What are the highest paying jobs in the U.S. Virgin Islands?

The U.S. Virgin Islands is the strangest salary market in the Caribbean, and it took me three years of survey data to work out why.

Every other place I have looked at has a long tail at the bottom. Jamaica has people at JMD $600,000. Puerto Rico has Secretaries and Administrative Assistants at USD $22,570. The worst paid occupation in the entire territory, in the most recent survey year I hold, is Customer Service Representatives at USD $37,140. The same occupation in Puerto Rico pays USD $26,700, and in Jamaica the floor of the whole database is JMD $600,000🤯.

So the interesting question here is not "what pays the most". It is "why is the floor so high, and what happened to the ceiling?"

The short version: the highest paid occupation in the territory in 2025 is Pharmacists, at USD $134,970. But the highest figure anywhere in three years of Virgin Islands data belongs to Software Developers, at USD $162,820 in 2024, and that occupation does not appear in the 2025 survey at all.

Note well: All salaries here are annual. This article was written on our data as at September 24, 2026. The U.S. Virgin Islands uses the US dollar, so nothing on this page is converted.

What Are The Ten Highest Paid Jobs In The U.S. Virgin Islands?

The highest annual wages in the most recent survey year, 2025:

1. Pharmacists - USD $134,970

2. Chief Executives - USD $104,010

3. Medical and Health Services Managers - USD $96,950

4. Computer Occupations, All Other - USD $96,180

5. Managers, All Other - USD $95,530

6. Financial Managers - USD $94,990

7. Construction Managers - USD $89,950

8. Computer and Information Systems Managers - USD $87,900

9. Registered Nurses - USD $84,120

10. General and Operations Managers - USD $82,850

Registered Nurses in the top ten is the one that does not happen anywhere else I have looked. In Puerto Rico, a Registered Nurse earns USD $39,880 and sits in the bottom half of the table. In the Virgin Islands, the same job pays USD $84,120, which is more than double, in a territory forty minutes away by plane using the same currency.

The median occupation in the territory in 2025 earned USD $65,270.

What Is Happening To Government Pay In The Virgin Islands?

Something big, and it has not reached this data yet.

On 20 April 2026, Governor Albert Bryan Jr. signed Executive Order No. 545-2026, which puts non-union classified government employees onto a new General Schedule pay plan, replacing the one that had been in place since Executive Order 508-2020. It takes effect on 1 October 2026.

The mechanics matter more than any headline percentage, because the order does not name one:

- Every non-union classified employee is slotted into the new GS grade and step, and nobody is placed below their current salary.

- Everyone gets one step increase effective 1 October 2026.

- Further single step increases are scheduled for 1 October in 2028, 2030, 2032, 2034 and 2036.

- There are no retroactive increases for the years the old plan was in force.

So it is a restructuring with a schedule attached rather than a one-off raise, which is a genuinely unusual thing for a Caribbean government to commit to in writing. It is also the answer to a question the data raises. The territory's median wage went from USD $62,120 in 2023 to USD $65,210 in 2024, then USD $65,270 in 2025. That last year is flat. Not falling, not rising, flat.

Note Well: none of that restructuring is in the figures on this page, because it starts in October 2026 and the most recent survey I hold is 2025. If you are a government worker in the Virgin Islands reading this in 2027, your number should not match mine.

Which Sectors Pay The Most In The U.S. Virgin Islands?

Median annual wage by sector, 2025 survey year:

- Healthcare - USD $90,535 (2 occupations)

- Property & Construction - USD $89,950 (1 occupation)

- Business Consulting & Management - USD $89,190 (4 occupations)

- Science & Pharmaceuticals - USD $87,795 (2 occupations)

- Banking & Financial Services - USD $69,990 (3 occupations)

- Human Resources - USD $68,850 (2 occupations)

- Insurance - USD $62,550 (1 occupation)

- Education - USD $60,040 (2 occupations)

- Marketing & PR - USD $59,990 (1 occupation)

- Information Technology - USD $59,430 (5 occupations)

- Accounting - USD $59,060 (1 occupation)

- Law - USD $52,140 (1 occupation)

- BPO & Contact Centres - USD $37,140 (1 occupation)

Information Technology at tenth, below Insurance and below Education, is not a ranking you will see in any other Caribbean country. In Jamaica, IT is second. In Puerto Rico, it is sixth. Here it is tenth, and the reason is in the next section.

Is Tech Worth It In The U.S. Virgin Islands?

This is the most confusing part of the territory's data, and I am going to show you the confusion rather than tidy it away.

Here is every computer occupation across the three years:

- Software Developers - USD $159,120 in 2023, USD $162,820 in 2024, not surveyed in 2025

- Computer Occupations, All Other - USD $95,010, then USD $179,830, then USD $96,180

- Computer and Information Systems Managers - USD $82,390, USD $88,300, USD $87,900

- Computer Systems Analysts - USD $54,950, USD $56,650, USD $59,430

- Computer Network Support Specialists - USD $50,860, USD $50,600, USD $56,360

- Computer User Support Specialists - USD $48,350, USD $49,610, USD $50,430

Two things jump out, and both are about small numbers.

Software Developers were the highest paid occupation in the entire territory for two years running, at a level that beats anything in Puerto Rico by more than double, and then the occupation simply stops appearing. That is what happens in a survey of a small territory: an occupation with very few employers drops out when there are not enough of them to publish without identifying somebody.

"Computer Occupations, All Other" doing USD $95,010, then USD $179,830, then USD $96,180 is the same problem wearing a different hat. A single well paid employer entering or leaving that bucket moves the whole line.

So read the tech numbers here with both eyes open. Senior tech in the Virgin Islands genuinely does pay extraordinarily well by regional standards. Support tech pays USD $50,430, which is barely above the territory's own 25th percentile. The middle of that ladder is mostly missing from the data, and the top of it is volatile because the territory is small.

Who Are The Highest Paid People In The U.S. Virgin Islands?

I cannot tell you, and I would rather say that than guess.

Our Life at the Top page names executives and heads of government whose compensation is disclosed in a filing, a statute, or a published scale. It currently carries people from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, and the Cayman Islands. It carries nobody from the U.S. Virgin Islands. No named individual from the territory has been traced to a primary source yet.

The closest thing I have is the office of the Governor. Title 3, section 1 of the Virgin Islands Code sets the Governor's salary at USD $150,000 a year, and on that document the Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands earns more than twice what the Governor of Puerto Rico earns, in a territory with a fraction of the population. A higher current figure circulates online, but the only place I can find it is an encyclopaedia, and I do not publish a salary I cannot trace to the document that set it.

*If you can point me to a Virgin Islands executive compensation disclosure, or a current pay scale for elected office, I will add it with the source attached.

What Does A Normal Virgin Islands Salary Look Like?

Across all 81 figures, all three survey years:

- 25th percentile: USD $52,000

- Median: USD $63,820

- 75th percentile: USD $87,550

- Lowest reported: USD $34,740 (Customer Service Representatives, 2023)

- Highest reported: USD $179,830 (Computer Occupations, All Other, 2024)

Now put that beside Puerto Rico, which has the same currency, the same federal minimum wage, and roughly thirty times the population:

- 25th percentile - USD $52,000 in the Virgin Islands, USD $38,640 in Puerto Rico

- Median - USD $63,820 in the Virgin Islands, USD $59,310 in Puerto Rico

- 75th percentile - USD $87,550 in the Virgin Islands, USD $77,700 in Puerto Rico

The medians are close. The bottoms are not. A worker at the 25th percentile in the Virgin Islands earns about USD $13,400 more than one in Puerto Rico, which is a 35 percent difference at the point in the distribution where 35 percent actually changes your life.

That is the answer to the question I started with. The Virgin Islands does not pay its best people better. It pays its ordinary people better, and it has fewer of the very low-paid occupations that stretch the bottom of every other market in the region. Whether that is a healthy labour market or a small one that has lost its low-wage industries is a fair argument to have, and the refinery section above is where I would start it.

What Should You Actually Do With This?

1. If you are in nursing, look at the Virgin Islands before anywhere else in the region. USD $84,120 against USD $39,880 for the same occupation in Puerto Rico is the largest like for like gap in this data.

2. If you are a government worker, read Executive Order 545-2026 rather than this article. Your grade and step from 1 October 2026 are in that document. Mine is a survey that ends in 2025.

3. If you are in senior tech, the territory is worth a conversation. Software Developers were at USD $162,820 here. Just do not plan a career in an occupation that disappeared from the survey.

4. If you are in support tech, the ladder is USD $37,000 long. From Computer User Support Specialists at USD $50,430 to Computer and Information Systems Managers at USD $87,900.

5. Do not compare a Virgin Islands salary to a Jamaican one without comparing the rent. Both of these are in this database, and neither of them prices housing. The Virgin Islands pays more and costs more, and I have no data on the second half of that sentence.

How I Calculated These Figures?

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

- 81 approved figures for the U.S. Virgin Islands, covering 28 occupations across three survey years, all annual and all in US dollars.

- They all come from one source: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for the U.S. Virgin Islands, for 2023, 2024, and 2025. That is a survey of employers, not reports from individual workers, which is why this article talks about occupations and not about companies.

- There is no employer ranking for the Virgin Islands. Every "employer" in this data is a survey year. Until workers submit their own figures, there is nothing honest to rank.

- Where a "top ten" is quoted, I use the 2025 survey year. Where I quote a change over time I give all three years, because with a territory this small, one year on its own can be a single employer.

- Occupations that appear in some years and not others are shown as exactly that. I do not carry a figure forward into a year the survey did not report it.

- The Limetree Bay closure and Executive Order 545-2026 are not CaribSalaries data. They are context, sourced to the EPA action and its reporting, and to the Government of the Virgin Islands' own publication of the order.

- No currency conversion happens anywhere in this article.

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.

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

If you work in the Virgin Islands, you can fix the biggest hole in this article by yourself. Right now I have 81 government survey figures and zero salaries from actual people in the territory, which is why there is no employer table and no named individual on this page.

Add yours 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, especially one who moved over from the mainland and wonders whether they are being paid properly.