Consultant Salary 2026: The Same Title, Four Pay Floors

The one consultant salary figure a federal agency publishes

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts this work under code 13-1111, management analysts. For May 2025 it publishes a median annual wage of $101,860. Employment in 2025 was 1,077,100, and the agency projects 1,186,300 for 2035, which is ten percent growth over the decade. Checked 30 September 2026.

That median is the honest answer to "how much do consultants make," and it answers a question most readers are not asking. It covers 1,077,100 people across every employer in the country, from a two-person advisory practice to a federal contractor to a strategy firm. It mixes them deliberately, because an occupation is a kind of work rather than a kind of employer.

The full distribution sits behind that median, and it has no citable web page any more: the static OEWS profile for this occupation now redirects to the survey's home page, so these came from the agency's public data API, checked 8 October 2026.

Inside the consulting industry alone, the same survey runs from $50,240 at the 10th percentile to $204,240 at the 90th, which is 4.07 times, recalculated as 204,240 over 50,240. One occupation, one industry, and a fourfold spread before anyone mentions a firm.

The agency also states this page's thesis in its own words. The Standard Occupational Classification manual says: "The organizing principle of the SOC system is work performed rather than job title so there are many fewer occupation codes in the SOC than there are jobs in the economy." And then, plainly: "Workers with the same title may be classified in different occupations, based on their individual job duties."

Two limits come with the figures. The wage survey covers "wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments" and excludes "the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms," so it cannot price the top of a consulting ladder at all. And it counts 898,280 people where the occupational handbook counts 1,077,100, a gap of 178,820 that is largely the self-employed.

Four employers file the title Consultant, and four different floors

Four of the sixteen consulting employers in our extract filed the job title Consultant, spelled exactly that way, in the Labor Department disclosure file for fiscal 2026. The file covers determinations dated 1 October 2025 through 30 June 2026. Here is what each one filed.

Divide the highest floor by the lowest median and the same word comes out 1.81 times apart: $190,000 over $104,700 is 1.8147. The absolute gap is $85,300 on one job title.

Read the first row with one caution attached. Deloitte Consulting LLP files under a single entity that covers many practices, and its disclosure file is 1,548 Software Developers against 60 Management Analysts out of 2,622 records. Its Consultant title therefore spans kinds of work the filing does not separate, which is part of why its band is the widest of the four.

Put the federal median beside the bottom of that table and a second thing appears. Deloitte Consulting's median for the title Consultant was $104,700, which is $2,840 above the occupation-wide median of $101,860. BCG's floor for the identical title was $190,000, which is 1.87 times that same median. One title, and one of its filings sits near the national middle while another sits at nearly double it.

BCG also states the figure itself. Its Consultant posting for advanced degree candidates in the United States gives a $190,000 first year base, checked 29 September 2026, and 199 of its 273 Consultant filings carry $190,000 as a single value. That is the one case in this reading where a published number and a filed floor agree to the dollar.

Seven firms published a Consultant range on one day

Filings record last year's hires. Postings record today's policy, and on 8 October 2026 seven firms had a live US posting for the title Consultant with a pay figure attached. Listed alphabetically, because we publish no ranking of firms.

Highest flat figure over lowest floor is 2.78, recalculated as 200,000 over 72,000. Same word, same day, every number published by the firm whose word it is.

Bain words it as a single annual figure on its Consultant posting: "The annualized base compensation for first-year Consultants in the United States is $200,000." Its sibling posting puts Associate Consultant at $120,000 in the same sentence pattern. BCG writes "Consultant: $200,000 USD (as of January 1, 2027)" on one posting, and $190,000 with no effective date on another read ten days earlier, which is a $10,000 gap inside one firm and one title that neither posting explains.

Deloitte writes the most useful caveat any firm publishes on its Consultant posting, and it applies to every range in the table: "The disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for the applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled. At Deloitte, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role."

Protiviti is the only firm here that prices the variable part. It prints base, a $2,000 bonus target and an estimated total cash range as three separate figures, and across its published ladder the implied target rises with the grade: about 2.8 percent at Consultant, 10 percent at Senior Consultant, 12 percent at Manager.

Five published ladders, read side by side

Five employers filed enough distinct titles in fiscal 2026 to reconstruct their rung order from the bands alone. Lowest band first.

Three readings come straight off that grid.

Consultant is the third rung of six at BCG and at Bain, and the first rung of six at Deloitte Consulting. Two promotions separate the same word. A reader who learns that a consultant salary is $190,000 at one employer and then applies that figure to a Consultant title elsewhere has skipped two rungs without noticing.

Associate is the first rung at BCG and at PwC Advisory, and the third at McKinsey. BCG's Associate floor was $110,000. McKinsey's Associate band was $192,000 to $212,000. Divide and the same word comes out 1.75 times apart: 192,000 over 110,000 is 1.7455.

No McKinsey rung carries the word Consultant at all. Five of its seven filed titles append it in parentheses, as in Business Analyst (Management Consultant), and that parenthesis names the occupation of the filing rather than the grade of the firm.

Three more firms publish career paths with no Consultant rung on them. Kearney runs Business Analyst, Senior Business Analyst, Associate, Manager, Principal, Partner. Analysis Group runs Analyst and Senior Analyst, Associate, Manager, Vice President, then Principal and Managing Principal. Cornerstone Research runs Analyst then Associate. At all three the word appears only as a common noun for client-facing staff, so the job title this page is about does not exist there.

Senior consultant salary, and the ladders that skip the rung

Senior Consultant is the second most searched title in this cluster after the bare word, and it exists at some employers and not at others. Deloitte Consulting LLP filed it 351 times in fiscal 2026, at a median of $131,997, with values running from $56,534 to $190,000. Those 351 filings carry 217 distinct salaries across 139 cities.

City medians for that one title, from the same file:

McKinsey, BCG, Bain and PwC Advisory filed the title Senior Consultant zero times. The ladders above show why. The rung above Consultant is called Project Leader at BCG and Manager at Bain, and McKinsey's sequence runs Associate then Engagement Manager. A reader comparing a Senior Consultant offer against a strategy firm is comparing a rung to something that firm does not name.

The spread inside that one title is the other finding here. From $56,534 to $190,000 is a factor of 3.36, recalculated as 190,000 over 56,534 equals 3.3608. The occupational mix behind the Consultant row above is the same mix behind this one, so a rung that covers a software practice and a strategy practice at once will show a wide band whatever it is called.

What a filed wage covers before any bonus is added

A filed wage is base salary, and nothing else. The Labor Department's record layout defines the field as the "Wage paid to nonimmigrant workers at the First Worksite Location," checked 29 September 2026. No bonus, no signing bonus, no profit share, and no equity enters that number.

What makes a filing readable as pay information is one rule, published by the Labor Department's foreign labor certification program and quoted here in full: "The required wage rate must be the higher of the actual wage rate (the rate the employer pays to all other individuals with similar experience and qualifications who are performing the same job), or the prevailing wage (a wage that is predominantly paid to workers in the same occupational classification in the area of intended employment at the time the application is filed)."

The phrase that matters is the parenthesis on actual wage rate. A filed number is tied to what the employer pays comparable staff already inside the building. That is the strongest claim this source supports, and it stops short of two others. It does not make the sample a census, because only sponsored roles are filed. It says nothing at all about an employer that sponsors nobody, which simply has no rows.

The prevailing wage column is the second number on every row, and it is a public benchmark for the same city and occupation. Those two columns together are what let the next section separate an employer's pay policy from the local market it sits in.

Where a manager and a managing consultant actually sit

Manager is the third title this cluster searches, and it lands at a different height again. Bain filed Manager at $212,000 on 26 of 26 certified filings across ten cities, 25 of them at prevailing wage level IV. Deloitte Consulting filed Manager 439 times at a median of $167,835, from $77,605 to $249,200, with 281 distinct salaries across 179 cities. PwC Advisory Services filed Manager 219 times at a median of $184,000.

Bain's ladder is the clearest case of a title mapping to a government seniority level. Its six consulting rungs sit one per prevailing wage level, with a single Manager filing out of place at level III. No other employer read here shows that alignment. BCG's post-MBA Consultant sits at level II on 232 of 273 filings, while Bain's Consultant sits at level III on all 23.

Managing Consultant is the fourth title this cluster searches, and two firms publish where it sits. IBM puts it fourth of seven on a career path it prints in order: "Associate Consultant / Consultant / Senior Consultant / Managing Consultant / Senior Managing Consultant / Associate Partner / Partner." Guidehouse priced two of them on 8 October 2026, at $122,000 to $204,000 in New York and $130,000 to $216,000 in McLean, Virginia.

Guidehouse also supplies the one document in this whole subject that maps a rung to a degree and a number of years, and a regulator obtained it rather than a careers page. Its General Services Administration schedule catalog, current as of a February 2020 modification and dated accordingly, lists "Consultant I, Bachelors, 0", "Consultant II, Bachelors, 1", "Senior Consultant I, Bachelors, 3", "Senior Consultant II, Bachelors, 5", then Consulting Manager I, II and III at six, nine and twelve years.

The same firm shows the limit of reading a title at all. Its Senior Data Governance Consultant and its Lead Business Analyst carry one identical band of $98,000 to $163,000. Its Managing Consultant and its Associate Director carry another, $130,000 to $216,000. Guidehouse never says those pairs are the same grade. The identical band is the only signal that they are.

Why a posted range and a filed consultant salary disagree

A posting states a policy. A filing records a decision already taken. The two disagree in a patterned way, and reading one as the other is the most common error in this subject.

Four disagreements from this reading, each between a firm and itself:

1. Bain against Bain. Its Consultant posting states a $200,000 first year base. Its certified filings carry a $192,000 to $202,000 band on 11 of 23 records across twelve cities in the same fiscal year.
2. Bain against Bain again, in the other direction. Its Associate Consultant posting states $120,000. All eleven Associate Consultant filings top out at $117,000, across ten cities, so every filing sits under the published figure.
3. Accenture against Accenture. Its published Manager range runs from $87,400 to $253,000. Its 116 Business Architecture Manager filings run from $139,320 to $223,142 at a median of $167,300. The published range is about twice as wide as the filed distribution: $165,600 against $83,822.
4. Deloitte against Deloitte. Its posting says the published range "has not been adjusted for the applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled." Its filings carry 281 distinct Manager salaries across 179 cities. The stated policy is national and the recorded pay is local.

Neither document is wrong in any of the four. A posting sets bounds the employer intends to hire within. A filing is a sample of hires that already happened, one row at a time, with a city attached. Our consulting salary guide puts every firm on the filed basis so the rows compare, and consulting pay by city works through the geography on its own terms.

What a firm's own median employee earns, and why it travels badly

Seven listed consulting firms are required to publish the total compensation of their median employee, under the pay ratio rule in the US securities regulations. Those filings are the only place a firm states a single pay figure for its own workforce, and read together they show what an average is actually measuring.

CRA International over Huron is 2.52, recalculated as 225,864 over 89,793. Two US-listed consulting firms, and a gap of that size on the same measure. Huron's own filing explains it in one line: its net employee population is "8,497, of which 3,506 are located in India," which is 41 percent. Accenture says the same thing more starkly, reporting that "our identified median employee is located in India." What neither filing does is name a pay level inside India, so the Indian consulting offer record has to come from an audited school placement report instead.

FTI is the only one that names the job its median employee does, and the title is the one this page keeps returning to. Its 2026 proxy statement reports that its 2025 median employee is "a U.S.-based senior consultant" at $146,053.

Then the filings forbid the comparison we just made, in their own words. Huron writes that its ratio "may not be comparable to the pay ratio reported by other companies." Booz Allen writes that its figure "should not be used as a comparison to the information reported by other companies." FTI writes that it "is not intended as a measure of comparison with any other company." Take them at their word. A single average for a firm is a function of who got counted, and the firms say so themselves.

How to read one quoted number, in five steps

Someone quotes you a consultant salary. These five steps establish what it is before you act on it.

1. Ask which rung the title names at that employer. Use the ladder table above. Consultant is rung one of six at Deloitte Consulting and rung three of six at BCG, so the word alone settles nothing.
2. Ask whether the figure is base salary or a total. A filed wage is base only. A total has bonus and signing bonus added to it by whoever did the adding, and no primary source read for this page publishes such a total.
3. Ask for the date and the document. A band from a fiscal 2026 filing describes hires decided between October 2025 and June 2026. A posting describes a policy on the day you read it. Our pages carry both dates for that reason.
4. Ask what city the number belongs to. The strategy firms file one national floor per rung. Deloitte Consulting filed 281 different Manager salaries across 179 cities. Which habit the employer has decides whether a city changes the answer.
5. Ask what the employer publishes itself. BCG prints $190,000 for Consultant. Bain prints $200,000 for Consultant and $120,000 for Associate Consultant. McKinsey prints $192,000 for Associate. Those sentences sit on the firms' own pages and are the only numbers the firms own.

For one employer read end to end at every rung, see McKinsey pay by level. For the rung names and what each one is told to do, see the consulting career path. For the filing record itself, firm by firm and level by level, see the consulting salary report for 2026.

What no source on this page can tell you

Which employer pays most. Six of the nine results on this query carry a highest-paying-companies section. We publish no ranking of firms, here or anywhere, because the sources do not support one. Filings cover sponsored roles at employers that sponsor, on one fiscal window, at base salary only. Ordering firms on that basis would read as a league table built from an incomplete sample.

Bonus, signing bonus and equity by employer. The filing carries none of them. School employment reports give a class median signing bonus and never a figure per firm.

A first year total for a named firm. No primary source read here adds one up. Every total in circulation on this subject comes from a private survey that cannot be audited.

A median consultant salary for a named employer. The federal agency publishes a median for an occupation. The filings publish a sample of sponsored hires. Neither yields an employer median, and no firm publishes one.

The title to level map across employers. This is the gap at the center of the query. Guidehouse publishes degree and years against each of its own rungs, in a government schedule catalog, and it is the only firm here that does. No firm publishes a table matching its rungs to another firm's, so two offers carrying the same title cannot be aligned from published documents alone.

Anything outside the United States, except the figures firms publish themselves, which our per-firm pages carry where they exist.

Where practice fits before the number exists

Your own consultant salary lives in one document, and it is the offer letter. Nothing on this page moves that document. The interview does, and that is where our product sits.

Our structure drill grades a case answer in seconds against four weights published in full on our method page: Coverage 45, Separation 25, Depth 20, and Concision 10. Those weights are ours, and we say so, because no firm publishes a rubric of its own. The drills teach no business content, and they are not a substitute for reading the firm pages this article links to. Our assessment simulators are not running either: the /assessments page says 0 of 6 simulators are live, in those words, on the page.

The one figure in this subject that is fully knowable before an offer exists is what preparation costs. Our plans are published in full, and three months of them is under a tenth of a percent of any band in the tables above.