The 2025 Automation Professional Salary Survey, an annual publication of ISA’s Automation.com, presents data from automation professionals around the world who reported their gross salary for 2024 and any change of income in 2025. More than 1,000 respondents provided data for analysis. In this summary, we highlight the percentage of respondents who got a raise in 2025, the highest earning automation industry segments and the top gross incomes by region of the USA.
81% of automation professionals received a salary increase in 2025
80.73% of survey respondents received a salary increase of at least 1% in 2025. However, that means 19.27% of respondents didn’t get a raise. Last year, only 14.55% of survey respondents said they didn’t receive a raise at all in 2024.
Comparing salaries by automation industry (USA)
Automation professionals work across several vertical markets or business types, such as pulp & paper, military, oil & gas or consulting. We asked respondents to pick the category that best describes their industry so we could compare salaries across those. Because the number of respondents in each segment varied widely—we only had one respondent from the wood, paper and allied products vertical, for example—these gross income averages should be taken with a grain of salt. You should seek out other resources for salary information specific to your industry.
As we did last year, we had a high number of responses from the Oil, Gas, Petroleum and Refining segments. The average gross income of automation professionals in this segment $164,298 for 2024. Two segments that weren’t far behind were Computers & Electronics, averaging $156,250, and Utilities – Electrical, Natural Gas and Nuclear averaging $155,714.
Salary by region of the USA
Because more than half of our respondents currently reside and work in the USA, and we recognize that income can vary greatly among regions of the country, we divided the country into nine regions to compare. West South Central claimed the #1 spot with an average gross income of $158,333.00 for 2024. New England wasn’t far behind with $156,875.00. The Pacific claimed third place with $151,545.00. Last year, West South Central was #1 as well, with an average gross income of $151.565.00.
To find other interesting data, like average gross income by region of the world, primary job description and education level, download the full report.
