Help Desk Salary and IT Support Salary

What Is the Help Desk Salary?

The median help desk salary is $61,860 a year, which is $29.74 an hour for full-time work. That figure comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS survey, May 2025 release, at bls.gov/oes, for an occupation called computer user support specialists. The code is 15-1232.

That one occupation is the source of both the help desk salary and the IT support salary you see in search results. Help desk technician, desktop support technician, technical support specialist and IT support specialist are different job titles for work that BLS measures together. So there is one median, one range and one set of projections, and they apply to all of those titles.

About 717,190 people hold jobs in this occupation, which makes it one of the largest in IT and the place where most people in the field start.

IT Support Salary Range From the 10th to the 90th Percentile

Half of IT support workers earn less than $61,860 and half earn more. At the low end, the 10th percentile is $40,980. At the high end, the 90th percentile is $100,540.

The low end is what a first job usually pays: a phone-based, tier-one role resetting passwords and walking people through the basics. The high end is not a tier-one job at all. It is a senior desktop or application support specialist at a large employer, someone who handles escalations, trains the new hires and knows the company’s systems better than anyone else in the building.

That spread is the main reason to read the whole range and not only the median. Where you start is not where you will stay, and what the job pays after three years depends on how quickly you take on harder problems.

What Moves Help Desk Pay

Tier and responsibility. A first-line technician follows scripts. A second-tier technician fixes what the first tier cannot. A senior support specialist designs the processes and owns the tools. Each step up the tiers adds pay, and each requires you to solve problems on your own.

Certifications. The CompTIA A+ certification is the standard entry credential for support work, and many employers ask for it by name. It helps you get hired. After a year or two on the job, the specialist certifications for networking or cloud matter more, because they signal the direction you are heading.

Industry. Support roles at software companies, financial firms and large health systems tend to pay more than similar roles at schools, small businesses and retail. The reason is simple: the cost of a user who cannot work is higher at the first group, and they compete harder for the same staff.

Shift and coverage. Evening, overnight and on-call support often carries a pay premium. Remote roles can be competitive, and some employers adjust pay by location.

Soft skills. It sounds like a cliché, but support is the part of IT where communication is the job. Technicians who can explain a fix without making the user feel stupid get promoted ahead of those who cannot, and that shows up in pay.

Help Desk Salary Outlook

BLS projects employment in this occupation to change by -3.5% between 2025 and 2035. The projection is negative, and it is worth saying plainly: the number of computer user support jobs is expected to fall.

The reasons are practical. Self-service portals, chat assistants and better software reduce the volume of simple requests, and so fewer people are needed to handle the same number of users. The remaining work is harder and more varied.

Two details soften the number. The occupation is large enough that BLS still expects about 39,700 openings a year, because people constantly move up, move on or leave. And for most readers, support is a first step, not a career end point. The question is less whether there will be help desk jobs and more where you want to be after your first one. The BLS Employment Projections page has the full data.

The Degree Behind an IT Support Salary

BLS lists some college, no degree as the typical entry education for computer user support specialists. It is one of the few IT occupations where you can start without a degree, and many people do, usually with A+ and a persuasive interview.

A degree is not required to start, but it changes where you can go. Employers who hire analysts, administrators and engineers often screen for a bachelor’s, and the people who move fastest out of support are frequently the ones who study while working. An associate degree is a sensible middle path: it costs far less than a bachelor’s, it can be done online, and it counts toward one later.

Our ranking of online IT associate degrees compares programs by cost, format and certification alignment, so you can see what a two-year route would cost before you decide.

How to Raise Your Help Desk Salary

Treat the help desk as an apprenticeship. The first six months are for learning how the company’s systems fit together and which problems repeat. After that, ask for the harder tickets, and write down fixes in a shared knowledge base so your work is visible.

Choose a direction by your second year. If you like how networks work, study for the CCNA and read our help desk technician career guide to see what the next role looks like. If you prefer servers and accounts, aim at systems administration. If you like investigating incidents, look at security.

Then apply for the next job before you feel completely ready. The people who stay on a help desk for five years at one employer usually earn near the median. The people who move to administration or networking in two or three years often earn considerably more, and the difference compounds. The network administrator salary page shows where that next step lands.

Help Desk Salary Compared with the Next Step Up

The median for computer user support specialists is $61,860. Computer network support specialists, a slightly more technical group, earn a median of $76,220. Network and computer systems administrators earn $99,130.

Those three medians describe a ladder. Support is the base, network support is the first rung up, and administration is the next. Each rung asks for a bit more independent technical judgment and pays for it. Even a modest move, from tier one to network support, is worth a real raise, and the path from there into administration is well worn.

If you plan to start on a help desk, treat the salary as a starting number and not a ceiling, and plan your first two years around the next job.

How Help Desk Salary Changes with Where You Work

Two people with the same title can have very different pay and very different workdays. An in-house help desk at one company means you learn a small set of systems deeply and know the people you help. A managed service provider puts you in front of dozens of client environments, which teaches you faster and usually pays less per hour. A vendor support line at a software company tends to be technical and scripted, with better benefits.

Government and education jobs often pay below the median and offer steadier hours. Healthcare and finance employers tend to pay more because their systems are regulated and downtime is expensive. None of these patterns is a rule. They are tendencies, and the way to test them is to read job postings in your area and compare the posted ranges with the $40,980 to $100,540 spread above.

When you compare offers, count the whole package: the shift, the on-call duty, the training budget and whether the employer will pay for a certification. A job that pays a little less but funds your exam and gives you access to servers can be worth more over two years than a higher-paying job that leaves you answering the same ticket forever.

Help Desk Salary by State

District of Columbia pays help desk technicians the most, with a median of $80,950, 31% above the $61,860 national figure. Puerto Rico is the lowest of the 52 places BLS reports, at $36,250. District of Columbia stays first after adjusting for local prices, at $73,657 in buying power.

The 10 highest of 52. These figures are for computer user support specialists. The adjusted column divides the median by the BEA 2024 regional price parity for the state: an estimate of buying power, not what an employer pays.

Help Desk Salary in Major Metros

Of the 50 metro areas in our city guides with a published figure, Sacramento has the highest median at $106,040, and Tulsa has the lowest at $50,940. A metro median covers the whole area, suburbs included, so it can differ from pay in the city itself.

The 10 highest of 50. These figures are for computer user support specialists, BLS May 2025.

IT Salaries Side by Side

Computer User Support Specialists rank 9 of 9 by median pay among the IT occupations we cover. The low and high ends show how much overlap there is: a strong earner in a lower-paid job can out-earn a new hire in a higher-paid one.

Sorted by median pay. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, and Employment Projections, 2025-35.