Bill and Account Collectors
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia comes first for bill and account collectors on every measure. $62,230 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $50,180 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For bill and account collectors, the District of Columbia's $62,230 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $50,180. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
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
$47,030
People doing it
158,830
Highest paid
$62,230
DC
Best off, really
$50,180
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,400
Highest tenth
$65,580
Lowest, really
$35,328
VA
States with data
51
National average
$49,060
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $35,328 and $50,180. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 158,830 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $47,030. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $47,030. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for bill and account collectors cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $35,328 to $50,180. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in bill and account collectors is 158,830 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for bill and account collectors is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Bill and Account Collectors
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,400 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $47,030 |
| Top tenth earn over | $65,580 |
| This salary | $47,030 |
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 Bill and Account Collectors
The national median for this job
$47,030around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,400 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $47,030 |
| Top tenth | $65,580 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Bill and Account Collectors, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $37,680 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $62,230 |
| Spread | $24,550 |
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 | $45,710 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $47,039 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $60,810 | $51,041 | $50,180 |
| VT | $57,630 | $46,793 | $48,422 |
| SD | $46,620 | $39,639 | $44,996 |
| ND | $46,660 | $39,671 | $44,790 |
| DC | $62,230 | $49,583 | $44,749 |
| CT | $57,930 | $46,291 | $44,644 |
| MA | $59,800 | $47,559 | $43,940 |
| KY | $48,330 | $39,439 | $43,595 |
| WI | $49,090 | $40,057 | $43,027 |
| IA | $46,000 | $38,005 | $42,814 |
| NM | $46,560 | $38,556 | $42,657 |
| NV | $48,750 | $41,351 | $42,638 |
| OH | $46,230 | $38,771 | $42,229 |
| RI | $52,000 | $42,432 | $41,841 |
| CA | $57,930 | $47,058 | $41,800 |
| OK | $44,820 | $36,676 | $41,543 |
| MT | $45,420 | $37,297 | $41,329 |
| MN | $49,580 | $40,169 | $40,816 |
| KS | $45,760 | $36,683 | $40,775 |
| ME | $48,890 | $39,483 | $40,664 |
| MI | $47,130 | $38,297 | $40,662 |
| WV | $43,960 | $36,313 | $40,450 |
| IN | $45,240 | $37,225 | $40,381 |
| CO | $50,090 | $40,932 | $40,374 |
| TX | $45,710 | $38,908 | $40,039 |
| WY | $42,110 | $36,015 | $39,644 |
| NJ | $52,510 | $43,018 | $39,509 |
| NE | $43,210 | $35,637 | $39,432 |
| AZ | $47,740 | $39,748 | $39,314 |
| HI | $53,570 | $42,595 | $39,219 |
| PA | $46,660 | $38,239 | $39,219 |
| IL | $48,140 | $38,622 | $39,070 |
| GA | $46,300 | $37,670 | $38,956 |
| SC | $43,140 | $36,266 | $38,922 |
| MD | $50,010 | $40,351 | $38,812 |
| UT | $45,240 | $36,517 | $38,438 |
| FL | $46,410 | $39,470 | $38,153 |
| DE | $46,680 | $37,664 | $37,947 |
| TN | $40,920 | $35,059 | $37,896 |
| WA | $48,460 | $41,118 | $37,875 |
| MO | $41,760 | $34,709 | $37,825 |
| AR | $39,110 | $32,616 | $37,703 |
| ID | $41,880 | $34,464 | $37,697 |
| NC | $42,910 | $35,455 | $37,662 |
| OR | $50,880 | $39,160 | $37,395 |
| LA | $39,130 | $32,833 | $37,165 |
| AL | $40,330 | $32,867 | $36,531 |
| NH | $44,450 | $37,896 | $35,973 |
| MS | $37,680 | $31,041 | $35,560 |
| NY | $47,170 | $38,131 | $35,429 |
| VA | $43,770 | $35,593 | $35,328 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for bill and account collectors as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $47,030, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for bill and account collectors, 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 Alaska, at $51,041.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for bill and account collectors. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Virginia, on $35,328.
- These are distribution medians for bill and account collectors, with a national value of $47,030. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for bill and account collectors 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 $51,041, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for bill and account collectors rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Virginia anchors the distribution at $35,328. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.