Local Pay Reports: U.S. Median Pay Rises 1.0 Percent in March

The latest edition of the Glassdoor Local Pay Reports shows average pay in America reached $51,934 per year in March for full-time workers, up from a revised $51,782 last month. That’s according to the latest real-time salary data shared by millions of Americans looking for jobs on Glassdoor. While pay is on the rise for American workers, the pace of growth remained sluggish in March. Median base pay rose just 1.0 percent year-over-year in March. That’s up slightly from the revised 0.9 percent pace in February and is also up from the 0.6 percent pace in January. But pay growth today is still down sharply from the peak of 3.4 percent year-over-year we recorded in January 2017. The figure below shows how median base pay (the green line) has risen steadily over the past two years, however, wage growth (the blue line) slowed down dramatically in mid-2017. During the past year, we’ve consistently recorded sluggish year-over-year pay growth for the overall U.S. -- even as the nation’s labor market has improved. Let’s take a closer look at what happened in March with U.S. salaries on Glassdoor.

Pay Gains by Metro

Among the ten metros we track, the fastest annual pay gains were in the rapidly growing tech hub of San Francisco, where pay rose 3.5 percent from a year ago to $69,359 per year -- the highest median base pay of any metro we track. San Francisco today lies in the coveted “sweet spot” for pay in America -- both high average pay, and faster than average pay growth. The second-highest pay growth in March was in Houston (up 2.1 percent to $55,571 per year), followed by Seattle (up 1.9 percent to $61,562 per year), and New York City (up 1.8 percent to $61,759 per year). Chicago saw the slowest pay growth in March, where median base pay was unchanged from one year ago at $56,113 per year. Other metros with weak pay gains in March include Los Angeles (up 0.9 percent to $60,423 per year), and Philadelphia (up 1.1 percent to $55,510 per year). An interesting trend we’ve seen over the past two months is a sharp improvement in year-over-year pay growth in Houston. For the past year, Houston has often ranked last among the 10 metros we track -- largely due to weak oil prices hurting energy job growth in that region. However, average pay has surged this year in Houston as oil prices have crept above $60 per barrel, putting Houston’s pay growth at second highest nationally in March among the ten metros we track. Here’s a list of median base pay for all ten metros we track in our Local Pay Reports for March 2018:

Area	Median Base Pay	YoY %
National	$51,934	1.0%
San Francisco	$69,359	3.5%
Houston	$55,571	2.1%
Seattle	$61,562	1.9%
New York City	$61,759	1.8%
Atlanta	$53,801	1.8%
Boston	$59,272	1.4%
Washington DC	$59,582	1.3%
Philadelphia	$55,510	1.1%
Los Angeles	$60,423	0.9%
Chicago	$56,113	0.0%

Jobs with the Fastest Pay Growth

Among the 84 job titles we track each month, here are the ten jobs with the fastest growth in median base pay for full-time workers from one year ago in March:

Job Title	Median Base Pay	YoY %
Financial Advisor	$57,398	9.2%
Delivery Driver	$39,291	5.6%
Bank Teller	$29,824	5.4%
Network Engineer	$71,177	4.4%
Web Designer	$52,616	4.4%
Restaurant Cook	$29,136	4.2%
Web Developer	$65,553	4.1%
Sales Representative	$48,101	3.8%
Truck Driver	$53,728	3.7%
Pharmacy Technician	$30,281	3.4%

There are several themes that stood out among the jobs with the fastest pay growth in March:

• Financial advisors are seeing strong pay gains in 2018, up 9.2 percent nationally from one year ago. Financial planners are busier than ever in the wake of the recent federal tax cuts, helping clients understand and take full advantage of new tax changes. These jobs require “soft skills” like maintaining client relationships, navigating the gray areas of financial planning to offer creative and customized solutions for clients -- skills that are hard to automate and are in high demand.
• E-commerce jobs related to shipping and package delivery continue to see strong pay gains in March. Pay for delivery drivers was up 5.6 percent from a year ago to $39,291 per year, and salaries for truck drivers were up 3.7 percent to $53,728 per year.
• Network engineers are seeing some of the fastest pay growth among tech jobs we track, with salaries up 4.4 percent from a year ago to $71,177 per year. As more business moves online to the cloud, these engineers assure apps stay online and help design systems that keep online orders and web traffic flowing seamlessly -- an increasingly valuable skill in today’s e-commerce world.

Lowest Pay-Growth Jobs

Here are the ten jobs with the lowest wage growth in March, compared to one year ago:

Job Title	Median Base Pay	YoY %
Professor	$87,324	-4.8%
Bartender	$30,530	-4.1%
Communications Manager	$66,476	-2.2%
Quality Engineer	$71,414	-1.8%
Technician	$45,834	-1.6%
Research Assistant	$30,235	-1.6%
Insurance Agent	$43,932	-1.3%
Programmer Analyst	$68,802	-1.2%
Physical Therapist	$73,819	-1.0%
Project Manager	$73,882	-0.7%

Among jobs with slow pay growth today, professor tops the list for weakest gains in March with a -4.8 percent drop in median base from a year ago, down to $87,324 per year. This diverse job title contains a wide range of academic job opportunities, but overall reflects a weak job market facing faculty at many of the nation’s financially struggling colleges and universities. Other jobs with weak pay growth in March include quality engineer (down -1.8 percent to $71,414 per year) a classic manufacturing job in a sector experiencing weak job growth in America. Similarly, pay for communications managers fell -2.2 percent to $66,476 per year -- perhaps a reflection of recent job losses in media, as former journalists make the leap into public relations roles in recent years. While all pay growth is the result of both supply and demand for workers, these jobs offer useful clues about where any remaining pockets of weakness are in today’s otherwise strong labor market.

Highest Paying Jobs

Jobs with the highest pay growth aren’t always the ones with the highest earning potential. Here are the jobs with the highest U.S. median base pay from our March Local Pay Reports:

Job Title	Median Base Pay	YoY %
Pharmacist	$126,331	0.6%
Solutions Architect	$102,473	2.2%
Attorney	$99,540	1.8%
Tax Manager	$96,379	1.0%
Data Scientist	$96,257	1.1%
Product Manager	$93,072	2.1%
Professor	$87,324	-4.8%
Software Engineer	$86,331	1.7%
Systems Engineer	$78,629	1.3%
Process Engineer	$77,753	1.9%

Once again, three fields dominated the highest paying jobs in March: Health care, tech, and professional services. Pharmacist, solutions architect, attorney, tax manager, and data scientist topped our list as the jobs with the highest U.S. median base pay in the March Local Pay Reports.

Lowest Paying Jobs

Finally, here is a list of the ten lowest paying jobs in the March Local Pay Reports:

Job Title	Median Base Pay	YoY %
Barista	$24,189	2.5%
Cashier	$27,528	2.7%
Retail Key Holder	$28,999	1.1%
Certified Nursing Assistant	$29,093	1.4%
Restaurant Cook	$29,136	4.2%
Bank Teller	$29,824	5.4%
Research Assistant	$30,235	-1.6%
Pharmacy Technician	$30,281	3.4%
Bartender	$30,530	-4.1%
Server	$33,122	1.9%

You can view the full list of highest and lowest paying jobs as of March 2018 here.

How Does it Work?

Like the Know Your Worth tool by Glassdoor, Local Pay Reports incorporate millions of salaries directly collected from U.S. workers by Glassdoor and apply a proprietary machine-learning algorithm to estimate near-real-time trends in local pay for ten U.S. metros and the nation as a whole. The Local Pay Reports estimate year-over-year growth in median base salaries by job title for 84 jobs across more than 15 job categories including healthcare, technology, retail and more. The reports also estimate median base pay by industry and employer size, and provide a monthly trend of metro-level median base pay for each local market over the past four years. Our Local Pay Reports fill an important gap in our knowledge about wage growth at the local level for specific jobs. Official BLS “Occupational Employment Statistics” are updated only once per year, and use broad occupational groupings that can be confusing for job seekers. Local Pay Reports are released monthly—using the latest data from Glassdoor—and show pay for actual job titles that are easy for non-economists to understand. Read more in our full methodology and FAQs.

Monthly Jobs Report Expectations

The latest jobs report from the federal government is due out on Friday. This month, we expect to see +205,000 new jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.0 percent in March. See our full analysis for more commentary and predictions here. To learn more or subscribe to the monthly email alerts, visit: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/. The Glassdoor Local Pay Reports can be found here: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/local-pay-reports/. Press inquiries: To speak with Dr. Andrew Chamberlain about this month’s report, email pr@glassdoor.com. Follow him on Twitter: @adchamberlain.