Best States for Labor Relations Specialists: California Tops Overall, New Jersey Leads on Pay

Across the United States, labor relations specialists have a national median annual salary of $95,420 and national employment of 64,810. The national projected employment growth rate for this occupation is -0.1%, indicating a very small projected decline at the national level. Within that national context, LaborCove’s top 10 state rankings reveal notable differences. Some states, such as California and New York, pair relatively high salaries with comparatively large employment counts. Others, such as New Jersey and Massachusetts, report higher median salaries than the national figure with smaller employment counts than the largest markets, yet still earn high Geography Scores. The rankings also show that the state with the highest LaborCove Geography Score is not the one with the highest median salary. California holds Rank #1 with a Geography Score of 81.22 and a median salary of $105,810, while New Jersey has a higher median salary of $118,370 but ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 67.60. This illustrates that the LaborCove Geography Score is not a simple salary ranking, but a composite measure based on multiple inputs.

Nationally, labor relations specialists have a median annual salary of $95,420 and total employment of 64,810. These figures provide a baseline when evaluating state-level salary and employment data for this occupation. The occupation’s national projected employment growth rate is -0.1%. This projection applies only to labor relations specialists at the national level. Because no state or metro projections are supplied in this evidence, it does not indicate how any individual state or metro area might change over time. When comparing states in the rest of this article, the national salary and employment values are used strictly as context; they are not used to infer local hiring conditions or geographic projections.

LaborCove identifies California as Rank #1 among states for labor relations specialists, with a Geography Score of 81.22. New York follows at Rank #2 with a Geography Score of 70.76, while New Jersey holds Rank #3 with a Geography Score of 67.60. Massachusetts and Illinois round out the top five. Massachusetts is Rank #4 with a Geography Score of 58.38, and Illinois is Rank #5 with a Geography Score of 57.00. Washington, at Rank #6, has a Geography Score of 56.94, closely aligned with Illinois on this measure. The remaining states in the top 10 have more moderate Geography Scores within this group. Pennsylvania (Rank #7) has a Geography Score of 52.40, Minnesota (Rank #8) comes in at 48.65, Ohio (Rank #9) at 48.39, and North Dakota (Rank #10) at 46.98. Within the top 10 alone, this spread shows that California’s score is substantially higher than the other listed states, even though several of those states achieve strong salaries or notable employment counts of their own.

Several of the top-ranked states report median salaries above the national median of $95,420. California, for example, has a median salary of $105,810, and New York has a median salary of $100,500. New Jersey and Massachusetts both exceed these levels, with median salaries of $118,370 and $111,260 respectively. Within the top five, New Jersey has the highest median salary at $118,370, followed by Massachusetts at $111,260. California at $105,810, Illinois at $104,180, and Washington at $104,100 all sit above the national median as well. Minnesota’s median salary of $100,760 and North Dakota’s $101,220 also exceed the national figure, while Pennsylvania at $91,320 and Ohio at $80,150 fall below it. These salary patterns demonstrate that high Geography Scores can align with a range of pay levels. California ranks #1 overall with a median salary of $105,810, while New Jersey posts a higher median salary of $118,370 but ranks #3 on the Geography Score list. Similarly, North Dakota reports a median salary of $101,220 yet holds Rank #10 by Geography Score.

The national employment count for labor relations specialists is 64,810. Within the top 10 states, California has the largest single reported employment figure at 8,830, and it is specifically identified as the largest employment market in the dataset. New York has the second-largest employment count among the listed states at 6,860, followed by Ohio at 4,100. Illinois and New Jersey have similar employment counts in this occupation, at 3,670 and 3,700 respectively. Pennsylvania’s employment count is 3,470, which is modestly below those two states but still above the employment levels reported for Massachusetts (1,660) and Minnesota (1,710). Washington’s employment count is 2,760, placing it between the higher-employment states such as California and New York and the smaller counts for Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Dakota. North Dakota’s employment count of 90 is the smallest among the top 10 states listed here, despite its median salary of $101,220 and a Geography Score of 46.98.

The top 10 states illustrate several distinct combinations of salary, employment, and Geography Score for labor relations specialists. California pairs the highest Geography Score in this group (81.22) with both a relatively high median salary of $105,810 and the largest employment count of 8,830. New York similarly combines a median salary of $100,500 with an employment figure of 6,860 and a Geography Score of 70.76. By contrast, New Jersey and Massachusetts prioritize higher salaries relative to the national benchmark without matching California’s or New York’s employment counts. New Jersey’s median salary of $118,370 and Massachusetts’s $111,260 both exceed California’s $105,810, yet they report employment counts of 3,700 and 1,660 respectively. Their Geography Scores of 67.60 (New Jersey) and 58.38 (Massachusetts) still place them in the top four states overall. At the other end of the top 10, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Dakota show that lower or smaller values on one metric can accompany stronger results on another. Ohio’s median salary of $80,150 is below the national median, but its employment count of 4,100 is higher than those of Massachusetts and Minnesota. North Dakota’s median salary of $101,220 exceeds the national level, while its employment count of 90 is the smallest among these ranked states, and it still appears at Rank #10 with a Geography Score of 46.98.

LaborCove’s rankings for labor relations specialists rely on authoritative U.S. labor‑market data and our internal Geography Score methodology. For this article, national and state values for employment and median annual salary for occupation 13-1075 (Labor relations specialists) are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations with a reference period of May 2025. The report year of 2026 reflects when LaborCove is packaging and publishing the analysis, not the underlying OEWS observation date. The national projected employment growth rate of -0.1% is a separate occupational projection for labor relations specialists at the national level. It is not an OEWS observation and is not a state or metro forecast. No geographic projected growth rates are supplied in this evidence, so this article does not assign or imply any projected growth rate to individual states. The LaborCove Geography Score is a composite index that ranks states using the supplied salary, employment, and other internal factors. The exact contribution of each factor to the Geography Score is not disclosed in this dataset, so this article treats the score as a summary indicator rather than attributing it to any single input. Rankings and scores should be considered alongside personal factors such as preferred industries, experience level, and non‑labor‑market considerations, which are outside the scope of this data.