Occupation Salary Range Guides by SOC Code

Why Occupation Salary Range Guides Start with a SOC Code

Your employment attorney just emailed. She wants to see the methodology behind the salary range you posted last Tuesday. You pull up the spreadsheet — there is a number in column D, no source, no date, no explanation of how wide the band is or why. That is the documentation problem these occupation salary range guides exist to solve.

Every defensible salary range starts in the same place: a Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code. The SOC system is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' taxonomy for organizing occupations — over 800 of them — into a consistent, numbered hierarchy. When you anchor a range to a SOC code, you can point to the specific BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) dataset, name the geography, name the reference year, and explain the arithmetic that produced your minimum, midpoint, and maximum. That chain of evidence is what "defensible methodology" means in a pay-transparency audit or an enforcement inquiry.

This hub collects our occupation-by-occupation salary range guides — one for each SOC code we cover — so you can find the benchmarking starting point for the role you are posting right now. Each guide walks through how to read the BLS OEWS percentile data for that occupation, how to set a range spread (how wide the band is, expressed as a percentage of the midpoint), and what pay-transparency laws in the states where you operate require you to disclose. By the end of this page you will know which guide to open first and exactly what you will find inside it.

---

What the BLS OEWS Data Actually Contains — and What It Does Not

Before you open any individual guide, it is worth understanding what you are working with. The BLS OEWS program produces employment and wage estimates for over 800 occupations, drawn from a sample of approximately 1.1 million establishments (BLS, May 2025). Estimates are published annually at the national, state, and metropolitan-area level — which means you can look up what the occupation pays in your specific labor market, not just across the country.

The OEWS publishes five wage percentiles for most occupations: the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th. Each percentile tells you the wage below which a given share of workers in that occupation and geography earn — so the 50th percentile (the median) is the wage below which half of workers in that occupation earn. The 10th and 90th percentiles mark the outer edges of the typical distribution. Your salary range — a structured pay band with a minimum, a midpoint, and a maximum — is built on top of these anchors, not instead of them.

What the OEWS does not contain: it does not distinguish by employer size, industry sub-sector, or individual company performance. A software developer at a 30-person professional-services firm and one at a publicly traded technology company may fall into the same SOC code but command very different market rates within the OEWS distribution. Your range needs to reflect where your organization competes for talent in that distribution — a judgment call the data informs but does not make for you. Our guide How to Read BLS OEWS Data walks through the mechanics of that judgment in detail.

All wage figures in these guides come from the BLS OOH (May 2024 reference period) unless a guide notes that a newer release has been incorporated. Always confirm the current figure at bls.gov/oes before posting a range — data vintages matter in an audit.

---

The Occupation Salary Range Guides — Organized by SOC Code

Each entry below names the occupation, its SOC code, the BLS national median as of May 2024, and a link to the full guide. The full guide covers: the complete OEWS percentile distribution for the occupation, a worked example of building a range at a common spread width, notes on state-specific pay-transparency disclosure requirements (with instructions to verify the current rule with the relevant issuing authority), and a step-by-step documentation checklist.

---

SOC 15-1252 — Software Developers

BLS national median (May 2024): $133,080 10th percentile: $79,850 · 90th percentile: $211,450 (BLS OOH, May 2024)

Software developers are among the most frequently posted roles in pay-transparency states — and one of the highest-variance occupations in the OEWS distribution. The spread between the 10th and 90th percentile is more than $130,000, which means the choice of where in the distribution you anchor your range matters enormously for both budget and candidate expectations. The guide walks through how to set a defensible anchor for your specific market and seniority level.

Read the Software Developer Salary Range Guide →

---

SOC 11-2021 — Marketing Managers

BLS national median (May 2024): $161,030 10th percentile: $81,900 · 90th percentile: $239,200 (BLS OOH, May 2024; $239,200 reflects the BLS top-code at the 90th percentile)

Marketing manager is a title that covers an enormous range of actual scope — from a one-person brand function at a 40-person firm to a demand-generation leader managing a seven-figure budget. The OEWS distribution reflects that variance. The guide explains how to use SOC 11-2021 as a starting point, how to apply a geographic adjustment for your labor market, and how to document the scope-level rationale that narrows the range to something you can defend.

Read the Marketing Manager Salary Range Guide →

---

SOC 11-3121 — Human Resources Managers

BLS national median (May 2024): $140,030 10th percentile: $83,790 · 90th percentile: $239,200 (BLS OOH, May 2024; $239,200 reflects the BLS top-code at the 90th percentile)

HR managers held approximately 221,900 jobs in 2024 and the occupation is projected to grow 5% through 2034 (BLS OOH, May 2024) — which means this is a role many organizations in our core readership will post more than once. The guide covers how to build a range for an HR generalist or HR manager role at a 25–100-person organization, including the additional documentation considerations that arise when the person you are hiring will themselves be responsible for compensation administration.

Read the HR Manager Salary Range Guide →

---

SOC 13-2011 — Accountants and Auditors

BLS national median (May 2024): $81,680 10th percentile: $52,780 · 90th percentile: $141,420 (BLS OOH, May 2024)

Accountants and auditors present a cleaner OEWS distribution than the top-coded management occupations above — the full spread from 10th to 90th is visible, which makes the benchmarking arithmetic more straightforward. The guide walks through how to differentiate a staff accountant range from a senior accountant or controller range using the OEWS percentiles as reference points, without inventing a separate SOC code that does not exist.

Read the Accountant Salary Range Guide →

---

SOC 15-1244 — Network and Computer Systems Administrators

BLS national median (May 2024): $96,800 10th percentile: $60,320 · 90th percentile: $150,320 (BLS OOH, May 2024)

Network and systems administration roles are common across every sector — healthcare, construction, retail, professional services — but the SOC code sits in a technology family that can feel distant from the organization's core operations. The guide is written for the HR generalist or office manager who needs to post this role without a dedicated IT compensation benchmark, and it explains how to use the OEWS distribution alongside geographic adjustment to produce a range that holds up to scrutiny.

Read the Network Administrator Salary Range Guide →

---

SOC 43-4051 — Customer Service Representatives

BLS national median hourly wage (May 2024): $20.59/hr 10th percentile: $14.75/hr · 90th percentile: $30.16/hr (BLS OOH, May 2024)

The BLS reports customer service representative wages on an hourly basis. For organizations that post annual salary figures — as most pay-transparency law postings require — converting to a full-time-equivalent annual figure requires a clear assumption: a standard full-time work year of 2,080 hours (52 weeks × 40 hours). As a worked example using the national median: $20.59/hr × 2,080 hours = approximately $42,827 as a full-time-equivalent annual figure. That $42,827 is illustrative arithmetic, not a separately published BLS annual figure — your posting should note the hourly basis and the conversion assumption if your state requires an annual range. The guide covers both hourly and annual posting approaches by state.

Read the Customer Service Representative Salary Range Guide →

---

How to Turn a BLS Percentile Into a Salary Range: The Core Method

Reading a percentile is the first step. Turning it into a compliant salary range — a structured band with a minimum, a midpoint, and a maximum — is the second, and it requires a documented decision about range spread.

Range spread is how wide the band is, expressed as a percentage of the midpoint (or sometimes the minimum — be consistent in your documentation). A 50% spread means your maximum is 50% higher than your minimum. A narrower spread (20–30%) is common for high-volume, lower-variance roles like customer service; a wider spread (50–80%) is common for professional and management roles where individual skill and experience legitimately drive large compensation differences.

A simple worked example: suppose the BLS OEWS national median for your occupation is $100,000 (a round-number illustration). You decide to anchor your midpoint at the 50th percentile and use a 50% spread. Your minimum = midpoint ÷ 1.25 = $80,000; your maximum = minimum × 1.50 = $120,000. The midpoint of that band is $100,000. That arithmetic, documented alongside the BLS dataset, geography, and reference year, is a defensible methodology.

What makes it defensible is the documentation — the data source, the vintage, the geographic level, the spread decision, and the rationale. Our guide How to Build a Salary Range covers the full methodology step by step, including how to handle geographic adjustments when a role is remote or multi-state.

If you want to work through this for your own roles in a structured spreadsheet before committing to software, the Salary Range Builder Workbook (Excel) gives you a pre-built template with the BLS percentile lookup structure, the spread arithmetic, and a documentation summary tab — ready to adapt to your occupations and geographies.

---

Occupation Salary Range Guides and Pay-Transparency Compliance

These guides provide the benchmarking foundation. Pay-transparency compliance — what you are legally required to disclose, in what format, in which states — is a separate layer on top of that foundation.

As of 2026, 16 states plus Washington D.C. mandate salary disclosure in job postings, with Delaware joining in 2027 (Paycor / Nesco Resource, 2026). The specific requirements — which employers are covered, what must be disclosed, whether benefits must be included, and what penalties apply for non-compliance — vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. Each occupation guide in this hub notes the disclosure requirements for the highest-volume pay-transparency states (Colorado, California, New York, Washington, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Washington D.C.) as they apply to that occupation's typical posting context. Every jurisdiction-specific figure in those guides is sourced to the issuing authority, and each guide instructs you to verify the current rule with that authority — or with employment counsel — before posting.

The BLS OEWS data, the documented range-building methodology, and the jurisdiction-specific disclosure requirements together form the three-part foundation of a compliant posting. None of the three substitutes for the other two.

---

Start Building Compliant Occupation Salary Ranges Today

Pick the occupation guide that matches the role you are posting right now. Work through the BLS percentile data, apply a documented range spread, note your geographic adjustment rationale, and save the methodology alongside the posting. That file — data source, vintage, spread decision, rationale — is what you hand to counsel when they ask.

When you are ready to move from a one-off range build to a repeatable process across every role your organization posts, Salary Range Builder handles the BLS OEWS data lookup, the geographic adjustment, the range-spread arithmetic, and the compliance-formatted PDF output — so the documentation is built into the workflow, not reconstructed after the fact.

Start your 14-day free trial →

No credit card required. Same-day activation. Your first compliant salary range in under an hour.