2026 Edition · An annual reference on what work pays

Project Management Specialists

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metropolitan area. Estimated employment 10,300.

Data released May 2025 BLS OEWS · SOC 13-1082
Fig. 1 — The wage rule

Where you sit in the distribution

Drag the marker, or type a figure
$135,120 · 50th
$82,92010th
$102,16025th
$135,12050th
$172,82075th
$212,34090th

That is the medianhalf of project management specialists in San Jose earn more.

Table 1 — Adjusted

$135,120 in San Jose buys what $122,400 buys across the country as a whole.

San Jose's regional price parity is 110.4 — 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 Project Management Specialists in San Jose, classified from job titles on visa filings.

Mid
$140,000
Senior
$179,171
Lead
$223,743
Table 2 — Nearby metros

The same job, elsewhere in California

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

Metro areaMedianAdjustedRPPvs. San Jose
San Jose This page$135,120$122,400110.4
San Francisco$135,040$116,800115.6−4.5%
Sacramento$124,350$116,600106.7−4.7%
Hanford$118,380$116,500101.6−4.8%
San Diego$117,460$105,000111.9−14.2%
Napa$109,060$96,900112.6−20.8%
San Luis Obispo$108,730$100,100108.6−18.2%
Los Angeles$108,310$95,400113.6−22.1%

Price parity and difference against San Jose 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
Paypal$215,000$150k – $251k12+59.1%
Ebay$190,000$160k – $220k8+40.6%
Bytedance$181,250$181k – $268k5+34.1%
Intuit$179,171$122k – $240k38+32.6%
Apple$166,962$150k – $179k8+23.6%
Amazon Com Services$160,000$96k – $210k16+18.4%
Linkedin$150,426$122k – $219k13+11.3%

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.

120k130k140k150k160k 20212022202320242025
Nominal, as published Real, in 2025 dollars US$ thousands

Published pay rose 6.7% over the five years to 2025. Adjusted for inflation it fell 10.2% — 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 100 certified filings across 7 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
10,300 employed in this occupation in the metro (BLS estimate; excludes the self-employed).
Occupation
SOC 13-1082, Project Management Specialists. Mapped to our taxonomy as project-management-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.