According to CbusJobs board data (August 2026), the average listed pay across Columbus job postings that show pay is about $75,000 per year. That number comes from 8,060 live listings on our board, and it is accurate. It is also, for most job seekers, close to useless on its own. The board-wide average is pulled upward by high-paying clinical, sales, and technical roles, so it tells a nurse, a server, or a warehouse worker very little about what their next job should pay. Here is what the numbers look like when you break them down by field.

Columbus pay by job category, August 2026

Here is the CbusJobs category pay table for August 2026, ranked by average listed pay. The first figure is live listings in that category, the second is the average pay shown in those listings.

  • Sales & Business Development: 267 listings, $103,000 average
  • Allied Health & Therapy: 354 listings, $91,600 average
  • Accounting & Bookkeeping: 221 listings, $82,400 average
  • Nursing: 465 listings, $68,500 average
  • Automotive & Diesel: 127 listings, $63,300 average
  • Maintenance & Facilities: 210 listings, $61,800 average
  • Warehouse & Fulfillment: 155 listings, $53,700 average
  • Driving & Delivery (Non-CDL): 176 listings, $53,600 average
  • Administrative & Clerical: 125 listings, $49,500 average
  • Retail: 262 listings, $46,400 average
  • Restaurant & Food Service: 411 listings, $41,700 average
  • Bartending & Servers: 138 listings, $37,700 average

Which Columbus fields pay the most right now?

Sales and business development tops the table at $103,000 average listed pay, followed by allied health and therapy at $91,600 and accounting and bookkeeping at $82,400, according to CbusJobs board data (August 2026). Notice that only three of the twelve categories sit above the board-wide $75,000 average. Everything else is below it.

The healthcare numbers reflect who is hiring here. OhioHealth, Mount Carmel, Nationwide Children's, and Ohio State Wexner Medical Center keep clinical demand steady year round, and therapy and other allied health roles command the strongest listed pay in the table outside of sales.

Which Columbus fields pay the least?

Bartending and server roles average $37,700, restaurant and food service $41,700, and retail $46,400. Two honest caveats. First, listed pay for tipped roles usually reflects base wages, so actual take-home for bartenders and servers often runs higher than the posted number. Second, restaurant and retail work often runs part time, whether that shift is at Easton, Polaris, or in the Short North, and part time hours drag an annualized pay figure down. If a shorter schedule is what you want, browse part-time jobs in Columbus directly.

Why the $75,000 average misleads hourly workers

Nine of the twelve categories on this board average less than $75,000. Even nursing, the single largest category with 465 live listings, averages $68,500, below the board-wide number. That is what an average skewed by the top end looks like: a smaller pool of six-figure sales, clinical, and technical postings pulls the middle up, and the headline figure stops describing the typical job.

So when you see "the average Columbus job pays $75,000" quoted anywhere, including here, read it as a fact about the mix of postings, not a promise about your paycheck. A warehouse and fulfillment worker in the Rickenbacker logistics corridor should be comparing offers against the $53,700 category average, not the citywide one. An administrative candidate should anchor to $49,500. The category number is the useful number.

How to use this data when you negotiate

  • Anchor to your category, not the city. Quoting the $75,000 board average in a retail or restaurant interview will get you nowhere. Quoting your category average, with a source and a date, is credible.
  • Treat listed pay as an opening position. An employer who publishes a number has already decided pay is discussable. The average tells you where the middle of the market sits, so you know whether an offer is above it or below it.
  • Read listing volume as leverage. With 465 live nursing listings on one local board, Columbus hospitals are competing for the same candidates, and that competition is your leverage. In a smaller category like administrative and clerical, with 125 listings, pay may move less, so negotiate schedule, hybrid days, or start date instead.
  • Use below-average offers as evidence, not insults. If an offer lands under your category average, say so plainly and cite the data. "CbusJobs board data from August 2026 shows the average listed pay for this category is higher" is a sentence a hiring manager can take back to whoever sets the budget.

Where this data comes from

Every figure above is drawn from live listings on CbusJobs, a Columbus, Ohio job board running since 2009, as of mid-August 2026. These are averages of pay that employers actually published in their postings, not survey estimates or national models scaled to a local cost of living. Listings without published pay are excluded from the averages.

The numbers move as listings open and close, so check the current table on our Columbus salary data page before you walk into an interview. And if the category averages have you curious what is out there, all 8,060 live listings are searchable now on our find a job page.