USA Banking & Finance Industry Salary Report 2026

On disclosed postings, role medians run from $46,800 for personal bankers to $125,000 for investment analysts, a spread of about 167%. Pay tracks proximity to revenue and capital decisions: investment analysts sit roughly 60% above compliance analysts at $78,000, with financial planners next at $112,200 and a technical middle tier of quantitative analysts ($104,000), wealth advisors ($102,000) and FP&A analysts ($97,500). Loan officer pay reads lower and steadier this quarter at $75,000 after a higher, thinner reading last quarter. The feed carries no posting count per role, so treat the exact ordering as directional.

On web-sourced state data, New York leads at $105,000, about 3% above California at $102,000, so the top of the table is tight. New York, the long-standing anchor of United States finance pay, moves to the top this quarter. Florida is lowest among ranked states at $69,000. Among cities New York leads at $121,000, ahead of San Francisco at $115,000 and Seattle at $103,000. These figures are web-sourced estimates without per-area posting counts, so read them as directional rather than definitive.

Median posted pay was highest in February at $87,375 and dipped to $72,500 in May before recovering to $82,284 in June on the year's heaviest posting volume. The swing reflects the changing mix of roles posted through the year, not any cut to pay: quieter early months carried more senior openings, while high-volume months pulled in more analyst-level hiring. January rests on too few disclosed salaries to be reliable, so it is held back.

Beneath the headline the market is candidate-deep but fast moving. Glozo data shows roughly 28 candidates in the pool for every open vacancy, drawn from about 152,000 banking and finance candidates, yet the average listing stays live only about eight days. Personal banker postings run longest at about 13 days, while loan officer postings clear fastest at about six. Two markets sit inside one industry: ample generalist supply, and real scarcity for credit, risk and quantitative expertise, where postings fill quickly and the specialist pool is thin.

The mix is overwhelmingly permanent. Full-time roles account for about 93% of postings, contract work about 5%, and the rest splits across part-time, internship and temporary. A mix this weighted toward full-time points to employers building stable, long-tenure teams rather than leaning on contingent staff.

Among the skills measured, the clearest pay premium now attaches to AI and generative AI, about 42% over the industry median, followed by quantitative finance and machine learning at about 29% and the FRM credential at about 21%. The CFA adds about 17%. The pattern has sharpened over the quarter: skills that pair financial judgment with modern analytics carry the premium, and AI has moved to the front of that list, while broadly held tooling adds far less.

The candidate pool is uneven. It concentrates in the specialist tier, about 66% of candidates, with a sizable expert layer near 28%, while entry and leadership candidates are thin at about 4% and 2%. For employers that means ample mid-career supply and real competition for proven leaders, the same tier that clears fastest when it does come open.

This benchmark comes entirely from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not Glozo postings, and covers the management, business and financial operations occupation group rather than banking alone. Within that group women's median earnings are about 18% below men's, modestly narrower than the roughly 19% national gap across all occupations. Both figures come from the same BLS release, so the comparison is like for like.