What’s the difference between “Average Salary Median” and “Salary Median?”

Let’s talk about median. It’s a statistical method for representing an average. In a list of numbers, the middle number represents the median.

In a list of salary figures, the salary median indicates the average salary. But, the salary median only applies to job fields, and salary figures differ per metro area, even for the same job fields. If you were to “average” all the salary medians for job fields in a metro area, you would arrive at the average salary median. On this website, we refer to this as the metro area average salary median—an average of salary medians in a metro area. If we take all the metro area average salary medians in a state and “average” them, we arrive at the state average salary median. Let’s take all the state average salary medians and “average” them (all 50 states plus Puerto Rico on this website). We arrive at the national average salary median (“U.S. average salary median”).

The image showcases a list of average salary medians for a paralegal/legal assistant associate’s degree. Each row highlighted in light blue is the metro area average salary median, which is an average salary figure based on the salary medians of all the attainable job roles in that metro area. When averaging all the metro area average salary medians, you’ll get the state average salary median ($44,999), shown at the top of the screenshot above.

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