Below are estimated United States salary statistics for 2025. See estimates for the average, median, and top 1% wage or salary in the United States.
Salaries/wage incomes are gross (pre-tax), earned between January and December 2024 (the US Census Bureau's Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) was conducted in early 2025).
Salary Percentile Calculator
Salary Benchmarks in 2025
The most popular salary statistics to compare are median salary, average salary, and top 1% salary.
When talking about salaries, it's important to scope your population properly. I only include people who worked 40 or more weeks at a salaried position in 2025. Further, you can look at people who typically worked 30+ or 40+ hours a week ("full-time"). I also have data on salary by age.
What is the median salary?
The median salary in the United States in 2025 was $57,000.
What is the average salary?
In 2025, the average salary in the United States was $78,203.53.
What is the top 1% salary?
$400,000 was the threshold to earn a top 1% salary in 2025.
Salary vs. Income
Salary is the amount of money someone is paid in wages at a job. However, it's only one element of income.
Many people earn money through other means – everything from rentals, investments, to interest, to farms and businesses. Adding up all of those categories leads to income, a better view of spending power than merely looking at a salary. Find our income posts here. (Including household income and individual income).
Methodology on 2025 United States Salary Brackets
Data comes from the United States Census Bureau's Annual ASEC survey, released in September 2025. Here are the criteria:
- AGE >= 16
- CLASSWKR >= 20 and CLASSWKR <= 28
- WKSWORK1 at least 40 weeks
- WORKLY is 2, or the person 'wants' a job
Additionally, the two other categories of full-time workers set the respective floor on hours worked. For all columns, you're only seeing INCWAGE – wage and salary income.
This screen leaves us with 55,782 responses, representing an estimated 135,723,378 people who earned a salary and worked 40 or more weeks in 2021.
Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren, Daniel Backman, Etienne Breton, Grace Cooper, Julia A. Rivera Drew, Stephanie Richards, David Van Riper, and Kari C.W. Williams. IPUMS CPS: Version 13.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V13.0
Past results were split into two series:
Is this salary gross or net? Does this data include taxes?
The salary data in this post is before tax or gross salary.
