Occupation / job
Financial 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 $166,570 midpoint is $9,712 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Financial Managers near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
With 841,710 employed, this is one of the biggest occupations in the country. Work at this scale is always available and rarely scarce, and the wage on this page is what that combination produces.
These roles suit people who want to own a system rather than a number — the good ones are judged on whether the function runs, not on whether it grew.
How long it takes to become one of the 841,710 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 $125,490 and a quarter over $219,980: $94,490 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 $125,490, $75,470 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 the top job; running a function well is not the usual route to running the organisation.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 841,710 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
From $125,490 to $219,980 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $166,570 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.
In cash terms the middle half of Financial Managers runs $125,490 to $219,980 — $94,490 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $166,570.
The 75th percentile is $219,980. Reaching it from the $166,570 midpoint is $53,410 a year; reaching it from the $125,490 that the bottom quarter of Financial Managers earn is $94,490.
The climb from $166,570 to $219,980 is $53,410; the drop to $125,490 is $41,080. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Financial Managers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $80.08 at the midpoint for Financial Managers, $60.33 at the 25th percentile and $105.75 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Financial Managers. The self-employed are excluded, so $166,570 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Financial Managers, the hourly figure is $166,570 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else