According to the latest Wharton MBA Employment Report, the United States absorbed 94% of Wharton MBA hires in the Class of 2025, marking a sharp increase from the prior year, when U.S. placement was already dominant but materially lower. This is a structural re-concentration of MBA hiring into the U.S. market during 2024–2025, driven by where capital, advisory work, and execution risk actually materialized.
In this deep dive into Wharton MBA Placements by Regions for the 2025 graduating class, we cover:
• Overview of Wharton MBA Job Placements in the US
• Northeast: The Reason for Wharton’s Finance School Tag
• Mid-Atlantic: High-Value Roles with Limited Volume
• West: Wharton’s Impressive Technology Placement Story
• Midwest, South, and Southwest: Selective Hiring With Impressive Base Salary
• International: Asia Rising in Compensation
Overview of Wharton MBA Job Placements in the US
Between Q3 2024 and Q2 2025, the U.S. accounted for the overwhelming majority of global M&A deal value, private equity deployment, and consulting revenue growth.
While global deal counts remained restricted, U.S. deal value rebounded strongly, driven by sponsor-led transactions, healthcare take-privates, infrastructure assets, and balance-sheet restructurings. This concentration mattered for MBA hiring because these transactions generated integration, restructuring, valuation, and operating-model redesign opportunities, which are disproportionately staffed from U.S. offices.
AI Implementation and Consulting
Consulting followed the same pattern: North America accounted for the bulk of AI implementation, cost-transformation, and post-merger integration mandates, while Europe and Asia lagged due to regulatory roadblocks and slower corporate decision-making.
Regulators, government, and private enterprises in the rest of the world cautiously waited for the AI madness.
Critics might say the wait was too long and gave the US office an edge. This is not just a speculation.
Peer schools, even LBS and INSEAD, couldn’t capitalize on the AI boom as they could during the Digital transformation boom, post-pandemic.
Location mattered, and top US schools won this round.
The $185,000 median base salary for U.S. placements set a new baseline for Wharton MBA salary, $10,000 more than peer schools fighting it out to reach the top tier of the M7 rank.
Advantage Employers
AI became an excuse to downsize the bloated headcount companies had acquired in another mini-boom of our cooped-up life in a metastasized digital-only world.
Reality hit us hard, and people stopped living in the digital world. Return to office mandate happened, and a new wave of speculation and hype gripped the economy – AI.
Employers now have an excuse to trim the fat. And employees hung on to their jobs, losing bargaining power. It didn’t happen in one sector. It cut across sectors.
The exuberance of 3-4 offers and jumping roles every 1-2 years ended in 2022.
Execution Execution Execution
Employers did not need to bid aggressively on base pay because hiring volume was low; instead, they prioritised immediate execution capability.
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Northeast: The Reason for Wharton’s Finance School Tag
Within the United States, the Northeast alone accounted for 54.5% of total hires, by far the largest regional cluster, with a median base salary of $185,000. This represents a clear increase from the prior year and mirrors how the U.S. recovery concentrated geographically.
Wharton is a Finance School
Anyone still debating about Business School’s super specialization tag should look at the top consulting and top finance schools.
The top consulting schools quickly dissipated into the shadows, the moment AI came into the workflow, but for Finance, the complexity and liability of ruining people’s lives and disrupting institutional stability meant New York and the Northeast would rule the world, regardless of the Dollar losing its universal appeal or Trump creating another tariff war.
There is no alternative to Dollar among the Eastern giants with a history of tiffs and a shared memory of scarcity that their socialistic ideals had brought to their citizens. Capitalism and relying on the American markets bulked up a middle class that is now coming to take on the American might.
Till the might is fully visible, the American Northeast’s dominance will be led by financial services and consulting, which together form the largest industry destinations for Wharton graduates.
During the 2024–2025 cycle, New York and the broader Northeast corridor remained the primary execution hub for investment banking, private equity advisory, restructuring, and sponsor-related transactions.
Global Deals Start in the Northeast
Even deals with global footprints were often staffed and managed from Northeast offices. Similarly, consulting firms routed a disproportionate share of large integration and transformation projects through Northeast teams, particularly those linked to financial institutions, healthcare systems, and infrastructure assets.
Proof is in the Wharton MBA Salary
The salary profile reflects this concentration.
Base pay remained stable because roles were abundant relative to global alternatives, but compensation competitiveness was preserved through role optionality and deal exposure.
The Northeast’s hiring share is structurally anchored in the core engines of Wharton’s employment outcomes.
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Mid-Atlantic: High-Value Roles with Limited Volume
The Mid-Atlantic accounted for 10.3% of hires, with a median base salary of $190,000, exceeding the national median despite lower volume. This region’s profile crucially differs from the Northeast: hiring here was role-specific rather than scale-driven.
Government and Defense Industries Creating New $190,000 Highs
In the 2024–2025 period, Mid-Atlantic hiring was concentrated in strategy, internal consulting, government-adjacent finance, defense-linked industries, and regulated sectors. Consulting firms and financial institutions hired fewer MBAs overall in this region, but the roles offered were often tied to high-stakes decision-making, regulatory environments, and long-cycle programs, justifying higher base pay.
Compared to the prior year, hiring volume held steady, but salary strength increased, reflecting the scarcity in finding Wharton MBA talents emerging from recent cohorts. The admissions team is specifically hiring cross-functional, high-exposure global and local talent.
West: Wharton’s Impressive Technology Placement Story
The West accounted for 19.2% of hires, with a median base salary of $175,000, making it the second-largest U.S. region by volume but with a distinct compensation profile. This outcome must be read in conjunction with the technology industry analysis.
Between Q3 2024 and Q2 2025, the West, particularly California, absorbed massive capital investment into AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, semiconductors, and data centres. However, this investment was capital-intensive and labor-light, producing fewer MBA-level roles than earlier tech cycles. As a result, hiring volume recovered modestly compared to 2024 but did not approach pre-2022 levels, and salary growth remained constrained.
Technology Talent Concentration Didn’t Affect Wharton MBA’s Compensation
The lower median salary relative to the Northeast reflects a higher proportion of roles in product operations, internal strategy, and business development, but the base salary is one of the highest for the technology industry, even ahead of schools with strong Engineering DNA like Berkeley Haas and MIT Sloan.
The multi-year decline in the Product Managerial role affected the hiring volume at Wharton without affecting compensation, but the new demand emerging from selling the hundredth variety of AI models, or a wrapper around an AI model, or an AI agent around Google Gemini or OpenAI or Claude, has artificially inflated the demand for Business development talent, which seems to be fulfilled by Wharton’s technology cohorts.
Midwest, South, and Southwest: Selective Hiring With Impressive Base Salary
The Midwest (4.3%) and South (2.2%) remained small but stable destinations, both reporting median base salaries of $190,000, while the Southwest (3.8%) reported a slightly lower $177,500. These regions did not experience meaningful expansion or contraction relative to the prior year, but their hiring profiles were shaped by sectoral concentration.
Industrial and Healthcare Hiring Drove Midwest and South
Midwest hiring was driven primarily by industrial, healthcare, and corporate strategy roles, particularly within large incumbent firms managing supply-chain restructuring and cost optimization.
Energy Driving South and Southwest Hiring
The South and Southwest reflected selective hiring in energy, infrastructure, and regional operations, where roles carried significant responsibility but limited scale.
Salary levels in these regions remained competitive.
International: Asia Rising in Compensation
International hiring fell to 6% of the class, down meaningfully from prior years, with a median base salary of $135,000. This contraction reflects the asymmetric global recovery of 2024–2025.
While U.S. deal value and consulting demand recovered, Europe and Asia lagged.
Europe accounted for just 1% of hires, with a median base salary of $119,728, reflecting weak growth, regulatory overhang, and limited corporate expansion.
Asia represented 3.4% of hires, with a higher $180,000 median base salary, indicating potential.
Asian roles were concentrated in finance and strategy functions tied to cross-border deals.
The international salary dispersion highlights a critical point: international roles did not disappear, but they became narrow.
Unlike early years, where Asian compensation used to be behind that offered in the US, from 2023 onwards, the median base salary is ahead of the US base salary, indicating perhaps a change in power structures and opportunities in Asia.
Region | Percent Hired | Median Base Salary |
| United States | 94% | $185,000 |
| Mid-Atlantic | 10.3% | $190,000 |
| Midwest | 4.3% | $190,000 |
| Northeast | 54.5% | $185,000 |
| South | 2.2% | $190,000 |
| Southwest | 3.8% | $177,500 |
| West | 19.2% | $175,000 |
| International | 6% | $135,000 |
| Asia | 3.4% | $180,000 |
| Europe | 1% | $119,728 |
Next Step
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- Read F1GMAT's Wharton MBA Salary and Placement Analysis (2025) (By Industry)
Reference - Wharton MBA Employment Report