This Map Shows The Average Salary for Office Managers in Every State

(click to enlarge)

Earlier this year, we released the 2017 State of The Office Manager Report, a first of its kind study of the office manager role – and the intrepid men and women who fill it.

In the report, we learned that the officer manager role has been steadily expanding, both in scope and strategic importance. Today’s OMs are being tasked with more and more duties traditionally held by HR, finance, or operations.

Take event planning, for instance. 84% of our respondents reported that planning company shindigs was now on their plate. Similarly, 66% of respondents told us that they were responsible for onboarding new hires and helping employees transition to new roles.

Alongside new responsibilities comes heightened accessibility.

The smartphone revolution has famously ushered in an era of reachability, and office managers are feeling it. 52% of survey respondents said that their boss expects them to be on call outside of regular business hours.

Not surprisingly, more than a third (35%) named disconnecting outside of work as either more difficult or significantly more difficult than it was 2-3 years prior.

On a high level, we found that salaries have been slow to catch up to the role’s heightened stature and scope. According to data from Indeed, SimplyHired, and PayScale, the U.S. average compensation for Office Managers is $39,400 per year.

(By comparison, the national average wage is $48,098.63 according to the Social Security Administration.)

Not surprisingly, the issue of compensation is a vexing one for most OMs. For starters, we found that office managers don’t always feel comfortable negotiating for higher pay.

A full third of the respondents in our survey told us that negotiating their own compensation was either a “big challenge” or one of their “top challenges.”

(Check out The Office Manager’s Guide to Asking for a Raise for some proven tips from people who’ve done it before.)

Likewise, when we asked our survey takers why they might look for another job, salary was the most common reason.

Pay, of course, varies. We found that things like company revenue can make a big impact on this variance (more revenue, higher pay). Experience also plays a role, though we found that OM salaries hit a ceiling around $57,000, no matter how many years on the job.

But those are just the broad strokes. One factor we didn’t explore in our initial report – geography.

Let’s face it, where you work matters. Factors like income inequality, taxation, and cost of living can vary sharply depending on which state you call home.

So we took the data, sorted it by state, and broke down the best (and worst) states for office manager pay.

A few thing surprised us. The best pay for office managers was actually in North Dakota, despite the fact that it ranks 26th in terms of cost of living (ranked best to worst). Likewise, the state with the highest cost of living (Hawaii) didn’t make our top ten highest salaries.

How does your pay measure up? Take a look at the handy-dandy map above to find out.

Free Bonus: Get a PDF version of The 2018 State of The Office Manager Report. We surveyed 572 Office Managers to uncover 10 takeaways you can use to hit your goals and overcome challenges. Plus learn what other Office Managers are getting paid (and how you can earn more)!