REVEALED: Bain, BCG, and McKinsey management-consulting salaries, from $90,000 entry-level roles through partner

The top three management-consulting firms pay big base salaries for their consultants, even in entry-level positions.
Business Insider analyzed the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification’s 2020 disclosure data for permanent and temporary foreign workers to shed light on what the Boston Consulting Group, Bain, and McKinsey paid employees for base salaries at different seniority levels.
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The most elite consulting firms pay top dollar for talent, from entry-level roles on up.

The Boston Consulting Group, Bain, and McKinsey often hire from top schools and have acceptance rates that can be even lower than those of the schools themselves: In 2018, McKinsey hired 8,000 people out of 800,000 applications, the company told Business Insider last month. The firm steadily brought in another 8,000 in 2019. Over 12% of the 2019 hires came from MBA programs.

Twenty-one percent of Harvard Business School 2019 graduates entered the consulting field, and 16% of students in the class of 2020 pursued consulting internships, according to the most recently available data from the school.

The consultancies hire hundreds of foreign workers for their US offices. When US companies file paperwork for visas on behalf of current or prospective foreign workers, they’re required to say how much base compensation the workers are offered. And every year, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification discloses this salary data in an enormous dataset.

Business Insider analyzed the agency’s second-quarter 2020 disclosure data for permanent and temporary foreign workers to shed light on what BCG, Bain, and McKinsey paid consultants at different rungs on the corporate ladder, from entry-level employees to partners. The jobs were based around the country.

Representatives for BCG, Bain, and McKinsey did not respond to requests for comment.

According to US Department of Labor documentation, the offered wages in the disclosure data are the minimum amounts companies provided in foreign labor certification applications for specific workers. The wages are based on the average compensation that similar employees in each given job, industry, and with comparable qualifications are paid, which is known as the “prevailing wage.”

BCG and McKinsey listed two ranges for their prevailing wages, while Bain listed one salary.

Business Insider analyzed entries from the second quarter of 2020 specifically for roles related to management consulting, though the firms also listed numerous other jobs, like data scientist and engineer. Consultants can make many thousands of dollars in signing and annual bonuses, which are not reflected in this data.

Bain

The company has more than 8,000 employees in 37 countries.

For the US, Bain applied for 59 H-1B visas for these and other roles with the following average salaries:

Associate consultant: $90,000
Senior associate consultant: $110,000
Consultant: $166,770.83
Case team leader: $178,611.11
Manager: $200,000
Principal: $230,000

BCG

The company has more than 21,000 employees in over 50 countries and applied for 274 visas. BCG’s salary ranges for management consultants include the following roles:

Associate: $90,000 to $120,000
Senior consultant: $110,000 to $140,000
Senior associate: $120,000 to $165,000
Principal: $225,000 to $260,000
Partner: $231,800 to $260,000
Partner and associate director: $250,000 to $350,000
Partner and managing director: $300,000 to $450,000

McKinsey

The 94-year-old firm has 30,000 employees in over 65 countries. McKinsey applied for 261 visas with the following salary ranges for management consultants: