Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is the District of Columbia, at $65,180. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $47,557. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks: the District of Columbia leads at $65,180 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $47,557 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$50,670
People doing it
1,373,680
Highest paid
$65,180
DC
Best off, really
$47,557
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$36,000
Highest tenth
$74,550
Lowest, really
$35,963
HI
States with data
51
National average
$53,560
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, 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 $35,963 and $47,557. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Roughly 1,373,680 Americans do this job. Hold that scale in mind. A few thousand dollars here is a few thousand dollars across millions of households.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $50,670, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $35,963 to $47,557. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 1,373,680 workers nationally, bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks is one of the highest-headcount occupations BLS publishes. Aggregate effects of the differentials described above are correspondingly large, even where the per-worker figures appear modest.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $36,000 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $50,670 |
| Top tenth earn over | $74,550 |
| This salary | $50,670 |
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 Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks
The national median for this job
$50,670around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $36,000 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $50,670 |
| Top tenth | $74,550 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $42,840 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $65,180 |
| Spread | $22,340 |
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 | $48,910 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,332 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $49,710 | $42,122 | $47,557 |
| AK | $56,430 | $47,522 | $46,720 |
| DC | $65,180 | $51,762 | $46,715 |
| VT | $54,720 | $44,571 | $46,123 |
| CT | $59,970 | $47,818 | $46,116 |
| WA | $58,620 | $49,281 | $45,394 |
| WY | $47,910 | $40,676 | $44,773 |
| SD | $46,340 | $39,414 | $44,741 |
| IA | $48,180 | $39,674 | $44,694 |
| MN | $54,600 | $43,862 | $44,567 |
| OH | $48,810 | $40,773 | $44,409 |
| TN | $48,180 | $40,893 | $44,201 |
| WI | $50,340 | $41,000 | $44,040 |
| NV | $50,380 | $42,660 | $43,989 |
| MA | $59,830 | $47,582 | $43,960 |
| NM | $48,080 | $39,712 | $43,936 |
| NJ | $58,300 | $47,351 | $43,488 |
| CO | $54,000 | $43,901 | $43,303 |
| NY | $58,160 | $46,368 | $43,082 |
| ID | $48,310 | $39,290 | $42,975 |
| MO | $47,990 | $39,422 | $42,961 |
| MT | $47,270 | $38,696 | $42,880 |
| RI | $53,280 | $43,412 | $42,808 |
| SC | $47,940 | $39,837 | $42,754 |
| OK | $46,180 | $37,708 | $42,711 |
| NE | $47,110 | $38,593 | $42,703 |
| TX | $48,910 | $41,479 | $42,685 |
| CA | $59,230 | $48,025 | $42,658 |
| IN | $47,820 | $39,222 | $42,548 |
| LA | $44,890 | $37,289 | $42,208 |
| MI | $48,980 | $39,705 | $42,156 |
| KY | $46,550 | $38,071 | $42,083 |
| NH | $52,450 | $44,324 | $42,075 |
| KS | $47,290 | $37,827 | $42,047 |
| ME | $50,510 | $40,675 | $41,892 |
| UT | $49,440 | $39,705 | $41,794 |
| DE | $51,780 | $41,478 | $41,790 |
| NC | $47,930 | $39,288 | $41,734 |
| AZ | $50,590 | $41,967 | $41,508 |
| MD | $53,540 | $43,020 | $41,379 |
| GA | $49,350 | $39,969 | $41,333 |
| VA | $51,620 | $41,449 | $41,141 |
| AR | $42,840 | $35,475 | $41,008 |
| PA | $48,440 | $39,614 | $40,630 |
| FL | $49,330 | $41,817 | $40,421 |
| AL | $44,640 | $36,140 | $40,169 |
| IL | $49,560 | $39,693 | $40,153 |
| MS | $42,840 | $34,980 | $40,073 |
| OR | $54,060 | $41,437 | $39,569 |
| WV | $42,890 | $35,498 | $39,542 |
| HI | $48,730 | $39,060 | $35,963 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $50,670 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, the District of Columbia keeps the most at $51,762.
- The price adjustment for this job 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 $35,963. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $50,670. 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.
- The household modeled for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis the District of Columbia retains the most, $51,762. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks 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.