Here are Pensacola's top paying jobs, industries and how they compare
Do Pensacola workers actually make that much less than workers in other states? Yes, and in many cases, the differences are stark.
A recent report from payroll company ADP shows that Florida’s median yearly income for salary and hourly workers in Florida in October was $51,500, an increase of about 6.4% from last year.
That’s just the middle-of-the-pack number, however. The actual average, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, was $63,770. How do those numbers translate to Pensacola? Not as well.
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Pensacola’s average income is about $50,689.60, much closer to the state’s median income. For further comparison, that’s about 18% less than the national average of $61,900.80 per year.
Across the board, Pensacola workers make substantially less than their peers in their occupational group on a national level.
Some of Pensacola’s highest-paid occupations, such as management positions, legal and health care practitioners make as much as 27% less than the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent report.
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The natural rebuttal to this argument has always been that Pensacola’s lower cost of living made up the difference, but a previous study by doxo, which helps its customers stay on track of their bills by providing them with a single location to manage them, showed that Pensacolians were only paying about 1.7% less for monthly bills than the rest of the nation.
And that doesn’t include how much Florida homeowners are paying per month for soaring home insurance premiums.
Here are the 10 highest-paying jobs in Pensacola and how they compare to the rest.
Pensacola’s top 10 paying jobs
Here are the ten highest paying jobs in Pensacola.
Family medicine physicians — $310,930 per year
Physicians (all other) — $265,640 per year
Chief executives — $226,860 per year
Nurse anesthetists — $175,750 per year
Dentists — $173,230 per year
Sales engineers — $158,760 per year
Architectural and engineering managers — $153,270 per year
Computer and information research scientists — $150,880 per year
Financial managers — $144,000 per year
Computer and information system managers — $138,500 per year
Pensacola’s top 10 paying industries
Here are the 10 highest paying industries in Pensacola.
Management — $51.30 per hour
Legal — $43.43 per hour
Health care practitioners and technical — $41.10 per hour
Computer and mathematical — $40.71 per hour
Architecture and engineering — $38.32 per hour
Business and financial operations — $32.73 per hour
Life, physical and social science — $32.22 per hour
Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media — $28.11 per hour
Installation, maintenance and repair — $23.82 per hour
Educational instruction and library — $22.50
Pensacola’s least-paid industries
Here are Pensacola’s least-paid industries.
Food preparation and serving related — $14.01 per hour
Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance — $14.60 per hour
Personal care and service — $15.34 per hour
Health care support — $16.23 per hour
Farming, fishing and forestry — $17.17 per hour
Transportation and material moving — $17.84 per hour
Office and administrative support — $19.55 per hour
Sales and related — $19.82 per hour
Production — $20.34 per hour
Protective service — $20.97
What is a living wage in Florida?
The living wage in Florida for a single person comes out to $17.72 per hour, or approximately $36,857.60 per year salary, according to MIT’s living wage calculator.
Having a child costs a staggering $74,838, which is $13,000 more than Florida’s median household income in 2021.
The living wage attempts to calculate how much a person needs to be paid an hour to pay for necessities where they live. Factors for the living wage include costs for housing, childcare, health care, food and more, which makes it more likely to vary by state or city.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: What are Pensacola's top paying jobs and how do they compare?
