Best States for Auto Damage Insurance Appraisers: New Jersey Tops a High-Pay Top 10

Across the available data, the national picture for insurance appraisers, auto damage combines a mid‑five‑figure employment base with a national median salary in the upper-$70,000s. National projected employment growth for this occupation is negative, indicating a projected decline at the national level, but that projection does not specify how individual states or metros might change. Within that context, LaborCove’s state rankings reveal that the best states blend different strengths. Some stand out for high median salaries, others for higher reported employment within the top 10, and some for their position in LaborCove’s Geography Score even when their pay is close to the national figure. The top 10 states in this list all rank above other available geographies in LaborCove’s scoring system, but they are not interchangeable. For example, several states with six-figure‑adjacent salaries do not occupy the very top rank, and the state with the largest reported employment in this group is not the highest-ranked state overall. These differences show why it is useful to consider salary, employment counts, and Geography Scores together rather than focusing on a single metric.

At the national level, insurance appraisers, auto damage have a median annual salary of $78,240. National employment stands at 11,560. The national projected employment growth rate for this occupation is -8.2%. This figure describes a national‑level projection for 13-1032 as a whole and does not provide any state or metro growth rates. These national benchmarks offer context for interpreting state results. In the top 10 states, every supplied median salary is above the national median, but the Geography Score ordering still differs from a simple ranking by pay alone.

New Jersey ranks #1 in LaborCove’s state results with a median salary of $94,280, which is higher than the national median of $78,240. Texas, which ranks #2, has a median salary of $79,200, also above the national figure but below New Jersey’s median. Kentucky ranks #3 with a median salary of $97,950. This is higher than New Jersey’s median salary even though Kentucky appears one position lower in the Geography Score ranking. Pennsylvania, at rank #4, has a median salary of $95,720, which is higher than New Jersey’s $94,280 and higher than the national median. Massachusetts, ranked #5, shows a median salary of $79,930, which is above both the national median and Texas’s $79,200. Within the rest of the top 10, California (rank #6) has a median salary of $78,930, which is slightly above the national median. Maryland at rank #7 shows a median salary of $82,870, Virginia at rank #8 and Georgia at rank #9 each show $81,470, and New York at rank #10 has a median salary of $81,150. All of these are above the national median salary as well. These comparisons illustrate that a state’s position in LaborCove’s ranking is not the same as its position in a simple pay ranking, even though every supplied top‑10 state salary exceeds the national median.

Employment data are supplied for some, but not all, of the top 10 states. Among those with reported values, Texas at rank #2 has an employment count of 910, which is the highest figure supplied within this group. Massachusetts at rank #5 has an employment count of 680, which is smaller than Texas’s 910. California at rank #6 has an employment count of 550, which is smaller than Massachusetts’s 680. Pennsylvania at rank #4 has an employment count of 310, which is smaller than California’s 550. New York at rank #10 has an employment count of 360, which is greater than Pennsylvania’s 310 but smaller than California’s 550. These employment counts describe how many jobs are captured in the underlying data for these states. They should not be interpreted as job openings, employer counts, or forecasts, but they do show that some top‑ranked states have a larger reported job base in this occupation than others within the same group. The fact that Texas has the largest supplied employment count in the top 10 while ranking #2 overall, and that New Jersey ranks #1 without a reported employment value, again illustrates that LaborCove’s Geography Score is not a simple function of any single metric.

LaborCove’s Geography Score provides a unified rank for each state. New Jersey holds the #1 rank with a Geography Score of 66.65. Texas follows closely at #2 with a Geography Score of 66.58, which is slightly lower than New Jersey’s score. Kentucky ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 61.80, which is lower than Texas’s 66.58. Pennsylvania is ranked #4 with a Geography Score of 61.39, slightly below Kentucky’s 61.80. Massachusetts is #5 with a Geography Score of 61.30, which is slightly below Pennsylvania’s 61.39. California appears at #6 with a Geography Score of 56.89, lower than Massachusetts’s 61.30. Maryland at rank #7 has a Geography Score of 54.92, which is lower than California’s 56.89. Virginia, ranked #8, has a Geography Score of 52.62, which is lower than Maryland’s 54.92. Georgia at #9 has a Geography Score of 51.63, below Virginia’s 52.62, and New York rounds out the top 10 with a Geography Score of 51.39, slightly lower than Georgia’s 51.63. These scores confirm the rank order already supplied but also show that the spacing between states is modest near the top and widens somewhat further down the list. Even so, the differences between adjacent ranks are relatively small in score terms.

Looking across all three metrics, several patterns stand out. Texas has the highest supplied employment count in the top 10 but ranks #2 rather than #1, and its median salary is lower than the medians in New Jersey, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Kentucky and Pennsylvania both have higher median salaries than New Jersey while ranking below it, reinforcing that the Geography Score weights more than salary alone. Similarly, states such as Massachusetts and New York have median salaries above the national figure but appear at ranks #5 and #10 respectively. California’s salary is close to the national median while its Geography Score rank is #6, and its employment count is between those of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. For someone comparing locations, this means that two states can both sit in the top 10 but offer different combinations of pay levels, reported employment counts, and Geography Scores. LaborCove’s rankings summarize these quantitative differences, while the best choice among them depends on how you personally weigh income levels against other job‑market factors that are not measured here.

LaborCove identifies the best states for insurance appraisers, auto damage by applying its Geography Score methodology to authoritative labor‑market data. For each state where data are available, LaborCove incorporates the median annual salary, employment levels when supplied, and other underlying inputs into a single LaborCove Geography Score and rank. The result is a comparative view of how states perform on a combined set of metrics rather than on pay or employment alone. All national salary, employment, and projected growth figures refer to the insurance appraisers, auto damage occupation (13-1032) at the national level. The national median annual salary is $78,240 and national employment is 11,560. The supplied national projected employment growth rate is -8.2%, which is a national occupational projection only and not a state or metro forecast. Geographic salary, employment, rank, and Geography Score values are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data with a reference period of May 2025, as processed in LaborCove’s 2026 product year. Projected employment growth is drawn from separate national projection data, not from OEWS. Because LaborCove’s Geography Score combines multiple inputs, a state with a higher salary does not always rank above a state with a lower salary, and a state with more reported employment does not automatically receive a higher score. The rankings should be considered alongside your own career priorities, constraints, and qualitative factors that are not captured in this data.