Financial Analyst Salary in Texas: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A financial analyst in Texas earns a median of $99,150 a year, which works out to about $47.67 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field lands between $63,230 at the 10th percentile and $169,990 at the 90th. Texas has no state income tax, so more of that gross pay actually reaches your bank account than it would in most states.

How Texas pay compares to the national figure

The national median for financial analysts is $102,740, per BLS OEWS 2025. Texas sits at $99,150, which is $3,590 below the national line, or about 3.5 percent lower on paper. That gap looks like a small penalty until you account for taxes and housing.

Here’s the part most salary pages skip. The national median includes high-cost, high-tax states like California, New York, and Massachusetts, where a six-figure gross gets cut hard by state income tax. Texas charges zero state income tax. So a Texas analyst at $99,150 keeps a larger share of every paycheck than a same-paid analyst in most of the country. When you compare net pay instead of gross, the small headline gap usually flips in Texas’s favor. We run the exact numbers in the take-home section below.

Texas also employs a large share of the profession. The state reports 28,820 financial analyst jobs, one of the deepest markets in the country. Depth matters because it means more employers competing for talent, more lateral moves available without relocating, and more room to push your pay up by switching firms inside the same metro.

It’s worth being precise about what the national median represents and why the comparison can mislead. The $102,740 national figure is a single number stretched across markets with wildly different costs and tax rules. An analyst earning that median in San Jose or Manhattan is not living the same financial life as one earning $99,150 in Fort Worth, because the coastal earner loses a chunk to state tax and spends far more on housing. The honest comparison is net pay against local costs, and on that basis a Texas analyst near the state median typically comes out ahead of an analyst earning the national median in a high-cost state. We quantify the tax piece of that exactly in the take-home section, where the same $99,150 nets $5,248 more in Texas than in California.

One more thing the headline gap hides: the Texas range is wide. The 10th percentile at $63,230 and the 90th at $169,990 mean two analysts with the same job title can be more than $106,000 apart in pay. Your position inside that band depends far more on sector, certification, and metro than on the small distance between the Texas and national medians. That’s good news, because the levers that move you up the Texas band are things you can act on, and we cover each of them below.

Financial analyst pay in Texas by experience

Pay climbs steeply with experience in this field. An entry-level analyst near the 10th percentile earns roughly $63,230, while a senior analyst at the 90th percentile clears $169,990. That’s a spread of more than $106,000 across a single career, driven by deal size, sector, certifications, and whether you move into a lead or management seat.

A few patterns stand out. The jump from the 25th percentile ($77,350) to the median ($99,150) is about $21,800, and it usually maps to your third through fifth year, when you stop needing supervision on models and start owning forecasts. The next leap, from median to the 75th percentile ($126,200), is roughly $27,050 and almost always requires either a specialized sector, a certification like the CFA, or a title bump to senior analyst. The 90th percentile at $169,990 is largely the territory of corporate FP&A leads, buy-side analysts, and energy-finance specialists in Houston.

The state mean is $110,920, which sits well above the $99,150 median. When the mean runs that far ahead of the median, it tells you the top end of the market is pulling the average up. In plain terms, a smaller group of very well paid analysts, often in energy and private capital, stretches the top of the range. The $11,770 gap between mean and median is a useful signal for anyone negotiating: it confirms there’s real room above the midpoint, and that the analysts capturing it are concentrated in specific sectors rather than spread evenly across the field.

Reading the table from the bottom up is also instructive when you’re planning a career, not just a single offer. The first five years are about closing the distance to the median, and the fastest way to do that is competence on standalone modeling and forecasting. The years after that are about choosing a lane. An analyst who stays a generalist tends to plateau somewhere between the median and the 75th percentile. An analyst who picks a high-value specialty, earns a credential, or steps into management is the one who reaches the $126,200 mark and pushes toward the $169,990 top. The data won’t tell you which lane to pick, but it makes clear that picking one beats drifting.

Financial analyst salary by Texas metro

Where you work inside Texas changes your pay more than most people expect. The four big metros cluster near or above the state median, while smaller markets like San Antonio and El Paso run noticeably lower. Here are the five largest Texas metro markets for financial analysts, by BLS OEWS 2025 employment.

Houston leads on pay at $101,660, and that’s no accident. The energy sector concentrates corporate finance, treasury, and FP&A roles around oil, gas, and increasingly renewables, and those employers pay a premium for analysts who can model commodity exposure. Austin is right behind at $101,530, pushed up by the tech employers that relocated there and the venture-backed companies that need financial planning talent.

Dallas-Fort Worth is the volume leader by a wide margin, with 11,530 analyst jobs, more than the next two metros combined. The median there is $100,350, a touch under Houston and Austin but with far more openings, which makes it the easiest metro in Texas to land a first analyst role or change employers without moving.

San Antonio and El Paso tell a different story. San Antonio pays a median of $82,120, about $19,540 below Houston, and El Paso sits lowest at $79,320, roughly $22,340 under Houston. The trade is real, though. Both markets carry lower housing costs, so the gap in what your paycheck actually buys is smaller than the raw salary difference suggests. If you’re early in your career and rent is your biggest line item, a San Antonio offer can stretch further than a Dallas one even at lower gross pay.

The strategic read on these five metros is straightforward. If you want maximum pay and the widest choice of employers, the Dallas-Houston-Austin triangle is where the money and the jobs both sit, and the three medians are within $1,310 of each other, so the deciding factor becomes which sector and which cost of living fits you. If you want a lower cost of living and are willing to trade some gross pay, San Antonio and El Paso put you closer to family or cheaper housing while still paying a no-state-tax salary. There’s no wrong answer here, only a trade you should make on purpose. Because none of these metros charges state income tax, the comparison stays clean: every dollar of the metro gap is a real difference in pay, not an artifact of different tax regimes.

Take-home pay after tax in Texas

Gross salary is the headline. Take-home is what you live on. Texas has no state income tax, so the only mandatory cuts on a financial analyst’s paycheck are federal income tax and FICA (Social Security and Medicare). Here’s the breakdown across the same four career points, using single-filer 2026 estimates.

At the median, a Texas financial analyst keeps $78,138 a year, or about $6,512 a month, after an effective tax rate near 21.2 percent. The state-tax column is zero at every level, and that zero is the whole reason Texas take-home beats most of the country at the same gross.

The cross-state comparison that an AI overview can’t shortcut: take that same $99,150 median and drop it into California. A single filer earning $99,150 in California pays state income tax that a Texas filer never sees, leaving roughly $72,890 net versus $78,138 in Texas. That’s a $5,248 annual gap, money that stays in a Texas analyst’s pocket purely because of where the job sits. Over a decade at similar pay, that difference alone exceeds $52,000, before you even count the lower cost of living in most Texas metros.

Notice how the effective rate climbs with income but never explodes, because there’s no state layer stacked on top. The entry-level analyst pays about 16.4 percent all in, the median earner 21.2 percent, the experienced analyst 23.1 percent, and the senior analyst 25.3 percent at $169,990. In a high-tax state, each of those numbers would be several points higher, and the gap widens as you earn more. That’s why the Texas advantage compounds for top earners: the senior analyst keeps $126,941 of a $169,990 salary, and the share lost to a state would have grown right alongside the paycheck.

The number that actually matters is net pay minus local housing. A $78,138 net in Dallas, where you might spend $1,800 a month on a decent one-bedroom, leaves far more breathing room than the same net would in a coastal metro where rent runs double. Put differently, the $6,512 monthly net at the Texas median has to cover housing, and in most Texas metros it covers it comfortably with room left over. The same net in a city where a one-bedroom runs $3,500 leaves you with a very different month. Always do this subtraction before you compare two offers, because a higher gross in an expensive, high-tax metro can quietly lose to a lower gross in Texas. Run your own figure, with your filing status and benefits deductions, through the Texas paycheck calculator first. If you want help squaring withholding and deductions at tax time, a tool like TurboTax walks through the federal side step by step, which is the only income tax a Texas analyst files.

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How to earn more as a financial analyst in Texas

The pay range in this field is wide enough that deliberate moves can add tens of thousands to your salary. Here’s what actually shifts the number in Texas, drawn from how the percentiles cluster around employers and sectors.

• Earn the CFA charter. The Chartered Financial Analyst designation is the single most recognized credential for moving from the median ($99,150) toward the 75th percentile ($126,200) and above. It signals depth on valuation, portfolio analysis, and ethics that hiring managers pay for.
• Specialize in energy finance. Houston’s $101,660 median reflects a real sector premium. Analysts who can model commodity pricing, hedging, and capital projects for oil, gas, and renewables sit closer to the top of the range than generalists.
• Move into FP&A leadership. The path from analyst to senior analyst to FP&A manager is where the 90th-percentile salaries ($169,990) live. Owning the forecast for a business unit, rather than feeding inputs into someone else’s model, is the title change that pays.
• Switch employers strategically. With 28,820 analyst jobs statewide and 11,530 in Dallas-Fort Worth alone, lateral moves are plentiful. A switch every two to three years early in your career usually beats waiting for internal raises.
• Add technical tooling. Strong SQL, Python, and advanced Excel or Power BI skills separate analysts who get the senior modeling work from those who don’t. Short, focused courses through a platform like Coursera can close those gaps before your next review.
• Target the high-pay metros. If you’re geographically flexible, Houston and Austin both clear the state median. Choosing where you work inside Texas is one of the fastest pay levers you have, with no state-tax penalty in any of them.

Job outlook for financial analysts in Texas

Texas supports a deep and active market for this role, with 28,820 financial analysts employed across the state as of BLS OEWS 2025. Dallas-Fort Worth carries the largest concentration at 11,530 jobs, followed by Houston at 6,510 and Austin at 3,530. That spread across multiple large metros means the Texas market doesn’t depend on a single city or industry.

Demand is anchored by the mix of energy in Houston, corporate headquarters and financial services in Dallas, and technology in Austin. Each of those bases needs analysts for forecasting, valuation, and capital planning regardless of the broader cycle. Because the demand sits across three distinct industries in three different cities, a downturn in any one sector rarely empties the whole Texas market at once, which is part of why the state’s 28,820 analyst jobs hold up. For anyone choosing where to build a career, that diversification is a quiet but real form of job security.

When you’re ready to test the market, a board like ZipRecruiter lets you filter Texas analyst openings by metro and pay range so you can see where the current offers actually land. Comparing live postings against the percentile bands above is the fastest way to tell whether a given offer is at, below, or above market for your experience level and city.

Related and higher-paying roles in Texas

It helps to see how a financial analyst’s $99,150 Texas median stacks up against neighboring finance roles in the same state. Two of the closest comparisons:

• Accountants earn a median of $80,920 in Texas, which is $18,230 less than a financial analyst here. The analyst premium reflects the forward-looking modeling and valuation work that sits above transactional accounting.
• Personal financial advisors earn a median of $99,160 in Texas, essentially level with financial analysts, just $10 more. The two roles pay almost identically at the median, though advisor pay can swing higher with a commission or fee-based book of clients.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025 (occupation 13-2051). Tax estimates: 2026 federal and FICA schedules, single filer. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.