Jacksonville's 22 Career Fields Ranked by Pay in 2026: From $17.57 to $65.97 an Hour

Jacksonville, Florida, workers earned an average of $31.59 an hour in the latest metropolitan occupational wage report, compared with $33.54 nationally. The highest-paying major career category was management at $65.97 an hour, while food preparation and serving ranked last at $17.57, according to figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on July 7, 2026.

The gap between Jacksonville's highest- and lowest-paying occupational groups was $48.40 an hour. But the report also reveals something less obvious: Of the area's 22 major career categories, only two had average hourly wages above their corresponding national averages.

The federal data cover the Jacksonville metropolitan area, which includes Duval, St. Johns, Clay, Nassau and Baker counties. The estimates are based on May 2025 employment and wages, making them a benchmark for understanding local pay in 2026 rather than a measurement of today's advertised job openings.

Here is how all 22 career fields rank, what their wages mean and where Jacksonville stands relative to the nation.

All 22 Jacksonville career fields ranked by average hourly pay

The following table uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics' published mean hourly wages. Each category is ranked from highest to lowest based on the Jacksonville figure, with the corresponding U.S. wage included for comparison.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages in Jacksonville, FL — May 2025, Table A. All hourly figures are reproduced exactly as published.

These are averages across broad occupational groups, not starting salaries, minimum wages or the pay received by every worker in a category.

Which Jacksonville careers pay more than $50 an hour?

Three occupational groups exceed $50 an hour on average: management, legal, and computer and mathematical occupations.

Management leads the ranking at $65.97, compared with the U.S. management average of $69.84. The category includes many types of management work, so its average should not be interpreted as a typical starting salary for someone entering a supervisory position.

Legal occupations rank second locally at $54.16 an hour, compared with $67.07 nationwide. This is also Jacksonville's largest dollar shortfall against the national figure among the 22 groups, a difference of $12.91 per hour.

Computer and mathematical occupations rank third at $51.30, compared with $57.73 nationally. The $6.43 gap is smaller than the legal category's but remains one of the larger differences in the report.

These figures are occupational averages, not wage offers from individual employers. They provide a useful measure of an area's existing employment market without showing what a particular applicant can expect to earn.

What about engineering, business and technical work?

Architecture and engineering occupations average $48.04 an hour in Jacksonville, compared with $51.36 nationally. They rank fifth among the area's major occupational groups, just behind healthcare practitioners and technical occupations at $48.97.

Business and financial operations rank sixth at $43.08, compared with $45.78 nationally. This is a major category in the region's workforce, accounting for 7.6% of Jacksonville-area employment, versus 6.8% nationally.

Life, physical, and social science occupations average $40.84 locally and $45.48 nationwide. Despite the relatively high average pay, the group accounts for only 0.5% of Jacksonville-area employment in the federal report.

Taken together, the seven highest-paying groups each average more than $40 an hour locally. But the fact that a category has high average wages does not necessarily mean it represents a large share of local jobs.

For anyone examining career opportunities, the report provides two different pieces of information: how much an occupation group pays on average and how concentrated that type of work is in Jacksonville.

Which careers pay more in Jacksonville than nationwide?

Only two of the 22 major occupational groups have Jacksonville mean hourly wages above their corresponding U.S. averages.

The first is farming, fishing, and forestry occupations, which average $21.17 locally, compared with $19.96 nationally. That is a positive difference of $1.21 an hour, although the group represents just 0.1% of Jacksonville-area employment.

The second is healthcare support, with a local average of $20.20, compared with $19.62 nationally. That is a positive difference of 58 cents an hour, and the group accounts for 3.6% of regional employment.

Every other major occupational group listed in the release has a Jacksonville mean below its corresponding national figure.

That comparison does not establish whether a Jacksonville worker is financially better or worse off after living expenses. It measures wages by occupation, not household expenses or purchasing power.

Which Jacksonville career fields have the largest gaps with the U.S.?

The largest dollar difference is in legal occupations, where Jacksonville's $54.16 average falls $12.91 below the national $67.07 average.

Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations have the second-largest gap, averaging $31.28 locally against $38.36 nationally. The difference is $7.08 an hour.

Computer and mathematical occupations follow with a $6.43 difference, while life, physical, and social science occupations are $4.64 below the national figure. Construction and extraction occupations also trail their national counterpart by $4.64.

All differences were calculated by subtracting the BLS Jacksonville mean from the corresponding U.S. mean.

A particularly large gap within a broad group may reflect differences in the particular jobs that make up that category locally. The report does not establish that two workers with identical duties and experience necessarily receive those different wages.

What are Jacksonville's most common types of jobs?

High-paying occupations are only part of the regional employment picture. The BLS report also identifies the occupational groups making up the largest shares of Jacksonville-area employment.

Office and administrative support accounts for 12.6% of local employment, making it the largest major occupational category. Transportation and material moving ranks next at 9.9%, closely followed by sales and related occupations at 9.8%.

Food preparation and serving accounts for another 9.4%. Together, those four groups represent 41.7% of the area's occupational employment, calculated from the published percentages.

This helps explain why the highest-paying categories should not be confused with the most common ones. Management ranks first in average hourly wages but accounts for a smaller share of employment than office support.

The wage figures also show how different occupational groups can contribute to the overall regional average. Jacksonville's $31.59 mean reflects workers across the entire mix of occupations, including both high- and lower-paying categories.

Jacksonville has 96,850 office and administrative support jobs

The BLS release provides a detailed examination of office and administrative support, Jacksonville's largest major occupational group.

The area had an estimated 96,850 jobs in the category in May 2025. Its mean hourly wage was $23.89, compared with $24.79 nationally.

The report identifies customer service representatives as one of the area's largest detailed occupations, with 17,030 jobs. General office clerks accounted for another 13,430 positions.

Those are counts of estimated existing employment, not vacancies or currently advertised opportunities.

Individual occupations within the broader category show substantial variation. First-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers averaged $34.69 an hour, while executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants averaged $34.19.

At the lower end of the same category, hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks averaged $16.80. Clerical library assistants averaged $17.33, and switchboard operators averaged $17.49.

That spread demonstrates why an occupational category's mean is only a starting point. Specific job titles can have meaningfully different wages even when they belong to the same broad group.

Which office occupations stand out in the local data?

Jacksonville's office employment also contains some occupations that are more concentrated locally than nationally. BLS uses a measure called a location quotient to compare the area's occupational share with the U.S. share.

A location quotient of 1.00 indicates that an occupation has a similar share of local and national employment. A value above 1.00 indicates a higher local concentration, while a value below 1.00 indicates a lower concentration.

The BLS report identifies postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators with a Jacksonville location quotient of 2.82. Bill and account collectors have a quotient of 1.68, while bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks have a quotient of 1.00.

These figures describe occupational concentration rather than wage levels. A job that is unusually common in Jacksonville is not automatically better paid or more likely to have an available opening.

The same detailed table lists 6,780 bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks, earning an average of $26.26 an hour. Postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators account for 1,460 jobs, with a mean wage of $27.26.

Such details help explain the composition of the area's office workforce beyond its broad $23.89 hourly average.

What do transportation, construction and repair jobs pay?

Transportation and material moving occupations account for 9.9% of Jacksonville-area employment, compared with 8.8% nationally. Their mean hourly wage is $23.43 locally, versus $23.96 nationally.

Construction and extraction occupations have a smaller local employment share of 4.8%, compared with 4.1% nationally. The mean wage in that group is $26.78, below the national average of $31.42.

Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations average $28.75 locally, compared with $30.44 nationwide. They represent 4.5% of Jacksonville-area employment, compared with a 3.9% national share.

These three categories illustrate why examining wages and employment shares together is useful. All three account for larger portions of Jacksonville's workforce than they do nationally, but their published local wage averages remain below the U.S. figures.

They also cover different kinds of work, so their averages should not be treated as interchangeable. A specific skilled trade, transportation occupation or maintenance role can have different pay from the broader category's mean.

Which Jacksonville occupations average less than $25 an hour?

Nine major occupational groups fall below $25 an hour in the BLS Jacksonville table.

Sales and related occupations average $24.92, followed by office and administrative support at $23.89, production at $23.58 and transportation and material moving at $23.43.

Farming, fishing, and forestry averages $21.17, followed by healthcare support at $20.20. Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance averages $18.71, personal care and service $18.61, and food preparation and serving $17.57.

The lowest-paying group, food preparation and serving, is also among Jacksonville's largest employment categories. Its $17.57 local average is slightly below the $17.86 national figure.

Personal care and service averages $18.61 locally, versus $19.74 nationwide. Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance averages $18.71, versus $19.66 nationally.

These comparisons reinforce the distinction between the importance of an occupation and its average wage. A substantial employment presence does not necessarily translate into high average pay.

How much is Jacksonville's overall pay gap with the nation?

Across all occupations, Jacksonville's average hourly wage is $31.59, compared with $33.54 nationwide.

The difference is $1.95 an hour, calculated directly from the two published BLS means. Jacksonville's overall mean is approximately 5.8% below the national mean.

For illustration, annualizing those hourly averages using a full-time schedule of 2,080 hours produces the following figures:

These annual figures are calculations, not separately published annual estimates for all occupations. They assume 2,080 paid hours at the stated mean hourly rate and exclude the effects of individual schedules and overtime.

An average also should not be mistaken for the wage earned by the typical worker. The mean incorporates wages across a range of occupations and pay levels, including highly compensated positions.

What do these numbers mean for Jacksonville workers?

The report provides a clear picture of how occupational pay differs across Northeast Florida. Management, legal, computer and technical fields sit near the top of the ranking, while several service, production and support categories have much lower average wages.

It also shows that Jacksonville's occupational employment is distributed differently from the nation as a whole. Office support, transportation, sales and food service account for particularly large shares of the regional workforce.

For workers comparing career options, the broad rankings are useful for identifying differences among major fields. But individual decisions require looking deeper at specific occupations, qualifications, hours and actual employer offers.

The BLS detailed occupational tables provide that next level of information. A worker interested in office employment, for example, can compare a customer service representative with a payroll clerk, executive assistant or office supervisor instead of relying on one broad category average.

The important distinction is that these federal estimates describe what employed workers were earning in May 2025. They do not forecast 2027 salaries, show open positions or guarantee what a new employee would receive today.

How we did this

Jax Times reviewed the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wages in Jacksonville, FL — May 2025, released July 7, 2026. We used Table A to rank all 22 major occupational groups by their published Jacksonville mean hourly wages and compared each with its corresponding U.S. figure.

The metropolitan area includes Baker, Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties. We also reviewed the release's detailed office and administrative support table, employment-share data and technical notes.

All hourly wages in the main ranking reproduce the BLS figures exactly. Differences, percentages and illustrative annualized amounts were calculated from those figures. The report excludes self-employed workers, and its survey estimates should not be interpreted as current job openings or guaranteed individual salaries.