Which State Saw the Biggest Bump in Pay from Last July to Now?

According to pay insights from one of the biggest providers of data-driven insights on economic indicators, Wyoming ranks in the first place for greatest year-over-year pay increases.

ADP Research Institute, in partnership with Stanford Digital Economy Lab, have ranked the top states for national growth based on workers who've stayed in their role for the past 12 months.

The year-over-year median change in national annual pay was 6.2% and the median pay was $57,600 for those job stayers.

The Top 10 States for Growth:

1. Wyoming: 9.1
2. Idaho: 8.8
3. Montana: 8.5
4. Oregon: 7.8
5. New Mexico: 7.7
6. Kentucky: 7.3
7. South Dakota: 7.2
7. Utah: 7.2
7. Washington: 7.2
10. Colorado: 7.1
10. Nevada: 7.1

The report found that as of July 2023, the median annual pay level in Wyoming is $56,300. That's higher than three of her neighbors with Utah coming in at $50,000, South Dakota at $51,700, and Montana at $53,200.

Coloradoans make, on average, $62,900 and Nebraskans $60,300.

Each month, payroll data from about 17 million U.S. jobs are used to estimate the annual pay cited in this report.

ADP research tracks the same cohort of workers over a 12-month period to compute year-over-year change in pay for matched individuals. The matching process results in about 10 million individual pay change observations each month.

The findings look at both salary and wage workers. Salary workers make up about 39 percent of their sample; wage workers about 61 percent.