What Are the Highest Paying Jobs in Puerto Rico?

Ask what pays well in Puerto Rico, and you get the same three answers you get anywhere: a doctor, a lawyer, someone at a bank. What you seldom get is a figure. I have been collecting salary data across the Caribbean for years, and Puerto Rico is the place where people are most certain about the ranking and least able to say what any of it is worth🙃.

Here's the ranking with the numbers attached. CaribSalaries holds 132 approved salary figures for Puerto Rico, covering 44 occupations across three survey years. Once you line those three years up beside each other, the interesting part is not who is at the top. It is who moved.

The short version: the highest paid 'regular' occupation on the island in our data is Physicians at USD $172,230. The highest paid person we can name is Ignacio Alvarez, former President & CEO of Popular Inc., who took home USD $7,062,984 in total compensation in FY2025🤯. And the Governor of Puerto Rico earns USD $70,000, a figure that has not changed since 1989.

Note well: All salaries here are annual. This article was written using our data as of September 24, 2026, and every figure in it is in US dollars, because Puerto Rico uses the US dollar.

What Are The Ten Highest Paid Jobs In Puerto Rico?

These are the highest annual wages we have as of 2025.

1. Physicians - USD $172,230

2. Industrial Production Managers - USD $129,740

3. Family Medicine Physicians - USD $112,990

4. Pharmacists - USD $111,270

5. Dentists, General - USD $107,560

6. Computer and Information Systems Managers - USD $99,780

7. Chief Executives - USD $97,510

8. Database Architects - USD $95,620

9. Financial Managers - USD $90,660

10. Medical and Health Services Managers - USD $82,580

Five of the ten are medical. That is not a surprise on an island with a doctor shortage everybody talks about. Number two on the list is the one worth staring at.

Industrial Production Managers at USD $129,740 are the people who run the floor of a manufacturing plant. In Puerto Rico, that plant is very often a pharmaceutical one. Pharmaceutical products accounted for approxiamately three quarters of the island's exports in fiscal 2024. Eli Lilly announced a USD $1.2 billion upgrade to its Puerto Rico facility, with construction starting in 2026(generally the sort of announcement that shows up in the salary data two or three years later, not immediately). A production manager in that industry out-earns a Chief Executive in this data by more than USD $32,000, and nobody grows up saying they want that job.

The median wage across all 44 occupations in 2025 was USD $61,375. A Physician earns almost three times that.

Who Actually Earns The Most In Puerto Rico?

The occupational survey stops well short of the top. It reports what a Chief Executive earns on average, USD $97,510, which is a real number and a useless one if what you want to know is what the person running Popular actually takes home.

For that, you need the filings, and the filings are on our Life at the Top page:

- Ignacio Alvarez, former President & CEO, Popular Inc. - USD $7,062,984 total compensation, FY2025

- Aurelio Alemán, President & CEO, First BanCorp - USD $5,026,356 total compensation, FY2025

- Javier D. Ferrer, President & CEO, Popular Inc. - USD $4,825,287 total compensation, FY2025

- José Rafael Fernández, Chairman & CEO, OFG Bancorp - USD $3,479,297 total compensation, FY2025

- Victor Sánchez, President & CEO, Pharma-Bio Serv Inc. - USD $245,900 total compensation, FY2025

Every one of those comes from a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is why we can print a name beside the number instead of saying "a bank executive".

Four of the five run banks, and the gap between them and the fifth is the thing to notice. Victor Sánchez runs a listed company too. He earns USD $245,900, which is less than four percent of what the man at the top of Popular earns. Same island, same stock market, same kind of job title. Banking is simply where the money is concentrated in Puerto Rico, and it is not close.

Now put the Governor beside them. Jenniffer González-Colón earns USD $70,000 a year, set by Act No. 13 of 24 June 1989 and unchanged since. Not adjusted, not reviewed, the same number for thirty-seven years. The CEO of Popular earns more than a hundred times what the Governor of Puerto Rico earns, and the Governor earns about USD $8,600 more than the median occupation in our data.

*I plan to expand this section as more Puerto Rico filings are checked. If you know of a disclosed executive compensation figure with a primary source behind it, send it in.

Which Sectors Pay The Most In Puerto Rico?

Median annual wage by sector, 2025 survey year only:

- Healthcare - USD $107,560 (5 occupations)

- Business Consulting & Management - USD $77,910 (4 occupations)

- Property & Construction - USD $77,380 (1 occupation)

- Engineering & Manufacturing - USD $72,240 (5 occupations)

- Science & Pharmaceuticals - USD $70,395 (2 occupations)

- Information Technology - USD $62,710 (12 occupations)

- Human Resources - USD $59,635 (2 occupations)

- Education - USD $55,320 (2 occupations)

- Banking & Financial Services - USD $48,950 (5 occupations)

- Law Enforcement & Security - USD $45,510 (1 occupation)

- Accounting - USD $43,530 (1 occupation)

- Marketing & PR - USD $39,330 (1 occupation)

- Law - USD $38,770 (1 occupation)

- Insurance - USD $36,250 (1 occupation)

- BPO & Contact Centres - USD $26,700 (1 occupation)

Do not read "works at a bank" as "well paid". Banking is ninth of fifteen sectors by median, and its best paid occupation reaches USD $127,180 at the top quartile. Both of those are true at once, which is the whole point: a financial examiner at USD $37,470 and a financial manager at USD $90,660 are in the same building and on the same website. Which floor you are on decides everything.

BPO at the bottom at USD $26,700 against Information Technology at USD $62,710 is the same gap I found in Jamaica, in the same two industries, at roughly the same ratio. Two sectors that hire at scale, one paying more than double the other.

Is Tech The Highest Paying Career In Puerto Rico?

Not at the very top, but it is the most reliable ladder on the island. Here is the 2025 order:

- Computer and Information Systems Managers - USD $99,780

- Database Architects - USD $95,620

- Computer Network Architects - USD $78,200

- Software Developers - USD $79,380

- Information Security Analysts - USD $63,740

- Computer Systems Analysts - USD $63,730

- Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers - USD $61,690

- Database Administrators - USD $51,880

- Computer Programmers - USD $51,310

- Computer Occupations, All Other - USD $60,470

- Computer Network Support Specialists - USD $39,570

- Computer User Support Specialists - USD $36,250

Twelve computer occupations in one sector, and the top one pays 2.75 times the bottom one. That spread is useful information. In Puerto Rico, "I work in IT" covers a Systems Manager at USD $99,780 and a User Support Specialist at USD $36,250, and the distance between them is a career, not a promotion.

Two movements over the three years are worth pulling out. Database Architects went from USD $64,500 to USD $95,620, up 48 percent. Software Developers went from USD $61,030 to USD $79,380, up 30 percent. Meanwhile, Computer Network Support Specialists fell 21 percent, from USD $50,070 to USD $39,570. Support is going down while building is going up, in the same sector, in the same three years.

One comparison I cannot resist. A Software Developer in Puerto Rico earns USD $79,380. A Software Developer in the US Virgin Islands, in the same survey, earned USD $162,820. Both are US territories using the same dollar. I wrote about that in another article, and the answer is smaller than you would hope.

What Does A Normal Puerto Rican Salary Look Like?

Across all 132 figures, all three years:

- 25th percentile: USD $38,640

- Median: USD $59,310

- 75th percentile: USD $77,700

- Lowest reported: USD $22,570 (Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, 2023)

- Highest reported: USD $211,700 (Physicians, All Other, 2024)

And the three-year trend on the median itself: USD $54,480 in 2023, USD $55,015 in 2024, USD $61,375 in 2025. Almost flat for a year, then a real move. Some of that move is the teachers.

The bottom of the data has not changed much in character. Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Customer Service Representatives, and Pharmacy Technicians sit at the bottom in all three years, and all three are still under USD $30,000 in 2025.

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How I Calculated These Figures?

Every number here comes out of the CaribSalaries database and nowhere else.

- 132 approved figures for Puerto Rico, covering 44 occupations across three survey years, all annual and all in US dollars.

- The source behind all of them is the same: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for Puerto Rico, for 2023, 2024, and 2025. That is a government survey of employers, not individual reports from workers, which is why this article talks about occupations rather than about companies.

- This means Puerto Rico has no employer ranking yet. Every "employer" in our Puerto Rico data is a survey year, not a workplace, so I have not published an employer table for the island. When workers start submitting, that changes.

- The executive figures in the Life at the Top section come from filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, each one named with its filing and its date. Where a source hedges, the hedge is printed with the figure.

- The Governor's salary comes from Act No. 13 of 24 June 1989, codified at 3 L.P.R.A. § 34.

- Where a "top ten" is quoted, I use the 2025 survey year, so the ranking is one snapshot rather than three averaged together. Where I quote a range across years, I say so.

- No currency conversion happens anywhere in this article. Puerto Rico uses the US dollar.

I do not estimate, model, or fill gaps. If an occupation is not on this page, it is not in the survey years I hold.

For deeper analysis of the data, you can check out our three Insight Reports: https://caribsalaries.com/insights. We are currently running a 10% discount on all reports. If you sign up for an account, you also get an interactive dashboard with charts that can be explored for each report purchase.

Spread The Word

Work in Puerto Rico? This is the article that most needs your help, because right now every figure on it comes from a government survey and none of it comes from a person. You can add a salary here: https://caribsalaries.com/submit. Three minutes, is anonymous, and it is what makes the next version of this article better than this one.

Share it with a friend or a colleague, particularly one who thinks they know what the bank pays.