Project Manager Salary in North Carolina 2026,
$100,820 Median | BLS Data by City

North Carolina project managers earn a median $100,820 a year, $48.47 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $77,970 and $130,690 and a full range of $61,570 to $164,050. That is 1.5% below the $102,320 national median, and the figure covers SOC 13-1082, Project Management Specialists, so coordinators and delivery leads are included alongside project managers.

Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia at $105,200, then Durham-Chapel Hill at $104,870, Raleigh-Cary at $102,280, Greensboro-High Point at $99,690 and Asheville at $97,470. The eight-thousand-dollar spread from top to bottom is narrow, but the work behind each figure differs sharply.

No. North Carolina has no board for project managers and issues no project-management credential. Employers screen on the PMP from the Project Management Institute, on agile certifications such as the CSM or SAFe, and on domain evidence. Where a project is construction or engineering, the licence that legally matters belongs to the architect or professional engineer of record.

The pay is effectively identical — $105,200 against $104,870 — so the choice is about the work. Charlotte means banking and insurance platform delivery, regulatory programmes and vendor-heavy technology change. Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary mean clinical development, pharmaceutical manufacturing transfers and research programmes. Moving between them mid-career is harder than the shared job title suggests.

It helps most at the top. The 4.5% flat rate, reduced from 4.75% in 2024, applies to the whole range, so a PMO director at the state 90th percentile of $164,050 pays the same rate as a coordinator at $61,570. No North Carolina city levies a local income tax, so metro comparisons within the state are clean cost-of-living comparisons.

Because the state's project management employment is broad rather than top-heavy. A location quotient of 1.07 across about 36,200 specialists means North Carolina uses the title widely, including in operational and coordination roles that sit well below the $100,820 median. Charlotte and the Triangle pull upward, and Greensboro-High Point at $99,690 and Asheville at $97,470 anchor the state near the national line.

The occupation code is broad and the state's markets are narrow. SOC 13-1082 counts project coordinators alongside senior project managers, and North Carolina employers also use the PM title for jobs BLS files under management analysts, computer occupations and construction managers. A Charlotte technical programme manager's real market sits above this median; a manufacturing coordinator's sits below it.

Programme scope with a budget attached. The step from $100,820 to $130,690 in this state is usually a move from a single project to a portfolio — a banking platform programme with vendor contracts, a clinical development programme with regulatory dependencies, or a plant capital programme. In the Charlotte banking market that step also generally adds a bonus component that OEWS does not capture.