Salaries by State Worksite

This index organises certified LCA filings by the state of the worksite — the place where the work is performed — rather than by the employer's headquarters state. The distinction matters legally and economically: the prevailing wage for a filing is set for the area of intended employment, so a national employer filing for roles in several states faces a different wage floor in each place. Grouping by worksite state therefore shows where sponsored work is actually located and at what local price level it was offered.

State medians differ for two main reasons, and readers should keep both in mind. The first is genuine local wage variation: the same occupation is priced differently in different labour markets. The second is composition: a state whose filings concentrate in technology or finance will post a higher median than a state whose filings spread across education and general healthcare, even if each occupation is paid identically in both. Every state page on this site therefore includes its top occupations and top employers, so the composition behind its median is visible on the same page as the median itself.

The thirty states listed here are those with the most certified filings in the combined FY2024–FY2025 dataset. Smaller states still appear throughout employer and occupation pages wherever their worksites are among a filer's most common locations. Readers researching a specific place should usually go one level deeper than the state, to the city pages, because within-state variation — between a major metro and the rest of the state — is often larger than variation between neighbouring states.

All state figures are computed from certified cases only, with headline medians drawn from annual-wage filings after the published outlier rule is applied. Filing counts count cases, not individual workers, and a certified case does not by itself prove the employment started; the methodology page explains each of those limits and how this site handles them.

RankState (worksite)Certified casesMedian offered wage
1California123,286$160,000
2Texas101,315$110,000
3New York54,396$138,091
4Washington42,586$160,000
5New Jersey32,805$123,656
6Illinois27,562$110,000
7Georgia25,301$109,300
8North Carolina25,184$114,000
9Massachusetts23,166$122,970
10Florida21,912$104,002
11Virginia17,694$120,000
12Pennsylvania17,387$105,206
13Michigan16,196$107,500
14Ohio13,497$102,045
15Arizona11,514$106,000
16Tennessee7,888$101,084
17Maryland7,756$111,779
18Minnesota7,428$105,000
19Colorado7,049$117,021
20Connecticut6,945$106,000
21Missouri6,884$96,682
22Indiana6,441$96,000
23Arkansas5,148$120,000
24Oregon4,942$122,158
25Wisconsin4,498$96,492
26South Carolina3,777$97,000
27Utah3,733$101,754
28District of Columbia3,172$115,000
29Delaware2,987$120,000
30Kentucky2,738$92,818

How These Figures Were Computed

Every figure on this page was computed by our script directly from the U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA disclosure files for FY2024 Q4 and FY2025 Q1–Q4, retrieved in October 2026. We kept only cases whose CASE_STATUS is exactly “Certified” — denied, withdrawn and certified-withdrawn cases are excluded. Headline medians use filings whose wage unit is a year, because annual salaries compare cleanly; hourly, weekly and monthly filings are counted in case totals but are not converted into the headline median, and our methodology page explains that choice in full. Wages below $15,080 a year (the annualized federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour) or above $1,000,000 a year are excluded from medians as likely data-entry placeholders, and the number excluded is reported in the manifest that accompanies this site. Medians are shown alongside means because a handful of very large offers can drag a mean far above what a typical filing actually offered.