What a attorney earns, by metro

A attorney in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara has a median wage of $301,320. In Lower West Mississippi nonmetropolitan area the median is $63,110. That is a 4.77-fold difference for the same job title, which is unusually wide even by the standards of a country this large — and it means a national average for this role is close to meaningless.

The band is wide — outcomes vary a lot

The top tenth of attorneys earn $351,600 or more; the bottom tenth earn under $78,360. That is a 4.49× gap within the same occupation, in the same year. A spread this wide means the job title is not what determines pay — specialisation, employer type, seniority or book of business is. Expect the early years to sit near the bottom of the band rather than the middle, and treat the $159,670 median as a waypoint, not a destination.

Why the range is 4.77× wide

6 of the ten best-paying metros for attorneys are in CA. When one state dominates the top of the table like this, cost of living is doing part of the work but rarely all of it — state licensing rules, public-sector pay scales and the presence of a few large employers usually explain the rest. If you are comparing an offer in CA against one elsewhere, adjust for housing before concluding anything.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

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 23-1011. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates cover 504 of 528 metropolitan areas — near-complete coverage, which means the ranges above are reliable rather than drawn from a handful of markets. Read the methodology.