Methodology & Data Sources

1. Data Sources

Every number on a GlobalCybers salary, career or licence page traces back to one of four sources. We name the source and its vintage on the page itself, not only here.

• Wages — BLS OEWS May 2025. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, reference period May 2025 (release 2025A01, published May 2026). This is the current release across the whole site; we do not mix vintages between pages.
• Growth and openings — BLS Employment Projections 2024–2034. The 2024–34 projection round, by occupation, national.
• Take-home pay — published state tax schedules. State income-tax rates and brackets from each state’s revenue department, plus the federal brackets, standard deduction, Social Security wage base and Medicare rate for the tax year stated on the calculator.
• Licensing and credentials — the issuing authority. Requirements, fees and renewal cycles come from the state licensing board or the certifying body itself, never from a third-party aggregator.

1a. Data Vintages at a Glance

Every figure family on the site, its publisher, the release it comes from and how often it moves. These are the same vintage strings the page templates render, so this table cannot drift from them.

2. How Wage Figures Are Computed

National medians and percentiles are reproduced verbatim from OEWS for the SOC code the page maps to. We do not smooth, blend or re-weight them. Where a page shows an hourly figure alongside an annual one, the hourly figure is the annual median divided by 2,080 hours unless OEWS publishes an hourly value directly.

OEWS is collected on a rolling three-year sample and published roughly ten months after the reference period closes. Treat it as a firm anchor for what a role pays, not as a spot rate for what an offer will be this week.

3. State and City Figures

Where BLS publishes a state or metropolitan estimate for the occupation, we use that published estimate directly.

Where it does not — small states, small occupations, and metro areas the survey suppresses for confidentiality — the figure is a localisation: the national OEWS median for the SOC code multiplied by a state wage index derived from published all-occupation state wage levels. A localised figure is an estimate of the state’s typical pay for that role, not a survey result, and the page says so where it appears.

4. Mapping Occupations to SOC Codes

BLS publishes wages by Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code, not by job title. Each role we cover is mapped to one SOC code, and the page states the code and how close the match is:

• Exact— the SOC code covers this occupation and essentially only this occupation.
• Close— the SOC code covers this occupation together with closely related work, so the median is representative but not role-specific.
• Broad— the occupation sits inside a wider or residual “all other” SOC group. The figure describes the group, and pay for this specific title can sit meaningfully above or below it.

5. Growth and Openings

Projected employment change is the BLS Employment Projections 2024–34figure for the occupation. Annual openings are the program’s average openings per yearover the projection decade — a yearly average that includes replacement need, not a decade total and not a count of currently advertised jobs. These projections are national; BLS does not publish a state-level equivalent, so a state page’s growth figure is the national one unless stated otherwise.

5a. Why State and National Projection Windows Differ

Two different publishers, two different cycles — both labelled where they appear. National growth and openings come from the BLS Employment Projections program, currently the 2024–34 round covering 2024–2034. State projections are not produced by BLS. They are produced by the individual state labour-market agencies and published together through Projections Central, whose long-term series runs on its own cycle — several states are still on the 2022–2032 window.

So a state page may cite a 2022–2032 growth rate while the national page for the same occupation cites 2024–2034. That is not an inconsistency in our data: it is two separate programmes on separate release schedules, and we do not restate one in terms of the other or blend them into a single figure. Every projection on the site names its publisher and its window at the point of use, so a state and a national number are always comparable on their own terms rather than silently against each other.

6. Tax and Take-Home Calculators

Our paycheck calculator and salary calculator apply the federal income-tax brackets and standard deduction, Social Security to the published wage base, Medicare, and the state schedule for the state selected. They assume standard deductions and no local, county or city income tax unless the state page names one, and they do not model pre-tax benefit elections, retirement contributions, garnishments or supplemental withholding. Results are estimates for planning, not tax advice.

7. Verified Placement Data

Some salary pages show a GlobalCybers verified placement median alongside the published BLS figure. That number is the median base wage of candidates we placed into that role and state over the trailing twelve months. A placement is only counted when there is a confirmed credential or licence record and a signed offer letter — no self-reported salaries are included. Sample sizes are modest because this reflects our own placement volume rather than a market-wide survey, so treat it as a directional, real-world data point next to BLS, never as a replacement for it.

8. Review and Update Process

Pages are compiled by GlobalCybers Labor Market Research, our in-house data desk, which reconciles each BLS release against our own placement records and the issuing authorities for any credential named on the page.

Where a page carries a named human reviewer— a licensed tradesperson, registered nurse, PE, CPA or attorney on our review panel — that person has read the page in their own domain, and their name and credential appear in the byline. Where no named reviewer appears, the page was reviewed by the relevant GlobalCybers desk rather than by an individual, and the structured data on the page reflects that: a desk is published as an organisation, not as a person.

Every page states the date its figures were last verified. Wage and projection figures are refreshed when BLS publishes a new release; licence, fee and renewal details are re-checked against the issuing authority on a rolling basis and carry their own last-checked date.

9. Honest Limitations

These are the known weaknesses in the data. We would rather state them than have you discover them:

• Broad and residual SOC codes approximate niche titles. When a specialised job sits inside an “all other” group, the published median describes the group. Specialists in a well-compensated niche routinely earn more than their SOC group’s median.
• Projections are national.A national growth rate can be badly wrong for a single state whose industry mix differs from the country’s.
• Commission and profit-based pay is understated.OEWS measures base wages and salaries. It excludes employer-paid benefits, and it does not capture most commission, tips, profit distributions, per-diem or overtime-heavy earnings — so sales, owner-operator and heavy-overtime roles read low.
• The data lags. A three-year rolling sample published ten months late means figures are one to two years behind the market in fast-moving occupations.
• Localised state figures are estimates. Where BLS suppresses a state or metro estimate, our wage-index localisation fills the gap; it is a modelled figure, not a survey result.

10. Corrections

If a figure on any page looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source. Email info@globalcybers.comwith the subject line "Data Correction" and the page URL. Corrections that change a published figure are made at source, so every page using that figure updates together.

11. Frequently Asked Questions