Houston Compensation Benchmarks 2026
Houston does not pay one premium. Across 133 major occupations it runs -4.9% against national medians on average, but that average hides a spread of 27.8 points between the best-paid and worst-paid occupation groups in this metro.
Which means the shortcut most pay structures rely on, a single Houston geographic adjustment factor, is wrong in both directions at once: it underpays the roles this market values and overpays relative to market on the roles it does not.
Computed from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX (CBSA 26420). 651 occupations carry metro-level data; 133 have Houston employment above 5,000 and are used here. Free to read, free to use, no account required.
Houston pay by occupation group
Median wage vs national · employment-weighted within group
→ Architecture & Engineering at +5.6% and Healthcare Support at -22.2%. Same metro, same month, 27.8 points apart.
Where Houston pays more
Largest premium vs national median
Where Houston pays less
Largest discount vs national median
The ten roles Houston employs most
Metro median vs national median · annualised at 2,080 hours
| Role | Houston | National | Gap | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General and Operations Managers | $119,600 | $105,768 | +13.1% | 97K |
| Retail Salespersons | $31,346 | $35,422 | -11.5% | 79K |
| Stockers and Order Fillers | $36,899 | $37,336 | -1.2% | 73K |
| Registered Nurses | $99,840 | $97,552 | +2.3% | 66K |
| Customer Service Representatives | $40,394 | $44,782 | -9.8% | 66K |
| Home Health and Personal Care Aides | $23,442 | $35,797 | -34.5% | 64K |
| Cashiers | $29,349 | $32,885 | -10.8% | 55K |
| Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand | $38,002 | $40,248 | -5.6% | 53K |
| Office Clerks, General | $40,373 | $45,011 | -10.3% | 50K |
| Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers | $56,846 | $58,635 | -3.1% | 50K |
What named Houston employers file for the same job
US Department of Labor H-1B filings · FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026) · 9,088 certified Houston filings from 3,200 employers
Market data tells you the range; it never tells you who pays what. Employer wage filings do. Taking one role, Software Developers, and only employers with 12+ Houston filings in it, the same job in the same metro is filed anywhere from the 17th to above the 90th percentile of the market range on this page:
| Employer | Filings | Median filed | vs Houston market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ernst & Young U.S. LLP | 24 | $198,166 | >P90 |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 40 | $150,750 | P68 |
| Deloitte Consulting LLP | 47 | $149,718 | P67 |
| HP Inc. | 14 | $149,718 | P67 |
| Microsoft Corporation | 16 | $141,585 | P60 |
| Capgemini America Inc | 33 | $141,270 | P60 |
| TanPro Technologies LLC | 17 | $90,522 | P17 |
| Mebhaz Inc. | 12 | $95,035 | P21 |
| CORPORATE SOLUTIONS GENERAL INC | 24 | $98,301 | P23 |
→ 74 percentile points between named employers, inside one role, inside one metro. A candidate moving between two of these companies is not moving within a band; they are changing markets.
Median filed by role · where it sits on the Houston OEWS curve
What this data is, and is not. These are base salaries stated on Labor Condition Applications for visa-sponsored roles, floored by prevailing-wage rules: offered pay on a legal form, not a payroll extract, and base only, no bonus or equity. It shows how an employer positions pay for a role. Source: US Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification disclosure files, FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026). Employers keyed on federal tax ID; role medians computed only where an employer has 12 or more Houston filings in that occupation. Metro membership is by worksite county in the OMB delineation BLS uses for this metro.
Method, and one exclusion worth naming
Each Houston occupation is compared to its own national median from the same BLS survey vintage, so the comparison holds the job constant. Group figures are employment-weighted, meaning a group is driven by the roles Houston actually employs rather than by an unweighted average across job titles.
Tipped occupations are excluded. BLS reports cash wages for tipped roles, and most of the variation between metros comes from state tip-credit law rather than local pay levels. Texas applies the federal tipped minimum, while the national median is lifted by states that require full minimum wage before tips, so tipped roles would show discounts that are legal, not local. Waiters, bartenders and similar roles are left out for that reason.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX (CBSA 26420). Employer-reported wages from approximately 1.1 million surveyed establishments. Analysis by CompSignal; the underlying figures are BLS, the comparison and commentary are ours.
Run this on your own roles
Every tool below is free, needs no account, and uses the same BLS data as this analysis.
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