Salary Finder: Career One Stop's Pay Data, from Search to Offer

14 min read

Where Salary Finder (Career One Stop) Gets Its Numbers

The Labor Department runs CareerOneStop as its career website, through its Employment and Training Administration. Salary Finder is one of its free tools, and you can use it without an account. People search for it as “salary finder career one stop” or “CareerOneStop salary finder,” and both lead to the same place.

It answers one question well: what do people in this job, in this area, get paid? It cannot tell you what one company pays, so check the going rate against job postings that list pay.

What a Salary Finder (Career One Stop) Search Returns

Each search returns pay for your regional area, your state, and the whole country, and a chart can set your area beside the national figures. The Salary Finder search page says it covers more than 800 occupations, and the help page rounds that to 800. Career explorers use it to see what careers pay and how pay grows with experience. Job seekers use it to judge what a fair offer looks like and to answer questions about salary requirements.

A Federal Wage Survey, Refreshed Once a Year

The figures come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, or OEWS. The Labor Department’s statistics office runs it, and each state collects the data. CareerOneStop updates the numbers once a year. The current release went up in June 2026 and reflects May 2025 estimates.

That source is the reason to start here. The numbers come from a government wage survey, so they do not depend on who felt like posting their pay. The price is time: by the time you read them, they are about a year old.

Run a CareerOneStop Salary Finder Search, Step by Step

1. Open the tool. Head to Salary Finder on CareerOneStop.
2. Enter the occupation. Type a job name or keyword, click “List of occupations” to browse titles, or paste an O*NET code if you have one.
3. Enter the location. Type a city and its state, just a state name, or a five-digit ZIP. A city or ZIP returns results for the larger regional area it belongs to.
4. Click Search. A table shows three pay figures (low, median, high), both hourly and yearly, for your area, with the state and national figures beside it.
5. Use the extra views. “View National Data” lists hourly and yearly pay for each state. “View chart” draws your area or state against the national figures.

Most Bad Salary Readings Start With the Wrong Job Title

Most misleading Salary Finder readings start with the wrong occupation. The tool uses standard government job titles, so the title on your business card may not appear word for word. Titles like “HR business partner” or “customer success manager” usually map to the nearest official title instead.

When you type a keyword, the tool offers matching titles; pick the one whose daily duties match the job, even if its name sounds a little off. If two titles both fit, run both.

Pick the occupation by its duties, because every number after that depends on getting the title right.

A tip for stubborn searches: every occupation has an O*NET code, and O*NET OnLine lists them. If a keyword keeps giving you the wrong title, find the code there and paste it into the occupation box instead.

A Worked Salary Finder Example: One Career, One City

Here is one search run through Salary Finder, the kind a career changer would run before making the move.

Picture a high school teacher with 12 years in the classroom, now looking at corporate training jobs in Columbus, Ohio. In government terms, the job is Training and Development Specialists. Here are the May 2025 survey figures for that title, read from the O*NET OnLine wage page, which draws on the same federal survey that Salary Finder uses.

Three things stand out. Columbus pays about $7,600 more than the Ohio median, so a statewide figure would undersell a Columbus job. The Columbus median also sits about $3,100 above the national one. And the spread is huge: the high figure is more than three times the low one.

With a spread that wide, the median alone tells you little; where you land between the low and the high decides your number. The next section shows how to work that out.

Reading Salary Finder Results: The Three Columns Are Percentiles

The three columns on a Salary Finder result are percentiles. Picture every worker in the job, in your area, lined up from lowest paid to highest paid. A percentile tells you how far along that line a figure sits.

What Each of the Three Columns Means

Low

10% of workers earn less and 90% earn more. CareerOneStop describes it as the pay usually earned by entry-level, inexperienced workers.

Median

Half the workers earn less and half earn more. This is the middle of the line.

High

90% of workers earn less and 10% earn more. CareerOneStop says it is usually earned by very experienced, trained workers.

Those plain-English readings come from CareerOneStop’s own guide to reading salary information. If the median is the figure you are after, know that it is the middle worker’s pay and not an average.

A handful of very high earners can drag an average up, but they barely move the median, so the median is the better picture of what a typical person in the job makes.

In Columbus, the training specialist exactly in the middle earns $72,390. One in ten earns under $36,250, and one in ten earns over $124,740.

Low, median, and high are points on a line of real workers, so your task is to work out where on that line you would stand.

Which Salary Percentile Matches Your Experience Level?

Salary Finder does not link years of experience to percentiles, so use the table below as a rule of thumb. No government formula sits behind it.

Salary Finder shows three points. The O*NET wage page adds two more, at the quarter mark and the three-quarter mark, which in Columbus are $47,350 and $93,780 for training specialists. Those in-between figures fit most people better, since most of us are neither brand new nor at the very top.

Career changers need one more adjustment. Our teacher has 12 years of work behind them, but not 12 years as a training specialist.

Most employers will count part of it: running a room, planning lessons, and checking whether people learned are the daily work of training. A sensible opening target is the 25th to 50th percentile, roughly $47,000 to $72,000 in Columbus, with the top of that band argued from the classroom work that maps straight onto the new job.

Compare Salaries Across Cities, States, and Careers in CareerOneStop

A pay figure means more once it sits next to another one. The Salary Finder chart sets your area against the nation, and View National Data lists every state, which helps if you might move or work remotely for an employer based somewhere else.

Inside one state the gap can be large. For training specialists, the Columbus median is $72,390, while in the Eastern Ohio nonmetropolitan area it is $52,000. That is more than $20,000 apart for one job title inside one state. CareerOneStop notes that pay generally runs higher in urban areas than in small towns and rural areas.

The same job can pay $20,000 more in one part of a state than another, so always search the area where you would actually work.

Why Your Town Shows Up as a Wider Region

Salary data is not published for single cities or ZIP codes, so Salary Finder shows the closest area it has, labeled as one of two types:

• Metro area. Usually a Metropolitan Statistical Area: a large population center plus the nearby communities closely tied to it. In New England you may see a Metro New England City and Town Area, which works the same way but is built from cities and towns.
• Balance of State. The parts of a state outside any metro area, sometimes called a nonmetropolitan area.

A suburb returns its metro area, so Worthington, Ohio gives you Columbus. A small town far from any city returns the balance of the state. If you live between two metro areas, run both.

Other CareerOneStop Salary Tools Worth Using Alongside Salary Finder

Salary Finder prices one job in one place at a time. Three sibling tools and one guide fill in the rest.

They work best as a chain. Highest-Paying Careers or your own shortlist gives you titles, Occupation Profile tells you what each job involves, Salary Finder prices each one in your area, and the CareerOneStop Compare Salaries page (listed on the site as Wages by Occupation and Local Area) lines up the finalists side by side. For a wider set of options, see our comparison of free and paid career planning tools.

CareerOneStop Salary Finder Limits: Year-Old Data, No Overtime, No Benefits

Because it rests on a large government survey, the data in Salary Finder (Career One Stop) holds up for what it measures. You can lean on it. The site is open about its gaps, though, and they change how you use the number.

The first gap is age. The June 2026 update reflects pay from May 2025, so the figures trail the market by about a year. If pay in your field has moved since then, the going rate today may differ from the screen.

Salary Finder shows cash pay from about a year ago, so it is the starting point of your research and not the full value of a job.

Commissions Count; Overtime and Shift Differentials Do Not

This matters most in jobs where extra pay is a big share of the paycheck. A nurse on night shifts who picks up overtime, or a tradesperson who works overtime every week, can take home well above the Salary Finder figure for the title.

Yearly Figures Describe Full-Time, Year-Round Workers

The yearly column covers only people who work full time, all year. The hourly column also includes part-time and part-year workers. If you plan to work part time, start from the hourly figure and multiply it by the hours you expect, instead of scaling the yearly figure down.

A Blank Result Usually Means Too Few Workers in the Sample

When a row reads “No data available,” the usual cause is a small sample: too few workers in that job, in that area, were surveyed to publish a figure. Widen the search. Try the state figure, then the national one, and check a neighboring metro area if one is close.

Using Salary Finder Data for a Job Offer or Salary Negotiation

You will reach for Salary Finder, Career One Stop’s pay tool, twice in a job search: once when an application or a recruiter asks for your salary requirements, and again when an offer arrives. Both times you want a range you can defend. Build it in four steps.

1. Pick your percentile band from the experience table above. For the teacher moving into training in Columbus, that is roughly the 25th to the 50th percentile.
2. Allow for the data’s age. If your field has been hiring hard since May 2025, aim for the upper part of your band. Recent job postings that list pay will tell you.
3. Price the whole package. Ask what the offer includes in health cover, retirement contributions, and paid leave, since benefits can be almost a third of total pay.
4. Check it covers your life. The MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates the wage a full-time worker needs to cover basic needs in each county, metro area, and state, for 12 family types. If the bottom of your band falls under that line, you want to know before you apply.

A range built from your percentile, your metro, and the full package is one you can explain, and an explained number is harder to talk down.

CareerOneStop’s own negotiation guide adds a good habit for the offer stage: thank them, say you are interested, and ask for at least 24 hours to decide. Since future raises build on your starting pay, that day is worth taking.

How to Answer Salary Requirement Questions With Salary Finder Numbers

Give a range, name where it comes from, and tie the top of it to your experience. The Columbus teacher might say:

On a written application, the same range goes in the salary box. If the form insists on one number, use the middle of your range. For putting a figure into a cover letter, see our guide to naming a pay figure in your letter.

Avoid quoting the high figure just because it is on the screen, and avoid quoting your old salary, which ties you to a field that may pay very differently.

Salary Finder Tells You What a Career Pays, Not Whether It Fits You

Every step so far assumes you already know which occupation to type in, and that is the hard part. Salary Finder (Career One Stop) will price any title you give it, including the wrong one. A high median in work you are poorly suited to is money you may not keep earning, because people tend to leave jobs that fit them badly.

So reverse the order. Start with what you are good at and the setting you work well in. Then list the occupations that match both, and only then price the list. Pay research is worth the most once it compares jobs you would do well.

CareerOneStop offers a free first pass at this: its interest assessment sorts careers by the kinds of work that appeal to you. We looked at what it does well in our guide to the CareerOneStop Interest Assessment. Interest is a fine filter, but it leaves open how good you would be at the daily tasks, and whether you could sustain the pace and the setting for years.

Pairing a Career Salary Finder With a Strengths Assessment

Here is the sequence, from fit to pay:

1. Pin down what you do best. Take a strengths assessment, or ask two or three coworkers which tasks you handle better than anyone else on the team.
2. Turn those strengths into three to five occupation titles. O*NET OnLine can help you match skills to official titles.
3. Price each title in Salary Finder for your metro area, and note the percentile you would likely start at.
4. Line up the finalists in Wages by Occupation and Local Area, then check benefits and living costs as above.

That first step is what we built Pigment’s Career Design System for.

Each question shows two tasks you might both enjoy, and you pick one. Would you rather run the workshop yourself, or build the materials someone else will teach? No option is the safe one to pick. Over the full set, those picks form a pattern of the strengths you rely on and the settings you thrive in. The report’s Career Alignment section then names specific roles and says why your pattern points to them. Those roles are the titles to type into Salary Finder.

Five Quick Checks Before You Trust a CareerOneStop Salary Finder Number