Best States for Postmasters and Mail Superintendents: California, New York, and Texas Form a Top Tier

Nationally, postmasters and mail superintendents have a median annual salary of $96,660 and employment of 13,810 positions. The occupation’s projected national employment growth is -3.5%, indicating a projected decline in total jobs at the national level. Within that national picture, LaborCove’s top 10 states display different mixes of salary levels, employment counts, and Geography Scores. Some states align closely with the national median pay, while others are higher or lower, and the largest state employment levels in this top group are still a small share of the national total. Because the LaborCove Geography Score is a composite result, a state with a higher salary does not automatically achieve the top ranking. The data for postmasters and mail superintendents illustrates this clearly: states differ in salary, employment, and Geography Score orderings, so each state’s position in the ranking reflects more than any single metric. Overall, the top 10 states form several distinct patterns: high-ranking states with relatively large employment counts, states whose salaries sit near the national median, and states that combine more modest employment levels with comparatively strong salaries.

At the national level, postmasters and mail superintendents have a median annual salary of $96,660. Among the top 10 states in the LaborCove rankings, several have median salaries close to this national figure, while others are higher. National employment for this occupation stands at 13,810 positions. By comparison, the largest single state employment count within the top 10 is 830 in New York, with California and Pennsylvania each at 800 and Texas at 820. These state-level counts are therefore much smaller than the national total. The projected national employment growth rate for postmasters and mail superintendents is -3.5%. This is a national projection and is not a forecast for any particular state. It simply provides context that, overall, the occupation is projected to have fewer positions nationally in the future than it does in the May 2025 baseline.

LaborCove’s Geography Score shows clear separation among the top states. California ranks #1 with a Geography Score of 84.95, ahead of New York at 82.19 and Texas at 79.83. Pennsylvania follows at 78.77, rounding out a closely grouped top four. From there, scores decline more sharply. New Jersey, at rank #5, has a Geography Score of 68.91, which is lower than each of the top four. Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, Florida, and Massachusetts complete the top 10 with Geography Scores between 67.28 and 62.63. These results underscore that California, New York, Texas, and Pennsylvania make up a higher-scoring tier within the top 10, while the remaining six states, though still in the national top group, register meaningfully lower Geography Scores in the LaborCove model.

The national median salary for postmasters and mail superintendents is $96,660, and the top 10 states cluster around this benchmark in different ways. California, the #1 ranked state, has a median salary of $101,150, which is higher than the national median. New Jersey’s $101,100 median and Florida’s $102,880 median are also above the national figure. New York and Texas, at $97,640 and $97,550 respectively, are modestly higher than the national median as well. Some top 10 states align more closely with the national benchmark. Pennsylvania’s $97,530 and Massachusetts’s $96,870 medians sit very near the national $96,660 level. In contrast, North Carolina at $96,410 and Illinois at $94,970 have median salaries below the national median among this top-ranked group.

Within the top-ranked states, employment counts for postmasters and mail superintendents vary but remain well below the national total of 13,810 positions. New York has the largest employment count in the top 10 at 830. Texas follows closely at 820, and California and Pennsylvania each have 800. These four states therefore form the highest-employment group within the top 10. Ohio and Illinois each report 510 positions, and North Carolina has 480. At the lower end of this top group, New Jersey has 440, Florida 350, and Massachusetts 330. All of these counts reflect the number of positions measured in each state rather than the number of employers or job openings.

Comparing the salary, employment, and Geography Score data side by side shows that the LaborCove ranking is not solely driven by any single measure. For example, Florida has the highest median salary among the listed top 10 states at $102,880, yet it ranks #9 with a Geography Score of 62.63. California, in contrast, ranks #1 with a Geography Score of 84.95 on a slightly lower median salary of $101,150. A similar pattern appears when examining employment and ranking. New York has the largest employment count in the top 10 at 830, but it ranks #2 overall, behind California, which has 800 positions. These comparisons illustrate that Geography Score and rank reflect a broader combination of inputs than salary or employment alone.

LaborCove’s rankings use authoritative labor-market data combined with the proprietary LaborCove Geography Score to compare locations for specific occupations. For this article, the Geography Score, median annual salary, and employment counts for postmasters and mail superintendents (occupation 11-9131) are analyzed at the state level. The national context includes the national median salary, national employment, and a projected national employment growth rate for the occupation. All occupational employment and wage statistics used here are based on Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) observations for May 2025, with a separate national projection providing the -3.5% projected employment growth figure. The projection is national-only and is not applied to individual states. Because the internal weighting of components within the LaborCove Geography Score is not disclosed, this article does not attribute a state’s ranking to any single factor. Instead, it focuses on transparent comparisons among the reported salaries, employment counts, and Geography Scores. Rankings should always be interpreted alongside an individual’s own preferences about pay levels, market size, and location.