Salary methodology
How CareerPCS wage benchmarks work
Some SkillBridge listings show a pay range. Here’s where it comes from — and what it does and doesn’t mean.
How we show pay
When an employer tells us what they pay, we show that. Otherwise, for many listings we show the typical pay for that kind of work in that state, using public government wage data. It’s context to help you compare programs — not a job offer, a prediction, or a promise you’ll be hired or paid that amount.
What the numbers mean
The range is what the middle of the workforce earns — the 25th to 75th percentile of annual wages for that occupation in that state, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In plain terms: a quarter of workers earn less than the low end, a quarter earn more than the high end, and the median is the exact middle. A plus sign — like $239.2K+ — means the government reported the figure is at least that high, so the real number could be higher.
These are wages across a whole state. They don’t tell you what a specific employer will pay, whether you’ll be hired, or what you’ll personally earn.
How we match a listing to a job
Before we can attach a wage, a listing has to be matched to a real occupation. We do that automatically — software reads the listing and proposes the closest occupation using the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET job data.
When the listing clearly points to one specific job, we show that job’s pay. When it points to a broad field but not one exact job, we show a broad-field range and label it that way. If a program trains for several different jobs, we show each job’s pay separately rather than averaging them.
How we pick the state
We work out the location from the coordinates and state information in the DoW SkillBridge directory, and we only assign a state when those agree. Nationwide, fully-online, or unclear or conflicting locations get no state pay figure. When one listing runs in several states, we show each state separately — we never average states together.
For a nationwide or online program we say so on the listing instead of showing a state range. The location attached to a listing often isn’t where the job ends up after the program — so picking that state’s pay would be guessing. Saying the program is nationwide or online is a fact about the program, not a claim about the pay. Where we simply couldn’t work out the location at all, we show nothing.
Where the data comes from
- Wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 state estimates.
- Occupations: the O*NET® 30.1 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
We change this source data by cleaning up occupation and job-title text, converting O*NET’s 2019 job codes to 2018 SOC codes with the official crosswalk, and joining our matched occupations to the wage data. USDOL/ETA has not reviewed or endorsed CareerPCS or the matches we derive.
The limits
- Pay varies a lot within a single state.
- What you’ll actually make depends on the employer, the role, your location, your experience, and how hiring goes after SkillBridge.
- Some government figures are missing or capped; when we can’t state a range honestly, we leave it off.
- Eligible, command-approved SkillBridge participants keep their military pay and benefits during the program.