Best States for General and Operations Managers in 2026

Across the top 10 states, the data shows that both very high salaries and very large employment counts can appear in the rankings, but they do not always coincide in a single state. Only some of the top-ranked states exceed the national median salary, and only one of them has an employment count above 400,000. Because all listed states share the same supplied 4.4% growth rate, the key differences in the CareerGPS Pro rankings among these 10 states come from the way salary, employment, and Geography Scores line up in the 2026 snapshot rather than from differences in the growth metric itself.

For general and operations managers, the national median annual salary in 2026 is $105,770. Among the 10 highest-ranked states, California ($124,390), New Jersey ($173,690), New York ($130,860), Massachusetts ($127,220), Washington ($133,750), Colorado ($131,840), Virginia ($122,080), and Maryland ($117,930) all have median salaries above the national figure. Texas, at $103,230, and Florida, at $101,580, have median salaries below the national median even though they appear in the top 10. On employment, the national count is 3,503,020 general and operations manager jobs. Within the top 10 states, Texas has the largest employment count at 431,310, while California’s 300,840 jobs represent the second-largest employment level in this group. Florida (236,290) and New York (206,740) also have six-figure employment levels. By contrast, Washington (50,630) and New Jersey (53,000) have smaller employment counts than the larger states in the top 10. These differences highlight that the top CareerGPS Pro state rankings include both high-salary states and high-employment states, and that some states combine both higher-than-national salaries and large employment levels while others stand out mainly on one of those measures.

New Jersey has the highest median salary among the 10 listed states at $173,690, which is well above the national median of $105,770. Washington’s median salary of $133,750, Colorado’s $131,840, and New York’s $130,860 are also notably above the national figure. California’s median salary of $124,390 is higher than the national benchmark and above the salaries in Texas and Florida, both of which are below the national level. Virginia at $122,080, Massachusetts at $127,220, and Maryland at $117,930 also sit above the national median salary. The fact that several states with median salaries above $130,000—such as New Jersey, Washington, Colorado, and New York—do not all rank ahead of California in the Geography Scores indicates that high salary alone does not determine the overall state ranking in this dataset.

California ranks #1 in the CareerGPS Pro state list for general and operations managers with a Geography Score of 60.38 and employment of 300,840. Texas ranks #2 with a Geography Score of 58.92 and the largest employment count among the top 10 states at 431,310. Compared with the national median salary of $105,770, California’s $124,390 median salary sits above the national figure, while Texas’s $103,230 is below it. Despite this salary difference, both California and Texas occupy the top two Geography Score positions. Florida and New York also pair higher employment counts with Geographic Rankings in the top 10. New York has 206,740 jobs with a median salary of $130,860, and Florida has 236,290 jobs with a median salary of $101,580, which is below the national median. This shows that top-ranked states can have a range of salary levels while still featuring relatively large employment counts within this group.

Several states in the top 10 offer median salaries that are above the national median while having smaller employment counts than the largest states in the group. New Jersey has a median salary of $173,690 with 53,000 jobs; Washington has $133,750 with 50,630 jobs; and Colorado has $131,840 with 41,870 jobs. Massachusetts and Maryland also fall into the category of states with employment below 100,000 in this dataset but salaries above the national median. Massachusetts reports a median salary of $127,220 with 95,880 jobs, and Maryland has $117,930 with 96,740 jobs. These combinations—higher-than-national salaries paired with employment counts below the largest states—illustrate that not all top-ranked states are defined by scale alone. In this data, smaller employment totals can still coincide with very strong median pay levels for general and operations managers.

Among the 10 states listed, California has the highest CareerGPS Geography Score at 60.38, followed by Texas at 58.92 and New Jersey at 58.36. New York is next at 55.41, while Massachusetts rounds out the top five with a Geography Score of 46.17. Washington (43.71), Colorado (42.41), Virginia (42.19), Florida (41.00), and Maryland (40.64) complete the top 10, with scores that are lower than California’s score of 60.38 but still high enough to place them in this leading group. Because the supplied growth rate is 4.4% for all 10 states, the variation in Geography Scores across this list reflects differences in how CareerGPS Pro’s scoring methodology evaluates the available metrics for each state. Users can interpret these rankings by comparing Geography Scores in combination with pay levels and employment counts for general and operations managers in 2026.

CareerGPS Pro uses authoritative labor-market data and a proprietary CareerGPS Geography Score to compare locations for a specific occupation. For this article, we focus on the national benchmarks for general and operations managers in 2026 and the 10 states with the highest CareerGPS Geography Scores. The Geography Score reflects CareerGPS Pro’s integrated view of the available metrics for an occupation in a given state. In this dataset, those metrics include median annual salary, employment counts, and a supplied growth rate of 4.4% for all listed top states. The exact internal weighting of these metrics in the Geography Score is not provided here. Users should interpret these rankings as one input into their planning. Individual priorities—such as preferred industries, personal circumstances, or other local conditions—may lead to different conclusions than the state order implied by the Geography Scores alone.