High-paying jobs? They’re a dime a dozen

More than a million people in the United States earn $500,000 or more, and they might be closer to home than you think.

High salaries consistently capture public attention, putting multi-million-dollar compensation in the spotlight. But while these exceptionally high earners might be rare, high-paying jobs aren’t. An analysis of ADP payroll data reveals that about 1 in 127 jobs in the United States pays more than $500,000 a year, and the reality of these high wages is closer to home than you might think.

It can be difficult to get a clear picture of just how prevalent massive paychecks are. Government data sets typically obscure the highest incomes by capping the level of wages reported. The Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, for example, set income caps at various levels less than $1 million. In half of U.S. states, the caps that year were even lower—less than $500,000.^{1The highest reported income cap in the 2022 American Community Survey was for Washington, D.C., at $791,000 a year. The lowest was for Mississippi, at $363,000 a year. The ACS currently sets the cap at the 99.5th percentile of each state’s pre-tax wage and salary income distribution.} This practice protects high earners from being identified publicly, but it also limits our understanding of exceptionally high wages.

Anonymized payroll data from ADP allows us to get a better view of exceptionally high wages. Because it’s based on administrative records, ADP data reflects a much larger share of the population than Census survey samples. And while ADP data doesn’t represent a random sample of earners, we have adjusted it to reflect the full population and provide a much more detailed view of top earners than publicly available government data.

What we found

What’s striking is how many people in the United States earn exceptionally high salaries. While just 0.79 percent of jobs in the country paid more than $500,000 per year, that’s well more than 1 million positions.²Per the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, average annual employment in the United States during 2023 was 153,140,899, or 131,289,681 if only the private sector is included. For both numbers, 0.79 percent is greater than 1 million. This isn’t just a small handful of executives—it’s a substantial number of professionals found in every major metro across the country.

Certain regions stand out for the sheer volume of workers pulling in substantial incomes. A ranking of large U.S. metros by the share of residents working at jobs that paid $500,000 or more has Austin and New York near the top. But when it comes to high-paying jobs, one region is in a league of its own.

Silicon Valley exceptionalism

The San Francisco Bay Area, home to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, vastly outranked every other metro in terms of high-paying jobs, including those paying more than $1 million or $2 million annually. About 1 in 48 Bay Area jobs paying more than $500,000 a year, nearly double the share in the second-highest region, Austin.

What drives this exceptional concentration of high earnings? Unlike other highly paid professions—such as doctors or lawyers, whose income is limited by the number of patients or clients they can serve—productivity in the tech industry, particularly at large employers, faces fewer constraints. A single star engineer or executive has the power to dramatically shift a company’s trajectory, and tech giants with enormous revenue at stake often reward these select individuals with extraordinary compensation.

In that sense, it’s no coincidence that tech-heavy Austin is second to Silicon Valley, followed by New York, which combines a strong tech presence with its role as the world’s foremost financial center. The Bay Area’s considerable lead likely reflects not just the dominance of tech in its economy and workforce, but also its position as the nucleus for the industry’s top talent and the corporate giants that rely most heavily on their expertise.

Compensation for star tech talent isn’t the only factor at play. Local housing costs play a critical role in determining who can afford to live where, and nowhere is that more a factor than in the Bay Area. Decades of skyrocketing housing prices have squeezed out low- and middle-income residents and discouraged potential newcomers. As a result, high earners account for a greater share of the population than they would otherwise.

The rise of remote work has given people greater freedom to live in one place while working for an employer elsewhere, hollowing out the middle of the Bay Area’s wage distribution and attracting high earners to other desirable locations. The relative abundance of people making $1 million or more in Honolulu, Las Vegas, parts of Florida, and affluent rural areas likely reflects a mix of natural amenities, lifestyle appeal, or favorable tax policies.

Despite tech’s dominance in shaping high-wage hubs, very high-paying positions are found in substantial numbers across every major U.S. metro. Whether driven by finance in New York, healthcare in Boston, or energy in Houston, high earners aren’t confined to one industry or region. Though tech is at the forefront, very high salaries are more prevalent than one might realize—perhaps just down the street, or down the line.

Methodology

We used a sample consisting of hundreds of millions of active and anonymized ADP payroll records spanning the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024. To address uneven pay over the calendar, annual pay amounts reported correspond to 12 times the average monthly pay over the prior 12 months, or over the duration to date of the current employment spell if less than 12 months. An entry from July 2023 reflects pay over the 12-month period ending that month, for example. Pay amounts reflect gross pay as reported by employers, which refers to pre-tax pay including bonuses, commissions and equity-based pay such as stock grants and options, as well as subsequent employee deductions for benefits. Records were adjusted for pay periodicity, for example monthly vs bi-weekly, and partial months of employment were omitted. Observations were re-weighted to be more nationally representative using information on local employment by industry and firm size from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Metropolitan areas reflect workers’ location of residence. They are limited to metros with more than 1 million residents. Metro area definitions correspond to Consolidated Statistical Areas where available and Core-Based Statistical Areas otherwise.