Best States for Insurance Underwriters: New York, California and Massachusetts Top a Salary‑Driven Field

Across all 50 states where LaborCove tracks this occupation, national employment for insurance underwriters stands at 105,420 and is projected to decline by 2.6% nationally. Within that national picture, the top 10 states in LaborCove’s rankings show distinct combinations of salary levels, employment counts, and Geography Scores. Among these 10 states, Texas has the largest reported employment count at 9,980 insurance underwriters, while Massachusetts and Colorado combine smaller reported employment counts with relatively high median salaries. New York, California, and Massachusetts all show median salaries that exceed the national median of $81,370, yet New York, not Massachusetts, holds the #1 Geography Score rank. The data also show that salary alone does not explain the rankings. Massachusetts has the highest reported median salary among the top 10 states at $106,640, but it ranks #3 overall, below New York and California. New York’s median salary of $97,450 and California’s $95,320 both sit below Massachusetts on pay, yet those states occupy the #1 and #2 positions in the LaborCove Geography Score ranking. Taken together, the figures indicate that LaborCove’s Geography Score reflects more than a single dimension such as salary or employment size. For insurance underwriters considering state-level options, the rankings highlight multiple viable configurations—high salary with moderate employment, or high employment with more moderate pay—rather than a single, uniform pattern.

Nationally, insurance underwriters have a median annual salary of $81,370 and an employment count of 105,420. The occupation’s projected national employment growth is -2.6%, indicating a modest decline at the national level rather than expansion. This national baseline provides a reference point for interpreting the state data. Several of the top-ranked states have median salaries above the national median, while others sit closer to it but appear in the top 10 based on their overall Geography Score. Because the projected -2.6% growth rate is national, it is not used to draw conclusions about individual states or to estimate state-level hiring trends. State comparisons in this article are limited to the supplied salary, employment, and LaborCove Geography Score data.

Among the top 10 states, several have median salaries that exceed the national median of $81,370. New York’s median salary of $97,450, California’s $95,320, Massachusetts’s $106,640, New Jersey’s $96,220, Colorado’s $100,640, Washington’s $99,400, and Wisconsin’s $97,370 are all above the national figure. Within the top 10, Massachusetts has the highest reported median salary at $106,640, ahead of Colorado’s $100,640 and Washington’s $99,400. New York’s median of $97,450 is higher than the national median and also higher than Georgia’s $85,980 and Texas’s $78,890, while Georgia’s median salary is above the national median but below New York’s. Texas is the only top-10 state with a reported median salary, $78,890, that is below the national median of $81,370. Despite this, Texas still ranks #4 in the LaborCove Geography Score, showing that higher salary alone does not determine a state’s overall position in the ranking.

Reported employment counts vary considerably among the top-ranked states. Texas has the largest reported employment count at 9,980 insurance underwriters, followed by Georgia with 7,160 and New York with 6,900. California has 6,580 reported insurance underwriter roles, while New Jersey and Wisconsin have smaller reported employment counts of 3,150 and 3,110 respectively. Massachusetts, Colorado, and Washington each have lower reported employment counts than New York and California. Massachusetts has 2,890 insurance underwriters, Colorado has 2,040, and Washington has 1,740. Employment for Illinois is not supplied, so no comparison can be made for that state’s employment level within this group. The variation in employment counts across these states illustrates that high Geography Score ranks can correspond to both larger and smaller reported employment levels. For example, Texas has the largest reported employment count among the top 10 but ranks #4, while Colorado ranks #7 with a smaller reported employment count than New York, California, Georgia, Texas, New Jersey, and Wisconsin.

LaborCove’s Geography Score ranking places New York at #1 with a score of 70.31, California at #2 with 68.84, and Massachusetts at #3 with 65.03. Texas holds the #4 rank with a score of 64.00, followed by Georgia at #5 with 58.60. These five states lead the national list for insurance underwriters in the LaborCove ranking. New Jersey, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, and Wisconsin round out the top 10, with Geography Scores ranging from 56.82 in New Jersey down to 53.13 in Wisconsin. Illinois, at rank #9 with a score of 54.15 and a median salary of $89,620, sits between Washington and Wisconsin on the Geography Score scale. The scores show that Massachusetts, despite having the highest reported median salary among these states, ranks below New York and California. Similarly, Texas ranks #4 even though its median salary is lower than the national median. These patterns indicate that the LaborCove Geography Score incorporates more than salary alone and that different combinations of metrics can produce similar overall rankings.

Several pairs of states in the top 10 illustrate how similar rankings can mask distinct salary and employment profiles. New York (#1) and California (#2) have Geography Scores that are relatively close—70.31 for New York and 68.84 for California—yet New York’s median salary of $97,450 is higher than California’s $95,320, and New York’s reported employment count of 6,900 is also higher than California’s 6,580. Georgia (#5) and New Jersey (#6) provide another contrast. Georgia’s median salary of $85,980 is lower than New Jersey’s $96,220, yet Georgia ranks higher in the LaborCove Geography Score. Georgia also has a larger reported employment count of 7,160, compared with New Jersey’s 3,150. Colorado (#7) and Washington (#8) both have median salaries above $99,000—$100,640 in Colorado and $99,400 in Washington—yet they rank below Georgia and New Jersey. Wisconsin (#10), with a median salary of $97,370, has a Geography Score of 53.13, below Illinois’s 54.15 despite Wisconsin’s reported employment count of 3,110 being available while Illinois’s employment data is not supplied. These examples underscore that similar rankings can correspond to noticeably different salary and employment combinations within the top 10 states.

LaborCove’s Best States rankings for insurance underwriters (SOC 13-2053) draw on authoritative U.S. labor-market data and LaborCove’s Geography Score methodology. For this article, national median salary, national employment, and the national projected employment growth rate are used as occupation-wide context, while state-level comparisons rely on each state’s median annual salary, employment count (when supplied), and LaborCove Geography Score and rank. The underlying occupational employment and wage statistics for states reflect observations from May 2025. The report year of 2026 refers to the publication and product year, not the observation date of the OEWS data. The supplied projected employment growth rate of -2.6% applies nationally to insurance underwriters; no state-level or metro-level projected growth rates are used or inferred. LaborCove’s Geography Score aggregates multiple quantitative factors into a single index and rank for each geography. The relative contributions of those factors are internal to LaborCove’s methodology and are not broken out in this article. Users should view the Best States ranking as one structured input to their decision-making and balance it against individual preferences, such as desired region, role focus, or personal circumstances.