What a budget analyst earns, by metro

Median pay for budget analysts runs from $50,260 in San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas to $134,850 in Iowa City — a 2.68× range across 196 metropolitan areas. The national median of $91,640 sits inside that range but describes no particular market.

What the percentile band tells you

Ten per cent of budget analysts earn below $62,250 and ten per cent above $136,660 — a 2.2× band. The upside from median to 90th percentile is 49%, which is a normal amount of room for experience and specialisation to matter. An offer below the 25th percentile is worth questioning; one above the 75th is worth taking seriously.

Where the money is

Iowa City (IA) leads and San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas (PR) trails, but the gap is modest. For a role like this the more useful comparison is not between cities but between the 10th and 90th percentile within one — see the band above.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Helena is the cluster

Helena has 11.46× the national concentration of budget analysts — the densest market in the country for this role, with 150 employed locally. Pay there is $79,700, which does not put it near the top of the pay table. Concentration and compensation are different things — a dense market is easier to get hired in and easier to move around within, but the competition that makes it dense also caps what employers need to offer.

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 13-2031. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 196 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 332 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.