# Pay range within jobs (TryHired analysis of BLS OEWS May 2025)

- Inside the typical U.S. occupation, workers at the 90th percentile of pay earn 2.25 times what workers at the 10th percentile earn: the median 90th-to-10th percentile ratio across 757 occupations (BLS OEWS May 2025, annual wages). For the middle half of occupations the ratio is 1.91 to 2.74.
- Most of that range is present inside each state. Across 482 occupations with reliable estimates in 10 or more states, the typical within-state 90th-to-10th percentile ratio is 2.04, against 2.20 nationally; the median occupation keeps 92% of its national pay range (on a log scale) inside a single state.
- Higher-paying occupations tend to have wider pay ranges: the rank correlation between an occupation's median wage and its 90th-to-10th percentile ratio is 0.62 across the 757 occupations.

Method: BLS OEWS May 2025 national and state annual wage percentiles (10th and 90th); state cells pass a reliability gate; top-coded cells are never used as numbers; the result holds within 3 percentage points across six alternative settings. Pattern only; nominal wages; no causal claims.

Data (CSV, JSON, data package): https://tryhired.co/careers/data/pay-range-within-jobs/#data
Reproduction record and source file hashes: https://tryhired.co/careers/data/pay-range-within-jobs/repro.json
Dataset version: 2026-10-27+acf14c4b4621

Free to reuse with attribution to TryHired and BLS. Corrections: maid@tryhired.co