Who’s making six figures in Orange and Los Angeles counties? – Orange County Register

Being financially comfortable in Los Angeles and Orange counties often requires a six-figure income.

So, what kind of work gets that kind of payday in a metropolitan area where the median wage is $53,490 a year?

To find a few clues, my trusty spreadsheet examined a curious annual employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These figures detail various slices of the pay scale for 22 major occupational categories in May 2024 – yes, 2024 – across the L.A.-O.C. metropolitan area.

Peek at median annual wages. That’s the mid-point of the pay ladder, or what we might say is “typical” pay. You’ll find the local hunt for paydays above $100,000 looks daunting.

Just five of L.A.-O.C.’s 22 work niches had median annual wages in six figures: Legal, management, computer-mathematical, healthcare-technical and architecture-engineering.

These occupations employ a combined 1.1 million. So, “six-figure” occupations, by this math, employ only 18% of the metro area’s 6.2 million local workers.

Upper crust

However, we know six-figure gigs exist in other crafts.

That kind of premium pay can be tied to a worker’s coveted skill sets or their high performance. Or it’s even due to an employer’s generosity.

To try to quantify these overachievers, think about local wages at the 75th percentile. That’s the midpoint of the upper half of the pay ladder.

What you see at this lofty level is a noteworthy bump in salary compared with the median paycheck, which is the 50th percentile. Wages in the L.A.-O.C. metro area at the 75th percentile were $90,360 a year for all occupations. That’s 69% above the $53,490 median pay.

And when you look across the 22 occupations at the 75th percentile, L.A.-O.C. adds four occupations to its six-figure club: life-physical-social science, business-financial, arts-design-entertainment-sports-media and education-library. These are occupations employing 1 million workers, or 16% of the local workforce.

So, who makes six figures at the more generous 75th percentile? Nine occupations with 2.1 million workers, or 34% of all local paychecks.

Six-figure niches

Here are the metro area’s nine six-figure occupations at the 75th percentile, ranked by their May 2024 annual wages …

Legal: $210,550 annual wage at the 75th percentile. That’s a 64% premium above the median of $128,680 for 67,650 workers.

Management: $196,390 at 75th percentile – 49% premium to $131,930 median for 449,010 workers.

Computer-mathematical: $160,230 at 75th percentile – 32% premium to $121,480 median for 178,860 workers.

Healthcare-technical: $151,810 at 75th percentile – 44% premium to $105,750 median for 324,970 workers.

Architecture-engineering: $140,880 at 75th percentile – 32% premium to $106,540 median for 93,340 workers.

Life-physical-social science: $127,540 at 75th percentile – 32% premium to $96,480 median for 52,510 workers.

Business-financial: $124,740 at 75th percentile – 39% premium to $89,470 median for 424,770 workers.

Arts-design-entertainment-sports-media: $122,090 at 75th percentile – 48% premium to $82,490 median for 174,200 workers.

Education-library: $102,490 at 75th percentile – 56% premium to $65,520 median for 344,320 workers.

Postscript

What do other local occupations pay at the 75th percentile?