Actuary Salary in California 2026,
$130,510 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $130,510 a year, or $62.75 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — essentially level with the national median of $130,000. The middle half falls between $101,600 and $188,390, and the full published band runs $83,510 to $219,490. The spread is unusually wide for a single occupation code because it contains everything from a first-year analyst with one exam to a fellow with signing authority.

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at $175,330, and it is not close. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara follows at $131,040, then Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim $127,970, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario $124,140 and Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom $116,580. The Bay Area figure reflects health-plan and reinsurance actuarial work plus the insurtech employers that compete for the same people against technology salaries.

No. California has no actuarial board, no state examination and no licence for the profession — there is nothing to apply for and nothing to renew with the state. What governs the career is the examination sequence run by the Society of Actuaries and the Casualty Actuarial Society, plus their Associate and Fellow designations. The one place California does impose a requirement is the appointed actuary signing statements filed with the Department of Insurance, which turns on those professional qualifications rather than on a state credential.

Because insurance underwriting is not headquartered here. California's location quotient of 0.41 means the state employs actuaries at well under half the national rate per worker, and about 1,280 in total. Carriers concentrate their actuarial departments where they are domiciled — Connecticut, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Nebraska — and California's actuarial employment is instead health plans, a Sacramento regulator, consulting offices and the property and casualty carriers writing the state's own wildfire-exposed risk.

Materially worse at the same gross. California's income tax is progressive to 13.3% with a 1.3% uncapped State Disability Insurance contribution on top; Illinois charges a flat 4.95%; Texas charges nothing. Since California pays roughly the national median of $130,000 rather than a premium, the state offers no wage compensation for that difference outside the Bay Area — and the Bay Area premium of $175,330 is substantially consumed by housing. That arithmetic is why actuarial careers so often move out of California rather than into it.

Because SOC 15-2011 covers the whole exam ladder in one code. An actuarial analyst who has passed a single preliminary examination and a fellow who signs statutory reserve opinions are both actuaries in this data, and the $83,510 tenth percentile to $219,490 ninetieth spread is essentially the exam sequence rendered as a wage distribution. That is useful information rather than noise: unlike most occupations, where the band reflects employer and geography, this one reflects a published, sequential credential that a candidate controls directly.

It rests on a sample of about 1,280 people, which is small for a state estimate, and it excludes the bonus and equity components that matter a great deal at the senior end of this profession — particularly at the insurtech and technology-adjacent employers that make the Bay Area figure what it is. OEWS measures wages and salaries. For a fellow being recruited into a chief actuary role, the wage line is a minority of the offer.

Exams, first and by a wide margin, because the Associate and Fellow designations are the profession's pay gates and no California employer sets them. Practice area second: health and reinsurance pricing pay above traditional life work in this state. Geography third, and it is worth about forty-eight thousand dollars between San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at $175,330 and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim at $127,970. The distinctly Californian factor is scarcity on both sides — few employers, and few credentialed actuaries willing to accept the state's tax and housing arithmetic.