Consulting Pay: What MBAs Earned In 2025

Management consulting is dead.

That seems to beryllium the fashionable sentiment successful the media. In their postmortems, writers volition constituent to AI. Forget engagement teams camping retired successful gathering rooms and accruing six-figure billables. These days, AI platforms tin stitchery information and spit retired reports successful hours – even minutes!

On apical of that, immoderate firms are inactive reeling from their pandemic hiring hangovers. Instead of hording talent, galore are scaling backmost connected hiring, cautiously culling existing staff, oregon adjacent delaying commencement dates according to Management Consulted. And let’s accidental firms aren’t precisely rolling retired lavish wage packages to pull high-end MBAs oregon concern majors, either.

That begs the question: Is consulting a viable avenue for ambitious graduates anymore?

In The Consulting Salaries Report 2026, Management Consulted attempts to reply this question. In galore ways, according to the report, absorption consulting is present operating successful an evolutionary period. Here, productivity gains mean deeper investigation and strategy execution. This ability, on with contented framing and statement building, volition differentiate the champion from the rest. At the aforesaid time, Management Consulted doesn’t sugarcoat what this modulation means for graduates entering the field.

“Last year, we wrote that “compensation maturation volition proceed to beryllium muted crossed the U.S. and non-U.S. markets” arsenic firms adjusted to a satellite wherever request for consulting services could turn without a commensurate summation successful headcount,” Management Consulted explains successful the 2026 Report. “That prediction proved correct. For a 3rd consecutive year, starting consulting salaries astatine some the undergraduate and MBA introduction levels person remained mostly unchanged.”

In 2024, Management Consulted recovered that MBAs could expect a $192,000 basal astatine the apical of the market, nary antithetic than 2024. They could besides apical retired astatine $63,000 successful show bonus and $35,000 successful signing bonus – which again mirrored the erstwhile year’s numbers. That said, this wage eclipsed what undergraduate grade holders made successful their archetypal twelvemonth astatine the highest levels. In this segment, the highest earners collected $112,000 bases, which were supplemented by $30,000 show bonuses and $5,000 signing bonuses. These numbers were besides identical to 2024 pay.

Such wage information carries a informing successful The Consulting Salaries Report 2026. “The epoch of automatic, year-over-year starting wage increases is implicit – astatine slightest for now,” observes Management Consulted. “As we wrote past year, and arsenic 2026 has present confirmed, firms are capable to clasp the enactment connected compensation not due to the fact that consulting is struggling, but due to the fact that it has go much efficient, much selective, and much strategically disciplined astir endowment investment…While request for consulting services should stay steadfast – and whitethorn adjacent accelerate successful prime sectors arsenic involvement rates normalize and superior markets reopen – this request is improbable to construe into meaningful starting wage growth.”