Annual Compensation Research
2026 US Salary Report
Comprehensive salary analysis across 255+ occupations and 173+ cities. Based on BLS OEWS May 2025 data, OECD wage statistics, and SalaryScope's salary prediction models.
Key Findings
Shareable statistics — cite freely with attribution to SalaryScope.
$106,313
US national median salary (2026)
Across 207+ tracked occupations
+35%
Average salary growth since 2019
Across all tracked occupations (2019–2024)
+58%
AI Engineer salary growth (2019–2024)
$115,000 → $182,000
$153K
Legal — highest-paid industry
Median across 6 tracked occupations
$485K
Radiologist — top-paying job
Highest median salary of any tracked occupation
1.95×
Geneva salary premium vs US national average
Highest premium of any global city tracked
Median Salary by Industry (2026)
Legal and Technology command the highest median pay. Trades and Hospitality remain the lowest-paid sectors despite tight labor markets.
| Industry | Median Salary |
|---|---|
| Legal | $152,833 |
| Technology | $137,950 |
| Sales | $130,885 |
| Business | $119,055 |
| Supply Chain | $118,918 |
| Finance | $111,107 |
| Engineering | $107,528 |
| Healthcare | $101,582 |
| Science | $96,364 |
| Marketing | $94,876 |
| Human Resources | $94,366 |
| Media | $90,693 |
| Architecture | $89,550 |
| Education | $84,768 |
| Creative | $82,966 |
| Real Estate | $82,277 |
| Hospitality | $75,805 |
| Government | $75,278 |
| Trades | $67,323 |
| Transportation | $60,381 |
10 Highest-Paying Jobs in 2026
Medical specialties and C-suite executives dominate the top tier. The gap between #1 (Radiologist) and median is $378,961 — a 356% premium.
Fastest-Growing Salaries (2019–2024)
AI and cloud roles saw the most dramatic wage acceleration over five years, outpacing inflation by a wide margin. The average across all tracked roles was +35%.
| Role | 2019 Salary | 2024 Salary | 5-Year Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Engineer | $115,000 | $182,000 | +58.3% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | $112,400 | $172,000 | +53.0% |
| Cloud Architect | $118,600 | $178,000 | +50.1% |
| Quantitative Analyst | $122,600 | $184,000 | +50.1% |
| Site Reliability Engineer | $108,400 | $161,200 | +48.7% |
| Data Engineer | $95,600 | $142,000 | +48.5% |
| DevOps Engineer | $98,200 | $145,600 | +48.3% |
| QA Engineer | $76,400 | $110,200 | +44.2% |
| Data Scientist | $96,290 | $138,200 | +43.5% |
| UX Designer | $80,900 | $115,800 | +43.1% |
Lowest Salary Growth (2019–2024)
Pharmacists saw the weakest growth (+5.2%) — barely outpacing inflation. Teachers also lagged significantly at +17.4%.
Global Salary Premiums by City
Geneva offers the highest salary premium globally — workers there earn approximately 1.95× the US national median. Swiss and Nordic cities consistently rank at the top. Multipliers are applied to base US salaries to produce local purchasing-power-adjusted estimates.
| City | Salary Premium |
|---|---|
| Geneva | 1.95× |
| Zurich | 1.80× |
| Oslo | 1.65× |
| London | 1.50× |
| Copenhagen | 1.50× |
| Hong Kong | 1.45× |
| Singapore | 1.40× |
| Tel Aviv | 1.40× |
| Sydney | 1.35× |
| Stockholm | 1.35× |
Est. SE Salary = Software Engineer national median ($145,641) × city premium multiplier. Source: OECD average wages, World Bank WDI, SalaryScope city cost model.
10 Lowest-Paying Jobs in 2026
Essential roles in trades, emergency services, and education continue to lag significantly below the national median. The gap between the lowest-paid role and the highest-paid is $422,161 — an 8× difference.
Deep Dive
Software Engineer: 5-Year Salary Trend
The Software Engineer role saw consistent salary growth from $107,510 in 2019 to $142,000 in 2024 — a +32.1% gain over five years, driven by pandemic-era remote work expansion, talent scarcity, and tech industry wage pressure.
2019
$108K
2020
$110K
2021
$121K
2022
$129K
2023
$137K
2024
$142K
Methodology
This report aggregates salary data from four primary sources, weighted by reliability and recency. The primary source is BLS OEWS May 2025 (released May 2026), which covers ~200 standard occupational classifications. Where direct BLS mapping is unavailable, SalaryScope applies category-level medians from the same dataset.
For international city comparisons, SalaryScope uses OECD Average Wages (2024) and World Bank WDI data to compute purchasing-power-adjusted city multipliers. City salary estimates represent expected compensation for a US-equivalent role adjusted for local labor market conditions and cost of labor, not cost of living.
5-year growth figures (2019–2024) are sourced from BLS OEWS historical releases. AI and ML roles show the highest growth partly due to job title reclassification and the emergence of new specializations not tracked in earlier surveys.
Industry median calculations include only occupations with sample sizes of n≥3 in each category. All salaries represent annual gross compensation in USD before taxes. All data is updated via automated cron pipelines running against live government data sources.
Data as of June 2026. Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS (bls.gov/oes), OECD.Stat Average Wages, World Bank World Development Indicators, SalaryScope Predictive Salary Model. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — cite as "SalaryScope, 2026 Salary Report (salaryscope.co/reports/2026-salary-report)."
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