Which US Industries Pay the Most? #
The highest paying industries in America are not the ones most salary guides name, because most salary guides rank occupations rather than industries. Rank by industry — average annual pay across everyone on the payroll — and the top of the table is almost entirely finance, with a small number of media and technology industries alongside it.
The single highest-paying industry in the federal record is investment banking and securities dealing, where average annual pay reaches $445,088 (Census CBP, 2023). That figure is an average across every employee in the industry, from analysts to support staff, which is what makes it remarkable — it is not a top-of-market salary, it is the middle of a very unusual distribution.
The Lowest-Paying Industries in America #
The bottom of the table is more crowded than the top and far more populated. Where the highest-paying industries employ tens of thousands, the lowest-paying ones employ millions.
At the very bottom sits sewing, needlework and piece goods stores, with average annual pay of $16,409 (Census CBP, 2023). Alongside it are limited-service restaurants, fitness centers, motion picture theaters and several clothing store formats — all industries where part-time and part-year work is the norm rather than the exception.
The scale difference is the part worth sitting with: the industries at the bottom of the pay table are among the largest employers in the country, while the ones at the top are comparatively tiny.
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Why the Gap Between Industries Is So Wide #
A gap this large is not explained by skill or education alone. Three structural factors do most of the work.
The first is revenue per employee. Industries where a small headcount intermediates enormous sums can pay extraordinarily well without payroll consuming much of revenue; industries where labor is the product cannot. The second is hours: full-year, full-time industries sit structurally above part-time ones on any annual measure, regardless of hourly rate. The third is bargaining position, which follows scarcity — and scarcity in the top-paying industries is a function of licensing, capital and network access rather than headcount.
Industry Pay Is Not the Same as Occupation Pay #
This is the distinction that makes most published pay comparisons unusable, and it is worth being precise about.
An industry wage covers everyone employed in that industry — an accountant at a software publisher counts toward software pay, not accounting pay. An occupation wage covers everyone doing that job, wherever they do it. The two answer different questions, and they come from different federal programs. Ranking industries and then reading the result as a career guide is a category error.
The figures on this page are industry wages, computed as annual payroll divided by employment from the Census business register. They are not salaries, and they are not what any individual should expect to be offered.
Using Industry Wage Data for Benchmarking #
For an operator, the useful comparison is never the national table. It is your own industry against the industries you actually compete with for staff.
A restaurant does not lose people to investment banking; it loses them to warehousing, retail and healthcare support in the same catchment. Benchmarking against the sector you are classified in, and against the neighbouring industries drawing from the same labor pool, is the comparison that changes decisions. National extremes are context, not a benchmark.
Industry-level wage, payroll and employment figures for any NAICS-classified US industry, with the state-level breakdown and multi-year series, are available in the VantaInsights report for that industry.