---
title: "Chief of Staff"
description: "Works as a senior executive's right hand, running priority projects, leadership meetings and company operations on their behalf."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/chief-of-staff"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Chief of Staff

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-1021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-1021.00

Works as a senior executive's right hand, running priority projects, leadership meetings and company operations on their behalf.

Also advertised as: Chief of Staff to the CEO; Executive Chief of Staff; Business Chief of Staff; Chief of Staff, Operations; Head of Staff.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $105,770 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $50.85/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $50,090 to $253,390, with the middle half between $72,320 and $167,280
- **Total US employment:** 3,503,020
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 285,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 39/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 3,503,020 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $50,090 |
| 25th | $72,320 |
| 50th (median) | $105,770 |
| 75th | $167,280 |
| 90th | $253,390 |
| Mean (average) | $134,940 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NJ | $173,690 | $159,634 | 53,000 |
| DC | $168,000 | $152,865 | 36,150 |
| SD | $137,400 | $155,104 | 4,280 |
| CT | $137,220 | $132,439 | 39,070 |
| DE | $137,220 | $137,484 | 5,000 |
| WA | $133,750 | $124,985 | 50,630 |
| CO | $131,840 | $127,935 | 41,870 |
| NY | $130,860 | $121,255 | 206,740 |
| MA | $127,220 | $120,295 | 95,880 |
| NH | $124,680 | $119,695 | 22,110 |
| CA | $124,390 | $112,346 | 300,840 |
| VA | $122,080 | $120,747 | 103,590 |
| WI | $118,730 | $126,181 | 36,910 |
| MD | $117,930 | $112,358 | 96,740 |
| RI | $117,380 | $114,763 | 9,150 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/chief-of-staff/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/chief-of-staff.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 3,599,000 in the 2025–2035 base year to 3,780,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 181,300 jobs, or +5.0%. Faster than average: 5.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 285,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** 5 years or more.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 28.8% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 27.3% |
| Some College Courses | 21.6% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 10.4% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 6.0% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 5.7% |

## What the work involves

- Run leadership team meetings and track action items
- Prepare board and executive presentations
- Lead cross-functional projects on behalf of the executive
- Manage company planning and goal-setting processes
- Filter and prioritize issues that reach the executive
- Communicate decisions across the organization
- Handle confidential personnel and strategic matters

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Administration and Management — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 7.00 |
| C — Conventional | 5.66 |
| S — Social | 4.11 |
| I — Investigative | 2.37 |
| R — Realistic | 2.20 |
| A — Artistic | 1.29 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 79.1 |
| ESFJ | 78.5 |
| ENTJ | 64.0 |
| ENFJ | 61.9 |
| ISFJ | 60.7 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [General and Operations Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-and-operations-manager) — median $105,770
- [Chief Executive](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chief-executive) — median $213,990
- [Administrative Services Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/administrative-services-manager) — median $114,130
- [Industrial Production Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-production-manager) — median $126,060
- [First-Line Supervisor of Non-Retail Sales Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-non-retail-sales-workers) — median $87,520
- [Facilities Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/facilities-manager) — median $106,660
- [Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-storage-and-distribution-manager) — median $107,230
- [Project Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/project-management-specialist) — median $102,320
- [Construction Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/construction-manager) — median $114,990
- [Information Technology Project Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/information-technology-project-manager) — median $116,580

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/chief-of-staff