The same job title. The same responsibilities. Fifty different salaries.
We pulled BLS median wages for five common occupations across all 50 states and ranked them from highest to lowest. Then we adjusted for cost of living to show which states give you the most purchasing power — which doesn't always match the raw salary ranking.
Registered Nurses
Highest raw salary: California — $133,340
Lowest raw salary: South Dakota — $60,540
Gap: $72,800 — nearly 2.2x
But California's RPP is 113.1. South Dakota's is 88.7. After cost-of-living adjustment:
Highest purchasing power: Washington — $86,070 salary, no state income tax, RPP 104.7. Adjusted: ~$82,200.
California after adjustment: $133,340 at RPP 113.1 → ~$117,900. Still high, but the 2.2x gap shrinks to 1.4x.
The state that gives a nurse the best financial deal? Texas. Median $78,660, no state tax, RPP 96.8. After tax and COL: you keep more than California nurses earning $55K more.
Software Developers
Highest: Washington — $145,720 (Amazon, Microsoft, Seattle)
Lowest: Puerto Rico — $48,860
US-state lowest: Mississippi — $70,240
Gap (continental US): $75,480
Adjusted for cost of living, the ranking reshuffles. Seattle developers earn more but face RPP 115.8 and high rent. Georgia developers earn $100K at RPP 94.7 — their dollar goes further per unit earned.
The remote-work wildcard: a developer earning the Washington median while living in a Mississippi-cost city has among the highest purchasing power of any occupation in the country. Remote work has made geography arbitrage the most powerful financial lever in tech.
Developer salary in every state →
Elementary School Teachers
Highest: New York — $73,820
Lowest: Mississippi — $37,880
Gap: $35,940
This is the occupation where the raw gap is most misleading. New York teachers earn nearly double Mississippi teachers, but New York's cost of living (RPP 115.5 statewide, 122+ in NYC) and state income tax (6.85% effective) consume a large portion of the difference.
After COL adjustment, the top state for teacher purchasing power is Illinois ($63,370 salary, moderate RPP, flat 4.95% tax). The bottom is still Mississippi — lower costs don't fully offset the extremely low salary.
Teaching is the occupation where geographic pay differences most directly reflect funding decisions, not market forces. Teacher salaries are set by school district budgets, which are set by state funding formulas and local property tax bases. The data is a map of education investment.
Teacher salary in every state →
Electricians
Highest: Illinois — $82,310 (IBEW Local 134, Chicago)
Lowest: Mississippi — $43,620
Gap: $38,690
Union density predicts electrician pay better than any other variable. The five highest-paying states for electricians (Illinois, New York, California, Oregon, Washington) are all states with strong IBEW presence and prevailing wage laws on public construction.
After COL adjustment, the Midwest and Pacific Northwest dominate. Illinois and Washington both combine strong wages with moderate-to-no state income tax.
Electrician salary in every state →
Accountants
Highest: New York — $104,750
Lowest: Puerto Rico — $45,380
US-state lowest: West Virginia — $57,120
Gap: $47,630
Accounting is the white-collar occupation that best illustrates the "high salary, high cost" trap. New York accountants earn the most but face steep state taxes (6.85%+) and the highest rent in the country. Texas accountants earn $79,830 — 24% less — but keep more money after taxes and housing.
The accounting profession also shows a strong Big 4 effect: metros with major Big 4 offices (NYC, Chicago, Houston, LA) have inflated medians. Remove the Big 4, and the metro-level variation shrinks.
Accountant salary in every state →
The purchasing power twist
Raw salary rankings are misleading because they ignore what the money buys. Here's what happens when you adjust the top-paying and bottom-paying states for cost of living using BLS Regional Price Parities.
Registered Nurses — adjusted for purchasing power:
California pays the highest nurse salary at $124,000, but with an RPP of 113.4, the purchasing power is equivalent to $109,300 at national prices. Meanwhile, Alabama pays $60,100 — but with an RPP of 87.3, the purchasing power is $68,800. The raw salary gap between California and Alabama is $63,900. The purchasing power gap is only $40,500. California still wins, but by 35% less than the raw numbers suggest.
The real winner? Texas. Nurses earn $79,200 with an RPP of 96.8 — purchasing power of $81,800. No state income tax pushes the advantage further. After taxes and cost-of-living adjustment, a Texas nurse's purchasing power is competitive with California despite earning $45K less on paper.
Software Developers — adjusted:
Washington state leads at $145,000, RPP 109.2, purchasing power $132,800. Mississippi pays the least at $72,800, RPP 85.1, purchasing power $85,500. But the real story is the middle: states like Colorado ($128K, RPP 105.3, PP $121,500), Virginia ($121K, RPP 102.1, PP $118,500), and North Carolina ($110K, RPP 97.5, PP $112,800) offer 85-90% of the coastal purchasing power at a fraction of the housing stress.
This is why the "move to SF for the tech salary" advice is increasingly outdated. Remote-eligible developers in Raleigh, Denver, or Salt Lake City capture nearly the same purchasing power as their Bay Area counterparts — and often more, once state taxes and rent are factored in.
Teachers — the most compressed profession:
After cost-of-living adjustment, the spread between the best-paying state and worst-paying state for teachers narrows to roughly $18,000 — compared to a $35,000 raw spread. Teaching salaries are set by state and district budgets that partially (but not fully) track local costs. This means teachers in expensive states like New York earn more in raw dollars but don't proportionally benefit from the premium. A teacher in Ohio at $52K (RPP 91.4, PP $56,900) has nearly the same purchasing power as a teacher in Connecticut at $68K (RPP 109.8, PP $61,900). An $16K salary difference translates to only $5,000 in real spending capability.
Electricians — where the trades actually pay best:
Illinois electricians earn $78,500 — the highest state median. Adjusted for RPP (99.6), purchasing power is $78,800. But factor in Illinois's income tax (4.95% flat) and the after-tax purchasing power drops to about $71,500. Compare that to Indiana: $60,200 salary, RPP 90.6, no local income tax premium. After-tax purchasing power: $63,400. Illinois still wins, but the gap narrows from $18,300 raw to $8,100 adjusted. And Indiana electricians carry far less cost-of-living stress.
The occupation where purchasing power adjustment matters least? Accountants. The geographic spread is modest (high: $92K in NY; low: $58K in WV) and both high-paying and low-paying states tend to have costs that roughly correlate — expensive states pay more, cheap states pay less, and the net effect is a relatively flat purchasing power curve.
The takeaway
For every occupation we checked, the highest-paying state is not the state where that salary buys the most. Raw salary rankings and purchasing-power rankings are different lists.
If you're choosing where to build your career, the data says: pick the state where the ratio of salary to cost is highest, not where the salary is highest in absolute terms. The AffordMap salary pages show this ratio for every combination of career and state.
The states that look rich but aren't (and vice versa)
When you rank states by raw median salary, the top 5 are predictable: Massachusetts, Washington, California, New York, Connecticut. All high-cost states. All coastal. The bottom 5 — Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina — are all in the rural South.
But rank by purchasing power — salary adjusted for what it buys locally — and the list scrambles completely.
States where the salary understates your lifestyle:
Washington climbs higher (no state income tax + strong salaries). Texas and Tennessee appear in the top 15 (zero state tax inflates take-home). Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa all jump significantly — modest salaries go a long way when rent is $950/month and prices are 8% below average.
States where the salary overstates your lifestyle:
California drops from #3 in raw salary to the middle of the pack in purchasing power. Hawaii drops from respectable to near-bottom — the highest cost of living in the country eats everything. New York and Massachusetts hold up better because their salary premiums are genuinely large, but they still fall 5-10 spots when you adjust for cost.
The biggest movers:
- Indiana: jumps +15 positions from raw salary rank to purchasing-power rank
- Mississippi: jumps +12 (the lowest salaries in America but also the lowest costs — partially offsetting)
- Hawaii: drops -18 positions (the cost of everything on an island erases the salary premium)
- California: drops -11 (high taxes + high rent + high prices = the trifecta of erosion)
This is the data that should inform relocation decisions, remote work negotiations, and retirement planning. The raw salary ranking tells you where the big numbers are. The purchasing-power ranking tells you where the big lives are. They're different lists.
How remote work reshapes the map
For the three remote-friendly careers on this list (software engineer, accountant, and increasingly nurse practitioner via telehealth), the salary map takes on a different meaning. A remote software engineer earning a California-based salary of $155K while living in Indiana (RPP 92.8, rent $1,100) has a purchasing power profile that doesn't exist on any single state's map. They're paid like California but spend like Indiana.
This isn't a hypothetical. It's how a growing portion of the American workforce actually lives. The BLS data captures what employers pay by location of the establishment, not the employee. As remote work continues to separate where-you-work-for from where-you-live, the salary map becomes less about state-level comparisons and more about individual arbitrage opportunities.
The states that win in the remote era are the ones with low cost of living, low or no income tax, and reliable internet infrastructure. Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Georgia all fit that profile. The losers are high-cost, high-tax states where the salary premium made sense when you had to live there — but doesn't when you can earn the same money from a $1,100/month apartment in Indianapolis.
All salary data from BLS OES. RPP from Bureau of Economic Analysis. Full methodology.