In 379 of 391 occupations, the average earner is not a typical earner
Mean pay exceeds median pay in almost every occupation the survey covers. How far it exceeds it says something about how the job is paid.
Published 2026-08-12 · BLS OEWS May 2025
Ask what a job pays and you will usually be given an average. The survey publishes two numbers, though, and they are not interchangeable. The median is the midpoint: half of workers earn less. The mean is the arithmetic average, and a small number of very high earners can drag it a long way from anything a person in that job would recognise.
Personal Financial Advisors are the clearest case. The median is $105,070; the mean is $156,670 — 49.1% higher. Quote the average and you have described a wage that most of the 266,800 people doing that job do not earn.
How common the gap is
Across the 391 occupations with at least 50,000 workers nationally and both figures published, the mean exceeds the median in 379 of them. It falls below in 11. The typical gap is 6.4% — small enough to ignore in most jobs, which is exactly why the exceptions matter.
Where the two numbers diverge most
| Occupation | Median | Mean | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Financial Advisors | $105,070 | $156,670 | +49.1% |
| Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents | $78,660 | $109,150 | +38.8% |
| Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary | $107,310 | $147,570 | +37.5% |
| Real Estate Sales Agents | $52,830 | $69,510 | +31.6% |
| Insurance Sales Agents | $62,280 | $81,480 | +30.8% |
| General and Operations Managers | $105,770 | $134,940 | +27.6% |
| Coaches and Scouts | $47,320 | $60,160 | +27.1% |
| Chief Executives | $213,990 | $269,630 | +26% |
The list is not random either. Financial advice, securities dealing, real estate and insurance sales sit at the top — all jobs paid substantially on commission, where the distance between a good year and a bad one is the whole story.
And where they nearly agree
| Occupation | Median | Mean | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transportation Security Screeners | $66,770 | $64,310 | -3.7% |
| Personal Care and Service Workers, All Other | $41,600 | $40,120 | -3.6% |
| Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers | $95,320 | $91,970 | -3.5% |
| Occupational Therapy Assistants | $72,300 | $70,710 | -2.2% |
| Tellers | $43,030 | $42,350 | -1.6% |
These are jobs on scales: pay bands, union agreements, public payrolls. A mean below the median is unusual enough to be worth noticing — it means the distribution has a longer tail downward than upward, which for salaried work usually points at part-year or part-time employment inside the same occupation code.
What this does not say
The gap measures the shape of a distribution, not fairness and not opportunity. A wide gap can mean a few people earn extraordinarily well; it can equally mean the occupation code lumps together work that is really two different jobs. The survey cannot tell those apart and neither can this.
Occupations where the survey censored the median at its publication ceiling are excluded here, because a capped median is a floor and comparing it to a mean would manufacture a gap that is an artefact of the ceiling.
The practical version
When a figure is quoted at you as “the average salary”, ask which average. For most jobs it barely matters. For a financial adviser it is the difference between $105,070 and $156,670 — and only one of them describes the person in the middle.
Every occupation page here shows both, along with the 10th and 90th percentiles, which say more than either. The full dataset is public domain, so the table above can be reproduced or contradicted.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Public domain under 17 U.S.C. §105. Not affiliated with or endorsed by BLS. Full methodology.