640. Washington ranks #10 with a Geography Score of 44.24, a median salary of $174,840, and employment of 12,930. All three states have median salaries above the national median of $166,570. Their employment counts are lower than those in California, New York, Texas, Illinois, and Florida, but still place them within the national top 10 states in LaborCove’s rankings for this occupation. For financial managers evaluating these states, the data shows that higher-than-national median pay can coincide with more modest employment totals while still translating into competitive Geography Scores in the LaborCove framework.

LaborCove’s rankings for financial managers (occupation 11-3031) are based on authoritative labor‑market data combined with the LaborCove Geography Score, which synthesizes multiple location-specific metrics into a single comparable value. For this article, we use national figures for median annual salary, employment, and projected national employment growth alongside state-level median salaries, employment counts, and Geography Scores for the top 10 ranked states. National projected employment growth (14.8%) is a U.S.-wide occupational projection and is not a forecast for any individual state. All salary figures reflect median annual pay, and all employment counts reflect the number of financial manager jobs in each geography at the time of the underlying OEWS observation (May 2025). Rankings and comparisons should be considered alongside individual career priorities such as role fit and personal circumstances, which fall outside the scope of this data-driven analysis.