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Would you be better off doing your job where you currently reside or would you be better off moving to another state, after adjusting the cost of living?
What someone earns can vary due to factors such as industry, geography, and worker skill. Jobs with more consistent tasks such as waiters or retail workers have more consistent median annual wages state to state.
But the larger the variation within a particular occupation, particularly with healthcare, management, and the arts, the larger the pay can vary.
In Texas, there are about million full-time workers.
Most workers in the state are in major job category of office and administrative support occupations (about 17.06 percent). More specifically, the most employed people in the state work as retail salespersons (3.38 percent).
The annual median pay ranges from $17,920 for personal care aides at the lowest end of the spectrum to $172,970 for pediatricians at the highest. That’s a gap of $160,508. Mississippi has the largest gap in the country of $193,000 between anesthesiologists and psychiatric aides.
Credentials, experience, and skill contribute to the differences in pay within a given occupation.
Texas’ highest paid jobs include airline pilots, copilots, and flight engineers, dentists, and obstetricians and gynecologists.
About 13 occupations in Texas have the highest median annual pay compared to the other states in the country. Out of 827, that’s 4 percent of all jobs with the highest pay categorized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, the value of a dollar differs state to state. Prices for some things can be cheaper or more expensive depending on where someone lives. For example, $103.52 in Texas is actually $102.99 in Maine, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
So after adjusting for the actual value of a dollar in a given state, Texas has about 16 jobs that have the highest median annual salary compared to other states.
Its lowest-paying jobs include models, counter attendants, cafeteria, food concession, and coffee shop, and ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers. After adjusting for cost of living, those occupational groups make $25,000, $19,224, and $20,984, respectively.
Pediatricians, general have seen the largest decline in wages. Between 1999 and 2015, the adjusted median annual salary dropped from $-1 to $172,970. That’s a change of about -1.7297110^{7} percent.
Meanwhile, real estate brokers saw the sharpest increase in wages in Texas. Wages went up 153.46 percent between 1999 and 2015 from $30,151 to $76,420.
Some occupations are markedly competitive, with less workers earning more. Local demand for the work and cost of living also can affect salaries.
Dental hygienists lost the most workers in Texas. In 1999, there were -1 employees. But by 2015, that figure declined 1.298110^{6} percent to 12,980.
The jobs that had gained the most employees was railroad conductors and yardmasters. There were 1,914 percent more workers in 2015 as compared to 1999. Overall, the total number of workers grew from 220 to 4,430 in Texas.
The adjusted median annual salary for editors in Texas is $51,884, which is ranked 19 in the country. Editors in North Dakota make the lowest salary out of all the states at $33,049. Over in Virginia, they make the highest salary at $65,178.
Editors in Texas earn about the same as private detectives and investigators in Missouri.
The wages for editors have grown by 4.88 percent to $50,120 and the number of employees have declined by 1.56 percent to 5,050 in 2015.
Data from this story is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics survey— specifically the wages as defined by straight-time, gross pay, which includes some types of pay like commissions, production bonuses, and tips. It does not include premium pay, such as overtime or profit-sharing payments, nor does it include data on the self-employed.
BLS excludes wages in the top 10 percent, or more than $187,200, when determining the median.Check our work — The data and analysis for this story are available in Trend CT’s GitHub repository. Read about our philosophy on reproducibility and open data.