How does your salary actually compare?
Ask an American where their salary sits and the answer is usually wrong in the same direction. Nearly everybody puts themselves somewhere in the middle, because the people you measure yourself against are the people who earn roughly what you earn. The real distribution runs much wider, and much lower, than the slice of it you can see from where you stand. Enter your gross annual income and age. This salary percentile calculator on Find The Norm uses US Census Bureau CPS ASEC data to rank your salary against all individual earners by age group.
Querying BLS salary data…
How much actually lands in your account?
See what survives tax, NI, pension and benefits.
What is the average US salary?
The median individual income in the United States was $45,140 in 2024 on the US Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, which is the midpoint of everyone aged 15 and over with any income, half of them above it and half below, and a good deal lower than the figure most people would guess. Mean income sits nearer $67,000, hauled upward by the earners at the very top. For anyone trying to work out where they stand, the median is the honest benchmark.
Household income is a different animal altogether. The median US household took in $83,730 in 2024, and a great many of those households hold two earners or more. People measure their own salary against that figure, decide they are falling behind, and are comparing one wage to two. Income percentiles and wealth distribution figures sit together on the net worth statistics page.
Salary and total income also part company. A salary is W-2 wages and tips from employment. Total income adds investment returns, rental income and self-employment profit, and the Census income figures on this page count all of it. So if a decent share of your money arrives from investments or a business you own, your real position sits above what this tool returns. The number is worth having in your head before an offer conversation.
Salary percentile by age group
Earnings climb along a fairly predictable curve, starting from a median of $18,950 for people under 25, rising hard through the 30s and 40s, peaking in the 45 to 54 band at $61,440, then easing back into the 60s as people cut their hours or leave demanding jobs. That figure for the youngest band reads low partly because the CPS ASEC counts everybody with any income at all, part-timers and students included. Set against your own age cohort, your number carries far more meaning than it does against the national median.
| Percentile | Individual income (USD) |
|---|---|
| 10th | $8,800 |
| 25th | $21,500 |
| 50th (median) | $45,140 |
| 75th | $81,500 |
| 90th | ~$145,000 |
| 95th | ~$197,000 |
| 99th | Not published by Census |
| Age band | Median income | 75th percentile | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 to 24 | $18,950 | $36,300 | $56,900 |
| 25 to 34 | $50,610 | $80,400 | Over $100,000 |
| 35 to 44 | $60,510 | Over $100,000 | Over $100,000 |
| 45 to 54 | $61,440 | Over $100,000 | Over $100,000 |
| 55 to 64 | $51,630 | $96,100 | Over $100,000 |
| 65+ | $33,310 | $64,200 | Over $100,000 |
What salary is top 10 percent?
Roughly $145,000 in gross annual income puts an individual into the top 10% of Americans with income, with the top 5% starting near $197,000, on Census CPS ASEC figures for 2024. Census doesn't publish a line for the top 1%. Treat the upper thresholds as estimates, because Census reports incomes above $100,000 in $50,000 bands and survey data catches the well-paid far better than it catches the wealthy.
Is $75,000 a good salary?
A $75,000 salary lands an individual earner at about the 72nd percentile of Americans with income, ahead of roughly seven in ten of them, which on the national numbers is well above average and stays that way until you ask where the money is being spent. $75,000 in rural Mississippi and $75,000 in San Francisco buy different lives. Cost of living, household make-up and debt all decide how far it stretches. The income class calculator puts that salary into its household-size-adjusted bracket.
Age moves the answer as well. At 18 to 34 that salary sits comfortably above the median for the cohort. By 45 to 54, the peak earning years, it comes out only a little above the middle, around the 59th percentile, and past 65 it is back above median again. Our income by state calculator shows how the same figure ranks depending on where you live.
Hourly wage to annual salary conversions
Multiply an hourly rate by 2,080, which is 52 weeks of 40 hours, and you have the annual equivalent, so $15/hr becomes $31,200/yr and sits near the 36th percentile while $20/hr reaches $41,600/yr and still lands below the median. $25/hr gives $52,000/yr, just over the median. $30/hr gives $62,400/yr, around the 65th percentile. $40/hr reaches $83,200/yr and the 76th, $50/hr reaches $104,000/yr and the 82nd. Our hourly to salary calculator runs the arithmetic and returns the national percentile for any rate.
Frequently asked questions
Everything you earn before anything is taken out. That covers federal and state income tax, Social Security, Medicare, health insurance premiums and 401(k) contributions. It is the figure at the top of your pay stub, never the one that reaches your bank. The calculator asks for gross because Census and BLS both report pre-tax earnings, and feeding it a net figure would put you in the wrong percentile.
Because almost everybody places themselves in the middle. Studies find Americans calling themselves middle class across an enormous range of actual incomes, and most people overestimate what the average American earns. Some of that is visibility, since high earners talk more and louder online and in the media. Most of it is that your reference group is your own social circle, and your social circle earns roughly what you do.
A great deal. Someone aged 28 on $50,000 is doing well against their peers, while a 50-year-old on the same money sits below the median for their age band. Cohort medians run from $18,950 for 15 to 24 year olds up to $61,440 for 45 to 54 year olds. The calculator returns a national percentile and an age-adjusted one so you can read both.
Partly. The CPS ASEC picks up wages, salaries, self-employment income and most regular cash, while its handling of stock options, RSUs and irregular bonuses is patchy. So if a large share of your package arrives as equity or variable pay, a base-salary percentile understates where you actually stand. Enter your expected total cash including annual bonus. Our net worth by age calculator covers the wealth side of the same question.
The calculator runs on CPS ASEC 2024 and BLS Q1 2025 usual weekly earnings. Census releases ASEC once a year, usually in September and covering the year before. BLS publishes usual weekly earnings quarterly. Percentile cutoffs drift a little each year with wage growth and inflation, so read the thresholds as a current estimate rather than a fixed line.
Pew Research Center draws the line at two-thirds to double the national median household income, adjusted for household size, which for a household of three came to about $61,000 to $183,000 on 2022 incomes, in 2023 dollars. Where you live moves it hard. $60,000 is comfortable across most of the Midwest and South and thin in California, where BEA's regional price parities put 2024 prices 10.7% above the national average and rents 54% above.
Not in this calculator, which ranks you against the national distribution and makes no cost-of-living adjustment. A $70,000 salary in rural Tennessee and a $70,000 salary in Manhattan return the same percentile while buying wildly different lives. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes Regional Price Parities for this gap. California sat at 110.7 in 2024, about 11% above the national average, and Mississippi at 87.0, 13% below. Our income by state calculator ranks the same salary state by state.
Switching employer is the lever with the most evidence behind it. The Atlanta Fed's Wage Growth Tracker, built from BLS Current Population Survey data, usually shows job switchers taking larger annual increases than people who stay, and the gap widens when the labor market is tight. Changing industry works too, since a move into technology, finance, healthcare or energy lifts your percentile at the same seniority. If you're staying put, take market pay data into your salary review.
- US Census Bureau. Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement 2024 (calculator) and 2025 (tables PINC-01, PINC-11 and A-2 on this page, 2024 incomes). census.gov.
- Bureau of Economic Analysis. Regional Price Parities by State, 2024.
- Pew Research Center. The State of the American Middle Class, 2024.
- Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Wage Growth Tracker.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics. Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers, Q1 2025. bls.gov.