San Jose Compensation Benchmarks 2026
San Jose does not pay one premium. Across 51 major occupations it runs +40.9% against national medians on average, but that average hides a spread of 84.6 points between the best-paid and worst-paid occupation groups in this metro.
Which means the shortcut most pay structures rely on, a single San Jose 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 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (CBSA 41940). 536 occupations carry metro-level data; 51 have San Jose employment above 5,000 and are used here. Free to read, free to use, no account required.
San Jose pay by occupation group
Median wage vs national · employment-weighted within group
→ Healthcare Practitioners at +97.4% and Healthcare Support at +12.8%. Same metro, same month, 84.6 points apart.
Where San Jose pays more
Largest premium vs national median
Where San Jose pays less
Largest discount vs national median
The ten roles San Jose employs most
Metro median vs national median · annualised at 2,080 hours
| Role | San Jose | National | Gap | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software Developers | $213,117 | $135,990 | +56.7% | 87K |
| Home Health and Personal Care Aides | $37,627 | $35,797 | +5.1% | 50K |
| Registered Nurses | $216,736 | $97,552 | +122.2% | 23K |
| Computer and Information Systems Managers | $291,658 | $175,136 | +66.5% | 19K |
| Retail Salespersons | $44,221 | $35,422 | +24.8% | 18K |
| General and Operations Managers | $163,862 | $105,768 | +54.9% | 17K |
| Computer Occupations, All Other | $184,434 | $116,584 | +58.2% | 17K |
| Cashiers | $42,952 | $32,885 | +30.6% | 17K |
| Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners | $43,867 | $36,837 | +19.1% | 16K |
| Managers, All Other | $217,277 | $141,898 | +53.1% | 14K |
What named San Jose employers file for the same job
US Department of Labor H-1B filings · FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026) · 36,564 certified San Jose filings from 3,156 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+ San Jose filings in it, the same job in the same metro is filed anywhere from the 13th to the 88th percentile of the market range on this page:
| Employer | Filings | Median filed | vs San Jose market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wayve Technologies, Inc | 17 | $280,000 | P88 |
| Crusoe Energy Systems LLC | 12 | $272,257 | P86 |
| Netflix, Inc. | 160 | $264,514 | P84 |
| Roku, Inc. | 26 | $264,514 | P84 |
| X.AI LLC | 19 | $260,000 | P83 |
| TikTok Inc. | 85 | $260,000 | P83 |
| Western Digital Technologies, Inc. | 12 | $145,634 | P13 |
| Qualcomm Atheros, Inc. | 31 | $148,022 | P14 |
| Illumio, Inc. | 27 | $149,365 | P15 |
→ 75 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 San Jose 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 San Jose 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 San Jose 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 San Jose 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. Tip-credit rules are set state by state (CA here), so tipped roles in this metro would mostly be measuring state law rather than the metro's pay level. 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 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (CBSA 41940). 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
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