Occupation / job
Compensation and Benefits Managers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
The $149,230 midpoint is $8,267 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Compensation and Benefits Managers near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
With 22,940 employed as Compensation and Benefits Managers, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.
Operations specialties management — finance, HR, IT, purchasing — suits people who would rather run a function well than own a profit line, and who like a remit with clear edges.
How long it takes to become one of the 22,940 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter of the field earns under $113,170 and a quarter over $200,610: $87,440 between them, a ratio of 1.8x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.
The 25th percentile is $113,170, $63,150 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you want to be measured on your own work — the outputs you are judged on are produced by other people.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 22,940 figure counts people already working as Compensation and Benefits Managers, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A ratio of 1.8x — $113,170 to $200,610 — is wide enough that specialising inside Compensation and Benefits Managers pays measurably. $149,230 is the middle of a range you can move within.
In cash terms the middle half of Compensation and Benefits Managers runs $113,170 to $200,610 — $87,440 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $149,230.
Between $113,170 and $200,610 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $149,230. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $51,380; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $87,440.
The climb from $149,230 to $200,610 is $51,380, against $36,060 down to $113,170. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Compensation and Benefits Managers is larger than the realistic downside.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $54.40 at the bottom quarter, $71.74 at the midpoint, $96.44 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Compensation and Benefits Managers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $149,230 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $149,230 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else