How We Calculate Salary Figures
Every wage number on Career Atlas USA comes directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey — we don’t adjust, estimate, or blend it with any other source at the raw-wage level.
Median vs. mean
We lead with the median (the middle value — half of workers earn more, half earn less) rather than the mean (average), because a small number of very high earners can pull the mean up in ways that don’t reflect a typical paycheck. Both are shown where available.
Percentiles
The 10th, 25th, 75th and 90th percentiles show the real spread of wages within an occupation — for example, the 10th percentile is what the lowest-paid 10% of workers in that occupation earn. These come straight from BLS; we never derive them from the median.
National, state, and metro figures
National, state, and metro-area estimates are each independently published by BLS for the same survey period — a state figure is not the national figure adjusted by a formula, it’s a separately measured estimate specific to that geography.
When a number isn’t available
BLS suppresses figures it doesn’t consider statistically reliable (too few workers surveyed in that occupation/geography). We show “Not available” in that case — never a zero, and never an estimate we made up to fill the gap.