Accountants and Auditors
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays accountants and auditors the most, $111,530. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and South Dakota wins, at $73,014. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For accountants and auditors, the District of Columbia leads both nominally at $111,530 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts South Dakota first at $73,014. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$83,680
People doing it
1,449,500
Highest paid
$111,530
DC
Best off, really
$73,014
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$56,020
Highest tenth
$144,090
Lowest, really
$52,502
HI
States with data
51
National average
$94,750
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $52,502 and $73,014. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 1,449,500 people in the country do this job. Very few jobs are this big. That is part of why its geography is worth setting out with care.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $83,680 in the middle.
- Interstate variation for accountants and auditors is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $52,502 to $73,014. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 1,449,500 workers are employed nationally in accountants and auditors. At this scale the occupation's wage geography is a macroeconomic fact as much as a career one, and small per-worker differentials aggregate into substantial regional flows.
- 51 jurisdictions report accountants and auditors, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Accountants and Auditors
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $56,020 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $83,680 |
| Top tenth earn over | $144,090 |
| This salary | $83,680 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Accountants and Auditors
The national median for this job
$83,680around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $56,020 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $83,680 |
| Top tenth | $144,090 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Accountants and Auditors, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $66,330 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $111,530 |
| Spread | $45,200 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $80,920 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $83,272 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $78,880 | $64,322 | $73,014 |
| DC | $111,530 | $80,780 | $72,903 |
| CO | $97,030 | $73,530 | $72,527 |
| RI | $95,820 | $73,040 | $72,023 |
| DE | $95,020 | $70,636 | $71,168 |
| WA | $96,550 | $76,753 | $70,700 |
| NY | $102,640 | $76,022 | $70,635 |
| CT | $97,550 | $72,841 | $70,250 |
| ND | $75,730 | $61,889 | $69,874 |
| WY | $77,620 | $63,436 | $69,826 |
| OK | $79,370 | $61,596 | $69,768 |
| NJ | $100,830 | $75,531 | $69,369 |
| VA | $93,290 | $69,856 | $69,337 |
| OH | $79,320 | $63,167 | $68,800 |
| IA | $77,440 | $60,978 | $68,695 |
| MA | $99,460 | $74,147 | $68,504 |
| NV | $81,600 | $66,236 | $68,298 |
| NM | $78,580 | $61,583 | $68,134 |
| TN | $76,840 | $62,887 | $67,975 |
| NC | $82,050 | $63,787 | $67,758 |
| TX | $80,920 | $65,757 | $67,669 |
| KS | $79,000 | $60,287 | $67,011 |
| LA | $73,810 | $58,927 | $66,701 |
| IN | $77,720 | $61,243 | $66,435 |
| AK | $83,460 | $67,544 | $66,405 |
| WI | $79,400 | $61,429 | $65,984 |
| MT | $75,810 | $59,240 | $65,644 |
| KY | $75,270 | $59,266 | $65,510 |
| MO | $76,590 | $60,049 | $65,440 |
| MD | $89,370 | $67,820 | $65,234 |
| GA | $81,900 | $62,959 | $65,108 |
| MI | $78,820 | $61,181 | $64,959 |
| AL | $74,880 | $58,311 | $64,812 |
| UT | $79,990 | $61,543 | $64,781 |
| WV | $73,320 | $57,942 | $64,543 |
| SC | $76,560 | $59,929 | $64,318 |
| NH | $83,470 | $67,551 | $64,124 |
| CA | $97,050 | $72,171 | $64,106 |
| ID | $74,730 | $58,295 | $63,763 |
| PA | $79,000 | $61,981 | $63,570 |
| VT | $78,890 | $61,233 | $63,365 |
| MN | $81,600 | $62,210 | $63,211 |
| NE | $72,080 | $56,962 | $63,028 |
| AZ | $79,970 | $63,492 | $62,798 |
| FL | $79,250 | $64,582 | $62,427 |
| IL | $80,230 | $61,445 | $62,157 |
| MS | $68,100 | $54,106 | $61,983 |
| AR | $66,330 | $53,481 | $61,821 |
| ME | $77,480 | $59,427 | $61,204 |
| OR | $85,800 | $62,233 | $59,427 |
| HI | $74,500 | $57,022 | $52,502 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for accountants and auditors, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $83,680 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for accountants and auditors, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is the District of Columbia, at $80,780.
- The price adjustment for accountants and auditors uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $52,502. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for accountants and auditors are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $83,680. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for accountants and auditors model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $80,780, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms figures for accountants and auditors deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.