2026 Edition · An annual reference on what work pays

Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metropolitan area. Estimated employment 18,030.

Data released May 2025 BLS OEWS · SOC 13-1161
Fig. 1 — The wage rule

Where you sit in the distribution

Drag the marker, or type a figure
$102,170 · 50th
$59,05010th
$74,93025th
$102,17050th
$161,12075th
$184,64090th

That is the medianhalf of people in this occupation in Seattle earn more.

Table 1 — Adjusted

$102,170 in Seattle buys what $91,900 buys across the country as a whole.

Seattle's regional price parity is 111.1 — well above the national average — a dollar here buys noticeably less than in the US as a whole. Adjusted figures for other metros are in the nearby-metros table below.

Fig. 2 — The ladder

What comes next

Median offered base pay by seniority for Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists in Seattle, classified from job titles on visa filings.

Entry
$81,500
Mid
$132,367
Senior
$142,800
Lead
$240,000
Table 2 — Nearby metros

The same job, elsewhere in Washington

Adjusted figures apply each metro's regional price parity, so the columns are directly comparable.

Metro areaMedianAdjustedRPPvs. Seattle
Seattle This page$102,170$91,900111.1
Olympia$79,910$77,100103.7−16.2%
Kennewick$76,540$76,500100.1−16.8%
Bremerton$76,220$72,200105.6−21.5%
Longview$71,120$72,90097.5−20.7%
Spokane$70,390$70,100100.3−23.7%
Wenatchee$69,160$66,600103.9−27.6%
Mount Vernon$68,710$67,100102.4−27.0%

Price parity and difference against Seattle are in the full table on wider screens.

Table 3 — Employers

Who pays what

Median offered salary from visa filings, which disclose employer, title and exact figure. Government wage surveys never publish at this level.

EmployerMedian offerRangeFilingsvs. metro
Bytedance$183,041$95k – $266k5+79.2%
Microsoft$168,000$102k – $235k76+64.4%
Amazon Com Services$142,800$78k – $187k79+39.8%
Tiktok$125,400$85k – $220k28+22.7%
Amazon Web Services$109,100$63k – $176k9+6.8%

Offer ranges and filing counts are in the full table on wider screens.

Fig. 3 — Five-year trend

Nominal against real

The same median, once as published and once restated in 2025 dollars.

90k100k110k120k 20212022202320242025
Nominal, as published Real, in 2025 dollars US$ thousands

Published pay rose 13.2% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it fell 4.7% — prices rose faster than pay since 2021. The two lines meet at the right edge by construction, since 2025 is the base year.

Sources

How this page was made

Wage data
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release. Public domain.
Price parity
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Regional Price Parities, 2024.
Employer pay
Department of Labor, Labor Condition Application disclosures, FY 2025. The table draws on 197 certified filings across 5 employers.
Career ladder
Seniority classified from job titles on the same visa filings; levels shown only with five or more filings each and a strictly rising progression.
Inflation
Real figures deflate by CPI-U annual averages (BLS, all items, US city average).
Employment
18,030 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
Occupation
SOC 13-1161, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists. Mapped to our taxonomy as market-research-analysts-and-marketing-specialists.

Percentiles are reported exactly as released and are never interpolated between published values. Visa filings record offered base salary at time of application, exclude equity and bonus, and skew toward larger employers — treat the employer table as a floor, not an average. We take no payment from employers, recruiters or anyone else for how any figure is presented.