The U.S. states where climbing the career ladder earns the biggest pay rise

Sure, you’ve heard of “quiet quitting” and maybe even “quiet ambition” — diligently doing your job each day with a song in your heart while refusing to “chase achievement for achievement’s sake,” according to Fortune.

But have you heard of “quietly working your way up to a senior position with more pay and more inspiring challenges?”

Perhaps not. It hasn’t been so bad to be an entry-level employee lately. Labor shortages have led to faster wage growth among lower-paid and less-educated workers than the better-paid and more highly educated. And following the pandemic, some two-thirds of employees cite their top ambition to be “spending time with my family and friends,” with “being physically/mentally healthy” a close second, according to one survey.

Still, the wage difference between entry-level and experienced-level workers remains profound in many regions and industries. To find which jobs, metropolitan areas and states deliver the greatest rewards to career climbers, we analyzed pay rates across nearly 40,000 U.S. job listings.

What we did

Analysts at Career.io used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Modeled Wage Estimates to calculate the average increase in hourly pay between ‘entry-level’ and ‘experienced-level’ workers for 39,282 occupation listings across 389 U.S. metropolitan areas and every U.S. state. We used this data to find the occupations in each state and three major metros with the greatest pay difference between experience levels.

Key findings

• Florida offers the biggest pay raise between entry-level and experienced-level workers, with an average boost of +35.3%.

• In California, bookkeeping & accounting clerks can hope for a +67% pay rise when graduating from entry-level to experienced-level work.

• In the New York metropolitan area, experienced compliance officers earn an average of +91.82% more than their entry-level counterparts.

• In the Chicago metropolitan area, experienced management analysts earn +65.58% more than entry-level ones.

The U.S. states where climbing the career ladder earns the biggest pay rise

The three states where climbing from an entry-level position to a senior one comes with the highest average hourly wage increase are Florida (+35.3%), Missouri (+34.8%) and Utah (+34.3%). The cost of living crisis has hit hard in Florida, where professions such as bus drivers, firefighters and social workers have seen wage increases lag behind inflation. In Florida, the role with the biggest leap in pay between junior and senior level is that of financial and investment analyst, where experienced professionals earn +78% more than new entrants.

We found two states with a wage hike lower than 15%: Washington (+12.4%) and Vermont (+14.7%). Washington’s biggest city, Seattle, has the highest minimum wage of any major U.S. city, but it is still not enough to cover the cost of living, according to campaigner David Rolf. “The majority of Americans no longer participate in the great American Dream of financial self-sufficiency, hard work, education, home ownership, and leaving your kids a better economic life than the one your parents left you,” said Rolf as the minimum wage rose in the new year. “That is largely now in our rearview mirror.”

Software developers are the biggest beneficiaries of seniority-based pay rises in Washington. An experienced software developer can earn +59% more than an entry-level developer. However, we found that software developers can gain even greater salary bumps in states including Kansas (+80%), Nevada (+78%) and Colorado (+77%). We identified the profession with the greatest pay rise for seniority in every state in the map below. 

Retail sales supervisors are the most well-rewarded career climbers in six states, more than any other occupation. Those states are Georgia, Rhode Island, Maryland, Oregon, Arizona and Delaware. However, the single biggest pay hike we found was for securities, commodities and financial sales agents in Idaho (+156%). This is also one of the fastest-growing occupations in Idaho, with a +17.4% rise in employees across 2022-23.

The U.S. metros where climbing the career ladder earns the biggest and smallest pay rise

Florida is the state with the highest wage hikes for experienced workers overall. But, analyzed at a metropolitan area level, Florida’s opportunity for advancement becomes a more complex picture. The Tallahassee metro (+43.72%) has the biggest pay rise for senior employees of any metro in our study, but there are three Florida metros among the five with the lowest pay rise. The lowest rise of all is in Florida’s Jacksonville metro (+21.32%).

However, one Jacksonville project maker revealed how entry-level workers can give themselves an edge — she checked a potential employer’s LinkedIn profile first and saw that many entry-level employees had been quickly promoted. She joined on $65,000, expecting to hit $100k with a promotion before the year was out.

“They told me, ‘We don’t want you to stay in this role for more than six months,’” Madison Das told CNBC Make It. “My department director and my direct supervisor are both women, and they both told me, ‘The intention is to bring people in to have them grow.’”

The occupations with the biggest pay rise for climbing the career ladder in New York-Newark-Jersey City

We found three occupations in the New York metro that have a significantly higher pay gap for senior-level employees than any other job: Compliance officers (+91.82%), Insurance underwriters (+76.46%) and Financial and investment analysts (+60.54%).

However, some may need to fight more than others to secure these compensation levels — one 2023 report found that New York’s gender pay gap hadn’t improved in 15 years. “Women don’t make more than men in any occupation that I could find,” said Lina Moe, the lead author of the Center for New York City Affairs study.

Compliance officers “examine, evaluate, and investigate eligibility for or conformity with laws and regulations governing contract compliance of licenses and permits, and perform other compliance and enforcement inspection and analysis activities not classified elsewhere,” according to Franklin University Career Guide. One city employer is offering $125,000 — $140,000 for a compliance officer with “three (3) or more years of progressively responsible experience in a financial services compliance role.”

The occupations with the biggest pay rise for climbing the career ladder in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim

Educational, guidance and career counselors and advisors (+76.26%) are the biggest financial beneficiaries of job promotions in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro area. California invested heavily in school counselors following the mental health fallout of the pandemic. “Since the arrival of the pandemic, our support personnel have become connectors and comforters-in-chief, not just to students but to parents and school staff,” said Sonia Llamas, the district’s assistant superintendent of K-12 school performance and culture.

Senior-level bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks (+63.98%) are the second biggest earners relative to juniors in this metro. Higher wages for more experienced accountants may be one way to prevent senior employees from leaving the trade. Accountants have long felt “underpaid and undervalued compared with positions in tech and banking,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Experienced accountants are leaving their roles at a faster rate than in previous years.

The occupations with the biggest pay rise for climbing the career ladder in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin

The Chicago metropolitan area has a significantly lower average seniority wage gap than the New York and LA metros analyzed above. The average across the ten biggest wage gaps is +35.44% in Chicago, compared to +56.32% in New York and +51.67% in LA-Long Beach-Anaheim.

However, management analysts can still hope for a rise of +65.58% as they graduate from entry-level to more senior roles. At Ernst and Young, for example, management analyst pay can range from $49,220 to $337,500, according to Business Insider; at Deloitte, the range across a number of analyst roles is $49,219 to $337,500. Both firms maintain offices in Chicago.

Rich pickings

Climbing the corporate ladder may not require giving years of your life to the same thankless employer. Some professionals are achieving fast wage growth by strategically job-hopping to reach more senior roles more quickly than if they waited for promotion. It’s not a flawless strategy and can end abruptly when employers figure out loyalty is not your strong point, or you find yourself in a situation where you could really have used more experience.

“An employee moving jobs too often can mean they aren’t in a position long enough to truly learn the role or gain new skills,” Glassdoor’s Lauren Thomas tells the BBC. “It can ultimately damage a person’s career: it may be challenging to demonstrate to a new employer previous proficiency and achievements.”

In a moment when workers are reevaluating their work-life balance, it literally pays to choose a career that balances your personal needs with a pay structure that suits your level of ambition.

Methodology

Using figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Modeled Wage Estimates, we calculated the average increase in hourly pay between ‘entry-level’ and ‘experienced-level’ workers for 39,282 occupation listings across 389 U.S. Metro Areas and every U.S. state.

We calculated the percentage increase in hourly salary per occupation in each location before calculating the average increase in hourly salary of all occupations per metropolitan area and per U.S. state.

Finally, we isolated the occupation in each U.S. state and a selection of U.S. Metro Areas, which enjoyed the greatest increase (%) in hourly pay from an entry-level role to an experienced-level role.

The data analysis was completed in April 2024 using the latest available estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for salaries per occupation by experience level, published in August 2023.