Project Manager Salary in Florida 2026,
$98,070 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $98,070 a year, or $47.15 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 4.2% below the national median of $102,320, with no state income tax deducted from it. The band runs $59,070 at the 10th percentile to $161,250 at the 90th, with the middle half between $75,820 and $128,640. The figure covers Project Management Specialists as a category, not any single job title.

Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville at $103,870, then Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin $100,180, Jacksonville $99,270, Naples-Marco Island $99,250 and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach $98,720. The two leaders are the Space Coast and the Panhandle defence corridor; the entire table spans about five thousand dollars, so moving within Florida for this job is rarely worth it on pay alone.

No. Florida issues no licence or state credential for project management at any level, and none is required in any sector. What Florida employers actually screen on varies sharply by industry: defence and aerospace employers on the Space Coast and around Eglin require security clearance eligibility, construction project management operates under the licensed general contractor's authority rather than the project manager's, and healthcare and public-sector work generally asks for Project Management Institute credentials. Clearance is the scarcest of those and prices highest.

In take-home terms, yes — the 4.2% shortfall against the $102,320 national median is smaller than the state income tax a project manager would pay in most other states, so a Floridian at the $98,070 median generally keeps more than the headline suggests. The complication is property insurance rather than tax. Florida's hurricane-driven insurance costs are high enough in much of the state to consume the advantage for a homeowner, which is why the income-tax comparison and the cost-of-living comparison do not agree.

Aerospace and defence, visibly. Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville on the Space Coast publishes $103,870 and Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin near Eglin publishes $100,180 — both above the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach figure of $98,720 despite far smaller populations. Cleared programme management in launch, defence systems and aviation sustainment is scarce in Florida, and the $128,640 seventy-fifth percentile is largely where that work sits.

Because the buyers are different. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach generates enormous volumes of project management work across logistics, hospitality, healthcare, construction and professional services — high demand, but also a very deep supply of candidates and mostly commercial rate pressure. Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville's demand comes from launch providers, defence primes and their supply chains, where programmes are technically complex, schedules are contractual and a large share of roles require clearance that takes months to obtain. Scarcity of eligible candidates, not the size of the market, is what sets the rate.

SOC 13-1082 is a broad code covering project management specialists across every industry, so a construction scheduler and an aerospace programme manager sit in the same estimate. That is why the band runs from $59,070 to $161,250. The wage measure also excludes bonuses tied to project delivery, which are common at the senior end. And with about 76,370 people in the Florida sample the state figure is robust, but the smaller metro rows should be read as directional.

Sector first — aerospace, defence and large-scale construction pay above the general commercial market here, and the Space Coast and Panhandle metro figures show it. Clearance second, which is a genuine Florida-specific lever given the state's defence footprint and is not something a certification substitutes for. Scope third: the move from managing projects to managing programmes and portfolios is most of the distance from the $98,070 median to the $128,640 seventy-fifth percentile. Technical domain fourth, since engineering-adjacent programme work outprices generalist delivery management.