BCBA Salary by State: What the Federal Wage Data Actually Shows (2026)
There is no federal wage code for board certified behavior analysts. Here is the closest official data — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025, state by state — with an honest account of what it does and does not measure.
If you search for what a BCBA earns, you will find a hundred pages carrying a confident national average. Almost none of them will tell you the thing that matters most: the federal government does not measure BCBA salaries. There is no Standard Occupational Classification code for board certified behavior analysts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has never published a wage estimate for the occupation, because as far as the classification system is concerned, the occupation does not exist.
That is not a reason to publish nothing. It is a reason to publish carefully. Below is the closest official wage data there is, state by state, with the seams showing.
The occupation code problem
BLS collects wages through the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program (OEWS), a survey of employers rather than of workers. Every job it captures is assigned an SOC code. Searching the OEWS occupation list returns no code titled “behavior analyst,” and O*NET, the Department of Labor’s occupational database, returns no exact title match either.
So BCBAs are scattered across whatever codes their employers use. Two codes matter most:
19-3033, Clinical and Counseling Psychologists. The official BLS definition of this code includes the clause “May design behavior modification programs,” which is the closest the classification system comes to describing behavior-analytic work. It is also the code most often used as a BCBA proxy. The problem is that it is dominated by doctoral-level psychologists, and most BCBAs hold a master’s degree. This code almost certainly overstates typical BCBA pay.
21-1018, Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors. A much larger, master’s- and bachelor’s-weighted group. This code almost certainly understates BCBA pay.
Neither is a match. Together they bracket it. Everything that follows uses the May 2025 OEWS reference period, the most recent published.
The national picture
| Measure (May 2025) | 19-3033 Clinical and counseling psychologists | 21-1018 Substance abuse, behavioral disorder and mental health counselors |
|---|---|---|
| US employment | 75,990 | 491,930 |
| Annual mean wage | $112,750 | $64,440 |
| Annual median wage | $100,580 | $59,350 |
| 10th percentile | $55,170 | $38,940 |
| 25th percentile | $73,210 | $47,100 |
| 75th percentile | $135,200 | $76,530 |
| 90th percentile | $180,960 | $97,590 |
| Hourly mean wage | $54.21 | $30.98 |
Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025, national cross-industry estimates for 19-3033 and 21-1018.
One coincidence worth naming so nobody mistakes it for a finding: OEWS counted 75,990 clinical and counseling psychologists nationally in May 2025, and the BACB certificant dashboard held 75,574 BCBAs as of 1 August 2026. Those numbers are close and they are unrelated. They count different people.
Wages by state
The table below gives the May 2025 annual median wage for both proxy codes in each state, alongside BCBA supply from our certificant dataset. BLS suppresses estimates that do not meet its disclosure or reliability standards; where that happened, the cell reads “not published” rather than an estimate. Maine, Maryland and Connecticut have no published 19-3033 wage for this period.
| State | 19-3033 median | 21-1018 median | BCBAs per 10,000 children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $90,800 | $47,310 | 5.3 |
| Alaska | $124,270 | $80,770 | 5.8 |
| Arizona | $119,010 | $65,300 | 8.8 |
| Arkansas | $77,520 | $51,580 | 4.8 |
| California | $116,000 | $59,250 | 12.8 |
| Colorado | $113,290 | $62,390 | 14.9 |
| Connecticut | not published | $63,590 | 20.9 |
| Delaware | $113,050 | $56,020 | 9.3 |
| District of Columbia | $107,000 | $60,450 | 6.9 |
| Florida | $85,610 | $56,790 | 19.8 |
| Georgia | $96,060 | $58,960 | 8.8 |
| Hawaii | $117,860 | $60,090 | 17.9 |
| Idaho | $97,790 | $63,360 | 5.5 |
| Illinois | $83,750 | $60,730 | 8.8 |
| Indiana | $84,990 | $53,760 | 11.4 |
| Iowa | $91,690 | $60,880 | 4.6 |
| Kansas | $76,690 | $59,470 | 5.3 |
| Kentucky | $99,140 | $54,190 | 7.1 |
| Louisiana | $71,330 | $37,910 | 7.3 |
| Maine | not published | $59,970 | 12.9 |
| Maryland | not published | $59,530 | 9.0 |
| Massachusetts | $115,180 | $59,890 | 28.4 |
| Michigan | $84,730 | $61,690 | 12.7 |
| Minnesota | $107,030 | $58,780 | 5.0 |
| Mississippi | $76,000 | $46,990 | 3.3 |
| Missouri | $99,410 | $56,910 | 7.7 |
| Montana | $68,160 | $59,000 | 4.1 |
| Nebraska | $94,540 | $63,770 | 7.2 |
| Nevada | $102,650 | $57,210 | 9.3 |
| New Hampshire | $64,270 | $54,840 | 25.5 |
| New Jersey | $127,090 | $62,820 | 18.4 |
| New Mexico | $124,800 | $74,100 | 5.3 |
| New York | $114,400 | $59,450 | 8.3 |
| North Carolina | $92,130 | $55,490 | 8.7 |
| North Dakota | $116,130 | $68,630 | 5.5 |
| Ohio | $101,190 | $58,360 | 5.8 |
| Oklahoma | $79,950 | $59,350 | 4.1 |
| Oregon | $134,350 | $74,590 | 6.6 |
| Pennsylvania | $91,870 | $52,010 | 11.2 |
| Rhode Island | $107,490 | $65,120 | 19.1 |
| South Carolina | $92,700 | $52,370 | 7.3 |
| South Dakota | $80,130 | $53,650 | 4.4 |
| Tennessee | $76,820 | $49,580 | 8.9 |
| Texas | $83,660 | $62,630 | 7.0 |
| Utah | $99,170 | $63,890 | 9.6 |
| Vermont | $83,270 | $61,810 | 20.7 |
| Virginia | $86,520 | $59,880 | 11.6 |
| Washington | $115,240 | $68,910 | 9.0 |
| West Virginia | $77,040 | $49,430 | 4.9 |
| Wisconsin | $113,360 | $62,220 | 6.1 |
| Wyoming | $89,890 | $62,980 | 3.7 |
Wages: BLS OEWS state tables, May 2025. Supply: BACB certificant dashboard against Census population estimates, full method and caveats here. State pages are at /states/.
Under the 19-3033 proxy, the spread runs from $134,350 in Oregon to $64,270 in New Hampshire — a factor of more than two. Treat the extremes with suspicion. New Hampshire reported only 330 workers in this occupation, and its annual mean of $98,030 sits $33,760 above its median, a gap that usually signals a small, skewed sample rather than a labor market fact. The same caution applies to Montana (150 workers) and Wyoming (50).
The 21-1018 column is steadier because the samples are much larger, and it tells a plainer story: Alaska $80,770 at the top, Louisiana $37,910 at the bottom.
Schools, clinics and hospitals
OEWS also splits each occupation by industry, which is the only way this data can speak to the setting question. For 19-3033, May 2025 national medians:
| Industry | 19-3033 median | 21-1018 median |
|---|---|---|
| Elementary and secondary schools | $101,110 | $62,710 |
| General medical and surgical hospitals | $107,770 | $66,550 |
| Offices of other health practitioners | $98,820 | $58,240 |
| Outpatient care centers | $108,210 | $59,390 |
| Outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers | $95,110 | $58,750 |
| Individual and family services | $89,120 | $58,440 |
| Local government, excluding schools and hospitals | $126,650 | $67,870 |
Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025, national industry-specific estimates. Industry names are the OEWS designations.
Two things stand out. Schools are not the low-pay outlier the field’s folk wisdom suggests. And the setting spread within a state is far smaller than the spread between states — geography moves the number more than employer type does.
What this data cannot tell you
Be blunt about the limits, because they are large.
It is not BCBA data. Every figure above describes an occupational category that contains some BCBAs and many non-BCBAs. It brackets BCBA pay. It does not measure it.
OEWS excludes the self-employed. Independent behavior analysts and practice owners are outside the survey entirely.
Three states have no published 19-3033 wage for May 2025: Maine, Maryland and Connecticut. We have left those blank rather than fill them from another year or another source.
Nothing here is cost-of-living adjusted. A $124,270 median in Alaska and a $113,290 median in Colorado are not the same money.
We did not use salary aggregators. ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Indeed and Salary.com report self-selected submissions with undisclosed sample sizes and no published methodology. They frequently carry a BCBA-specific number, which is genuinely more targeted than anything BLS publishes — and that is exactly why blending them with federal estimates produces figures nobody can check. If you use them, use them alone and note the date.
Pay, supply and reimbursement
The temptation is to read scarcity into wages: fewer BCBAs, higher pay. The data does not support it. Massachusetts has the country’s densest supply at 28.4 BCBAs per 10,000 children and a high proxy median; Mississippi has the thinnest at 3.3 and one of the lowest. High-wage states tend to have both more clinicians and higher pay, which points at state economies rather than at scarcity pricing.
Demand is the one BCBA-specific series anyone publishes, and it comes from the BACB rather than from a wage survey. Its 2010 to 2025 employment demand report counted 132,307 US job postings requiring or preferring BCBA or BCBA-D certification in 2025, up 28% on 2024. Five states accounted for 38% of them: California (20,258 postings, up 3%), New Jersey (8,139, up 58%), Texas (7,792, up 32%), Massachusetts (7,315, up 19%) and North Carolina (6,874, up 63%). Postings are advertisements, not hires, and the report does not record what any of them paid.
What does connect to compensation, at least arithmetically, is what payers pay. Medicaid reimbursement for the core direct-therapy code varies more than 50% across the states that publish clean schedules, from about $12.18 to $18.70 per 15-minute unit — the analysis is in our reimbursement gap piece. A practice’s revenue ceiling is set there, and salaries are paid out from underneath it. We are not claiming a measured relationship between the two; we are noting that both are published, both vary enormously by state, and only one of them gets discussed in salary articles.
Sources and method
All wage figures are Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics estimates for the May 2025 reference period, retrieved 2 August 2026 from the BLS public data API (series prefix OEUN for national and OEUS for state, cross-industry, occupations 193033 and 211018). The same estimates are published on the BLS occupation pages linked above; the /oes/current/ pages update when BLS releases a new reference period, so check the period stated on the page. Occupation and industry titles are taken from the BLS OEWS code files. Certificant counts come from the BACB certificant dashboard via our stats page. Job-posting demand figures come from the BACB’s US Employment Demand for Behavior Analysts: 2010–2025, published January 2026, which reports postings and contains no wage data.
If BLS or SOC adds a behavior analyst code, this page changes. Corrections welcome: [email protected].
Frequently asked
How much does a BCBA make?
No federal agency publishes a wage estimate for board certified behavior analysts specifically, so any single national number is an approximation. The closest official occupation, Clinical and Counseling Psychologists (SOC 19-3033), had a median annual wage of $100,580 in May 2025, and the broader Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors group (SOC 21-1018) had a median of $59,350. Most BCBA pay sits somewhere inside that band, because 19-3033 is weighted toward doctoral-level psychologists and 21-1018 toward bachelor's- and master's-level counselors.
Which state pays BCBAs the most?
No source can answer this precisely, because no federal survey identifies BCBAs as a distinct occupation. Using the closest proxy code, 19-3033, the highest May 2025 median annual wages were in Oregon ($134,350), New Jersey ($127,090), New Mexico ($124,800) and Alaska ($124,270). Those figures describe clinical and counseling psychologists in those states, not BCBAs, and they are not adjusted for cost of living.
Do BCBAs earn more in schools or clinics?
The federal data cannot separate BCBAs from other clinicians, but it does break the proxy occupations out by industry. In May 2025, clinical and counseling psychologists working in elementary and secondary schools had a median annual wage of $101,110, compared with $98,820 in offices of other health practitioners and $95,110 in outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers. The gap between settings is much narrower than the gap between states.
Why is there no BLS salary data for BCBAs?
The Standard Occupational Classification system, which BLS uses, has no code titled 'behavior analyst.' BCBAs are distributed across several existing codes depending on how their employer classifies the job, most often clinical and counseling psychologist, mental health counselor, or a special education or social service title. Until SOC adds a code, federal wage data can only bracket BCBA pay, not measure it.
Does the Behavior Analyst Certification Board publish salary data?
No. The BACB publishes certificant counts and an annual employment demand report built from job postings, but that report covers the volume of postings by state and year and does not report wages. Its 2010 to 2025 edition recorded 132,307 US job postings requiring or preferring BCBA certification in 2025, a 28% increase over 2024.
Are BCBA salaries higher where BCBAs are scarce?
Not in any consistent way that the available data shows. Massachusetts has the densest BCBA supply in the country at 28.4 per 10,000 children and a May 2025 median of $115,180 under the proxy code, while Mississippi has the thinnest at 3.3 per 10,000 and a median of $76,000. Supply and pay are both higher in high-wage states, which suggests the relationship runs through state economies rather than through scarcity pricing.
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