Financial Analyst Salary: The Complete Breakdown

The median financial analyst salary is $101,350 a year, or roughly $49 an hour, based on the BLS OEWS survey for May 2024. Half of financial analysts earn more than that, half earn less, and that's the number worth anchoring on if you only remember one figure from this page.

The real story is the range around it. The lowest-paid 10 percent of financial analysts make less than $62,410 a year, often junior analysts early in their careers or people working in lower-paying industries. The highest-paid 10 percent make more than $180,550, concentrated in asset management, hedge funds, and senior roles like portfolio manager. The BLS doesn't publish a 25th or 75th percentile for this occupation, so treat $62,410 to $180,550 as the honest range rather than reaching for a false middle.

What separates someone earning near the floor from someone earning near the ceiling isn't luck. It's the CFA charter, which is the single biggest credential lever in this field; whether you're on the buy-side or the sell-side; which industry you work in; and how many rungs you've climbed from junior analyst toward portfolio manager or finance manager. The rest of this page breaks down each of those factors on its own.

Where you work changes your financial analyst salary more than almost anything else on this list. Securities, commodity contracts, and investment firms sit at the top of the pay scale: these are the trading desks, asset managers, and investment banks where financial analysis is the core product, not a support function. Corporate financial planning and analysis (FP&A) roles and insurance companies sit in the middle, solid and stable pay, but you're one department among many rather than the profit center. Government agencies pay the least of the major employer categories, but they offer something the others don't: job stability and predictable hours.

The buy-side versus sell-side distinction matters just as much as the industry label. Buy-side analysts work for the firms that manage money directly, mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity, pension funds, deciding what to buy and hold. Sell-side analysts work for the banks and brokerages that research and recommend those investments to buy-side clients. Buy-side roles generally pay more, especially once performance-based compensation gets layered on top of base salary, because buy-side firms are compensating you for investment decisions that directly affect returns. If you want the higher end of the financial analyst salary range, the buy-side is where most of that money sits.

Corporate FP&A is a legitimate, stable path too, worth naming as an option rather than a consolation prize. You won't typically see the buy-side ceiling, but you also won't ride the same volatility. If you want to see how these industry paths connect to a full career trajectory, the how to become a financial analyst guide breaks down each track in more detail.

A junior financial analyst, someone in the first year or two out of a bachelor's degree, typically starts near the lower end of the range, closer to the $62,410 floor than the $101,350 median. You're building financial models, running comps, and learning the tools under a senior analyst's supervision, and the pay reflects that you're still early in the learning curve.

A mid-career senior analyst moves up toward and past the $101,350 median. By this point you're owning models and recommendations rather than just building them, you've usually got a few years of experience and often a CFA charter or progress toward one, and you're trusted with more direct exposure to decision-makers. This is where the financial analyst salary curve starts to bend upward faster than it did in the first few years.

The biggest jump on this ladder is the move into portfolio manager or finance manager roles, the territory near the $180,550 top 10 percent mark. That jump isn't about tenure. Plenty of analysts stay in the same seat for a decade and never approach it. It happens when someone earns the CFA charter, moves from the sell-side to the buy-side, or gets promoted into a role managing a portfolio or a team rather than just producing analysis. Tenure alone rarely gets you there; a change in credential, employer type, or job title usually does.

The CFA charter is the single biggest credential lever on a financial analyst salary, and it's worth understanding exactly what it takes before you commit to it. The Chartered Financial Analyst program has three exam levels, each testing progressively deeper material in investment analysis, portfolio management, and ethics. You also need qualified work experience in the investment decision-making process before the CFA Institute will award the charter, not just passing exams. Between studying for three levels and accumulating that experience, most candidates are looking at several years from first registering to holding the charter.

That grind pays off most clearly on the buy-side and in research roles, where the charter is close to an expected credential for anyone above the junior level and where it directly signals the investment judgment those employers are paying for. It matters less in some corporate FP&A roles, where the work is closer to internal budgeting and forecasting than investment analysis, and where employers may value an MBA, industry experience, or a professional certification like the CPA more than the CFA. If you're aiming at asset management, hedge funds, or equity research, the CFA is close to table stakes. If you're aiming at corporate finance, it's a strong signal but not always the deciding factor.

A lot of people pair the CFA path with a graduate degree rather than choosing one or the other. If you're weighing that combination, master's in finance programs are built around the same investment and portfolio management material the CFA exams test, which is part of why the two credentials complement each other instead of competing.

If you want to move your financial analyst salary higher, a handful of moves actually do it. Earning the CFA charter is the first, especially if you're aiming at investment or asset management work, since it's the credential those employers weight most heavily above the junior level. Moving from a sell-side research seat to a buy-side firm, an asset manager, hedge fund, or private equity shop, is the second, and it tends to move the needle more than staying in the same seat and waiting for a raise.

Specializing in a high-value niche is the third lever. Analysts who build deep expertise in a specific sector, asset class, or type of analysis, equity research, fixed income, risk, or valuation for private equity, become harder to replace than generalists, and that scarcity shows up in pay. The fourth is the most direct: stepping onto the path toward portfolio manager or finance manager, the roles that sit near the top of the range. That step usually requires some combination of the CFA, a track record of good calls, and enough tenure to be trusted with more capital or a bigger team.

Your degree sets the floor before any of that starts. A bachelor's in finance programs is the entry credential the BLS lists as typical for this occupation, and it's what gets you in the door as a junior analyst in the first place. From there, a master's in finance programs option helps you reach senior and management-track roles faster, particularly if you're pairing it with CFA study or aiming at a buy-side move. Neither degree guarantees the top of the range on its own, but skipping the credential step makes every other lever harder to pull.

Employment for financial analysts is projected to grow 6 percent from 2024 to 2034, according to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, faster than the 3 percent average projected across all occupations. That growth translates into about 29,900 openings a year on average over the decade, most from people leaving the occupation or moving up rather than from new positions being created from scratch.

There were about 368,500 financial analyst jobs in 2024, and the demand behind that growth is straightforward: companies and investors keep needing someone to turn raw financial data into a decision, whether that's whether to buy a stock, fund a project, or restructure a budget. As more of that decision-making leans on data, and as investment activity keeps generating new portfolios and deals that need analysis, the role stays in demand even in a slower-growing job market overall.

A 6 percent growth rate and nearly 30,000 openings a year is a genuinely good outlook, but it's not a guarantee of a specific financial analyst salary. Where you land inside the $62,410 to $180,550 range still depends on the industry, credential, and seniority factors covered above. If you're mapping out the full path into this field, how to become a financial analyst walks through the degree, experience, and CFA timeline in order, and finance degree programs is the place to compare ranked, accredited options at every degree level.