Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? The District of Columbia, at $90,850. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and New Jersey is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and New Mexico wins — the money there behaves like $64,727. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants is the District of Columbia at $90,850, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to New Jersey; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to New Mexico at $64,727 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$76,590
People doing it
459,910
Highest paid
$90,850
DC
Best off, really
$64,727
NM, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$50,560
Highest tenth
$109,850
Lowest, really
$48,576
WY
States with data
51
National average
$79,140
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.39%
NM, 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 $48,576 and $64,727. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 459,910 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $76,590. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $76,590, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $48,576 to $64,727. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 459,910 workers, executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $50,560 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $76,590 |
| Top tenth earn over | $109,850 |
| This salary | $76,590 |
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 Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
The national median for this job
$76,590around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $50,560 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $76,590 |
| Top tenth | $109,850 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $51,600 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $90,850 |
| Spread | $39,250 |
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 | $71,990 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $74,083 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | $73,890 | $58,504 | $64,727 |
| NJ | $89,520 | $68,295 | $62,723 |
| OH | $69,600 | $56,596 | $61,643 |
| TN | $68,190 | $56,802 | $61,397 |
| DC | $90,850 | $67,989 | $61,360 |
| TX | $71,990 | $59,475 | $61,204 |
| MN | $78,470 | $60,221 | $61,190 |
| VA | $80,330 | $61,484 | $61,027 |
| PA | $75,270 | $59,472 | $60,997 |
| CT | $82,520 | $63,094 | $60,849 |
| DE | $78,920 | $60,373 | $60,827 |
| AL | $69,450 | $54,703 | $60,801 |
| RI | $77,820 | $61,078 | $60,228 |
| CA | $89,000 | $67,257 | $59,741 |
| WA | $79,250 | $64,582 | $59,489 |
| NC | $70,140 | $55,884 | $59,363 |
| WI | $68,920 | $54,678 | $58,733 |
| NE | $66,210 | $53,071 | $58,722 |
| MD | $78,540 | $60,716 | $58,400 |
| MA | $82,650 | $63,162 | $58,355 |
| NV | $67,830 | $56,548 | $58,309 |
| IL | $74,390 | $57,626 | $58,293 |
| ND | $61,270 | $51,410 | $58,044 |
| VT | $70,770 | $56,056 | $58,008 |
| NY | $80,640 | $61,803 | $57,424 |
| WV | $63,820 | $51,426 | $57,285 |
| IA | $62,340 | $50,513 | $56,905 |
| KS | $64,860 | $50,964 | $56,649 |
| AZ | $70,770 | $57,250 | $56,624 |
| MI | $66,840 | $53,262 | $56,551 |
| NH | $71,650 | $59,236 | $56,230 |
| HI | $80,710 | $60,919 | $56,090 |
| GA | $68,290 | $54,063 | $55,909 |
| KY | $62,410 | $50,260 | $55,555 |
| OK | $59,910 | $48,122 | $54,507 |
| AK | $66,210 | $55,380 | $54,446 |
| OR | $75,480 | $55,876 | $53,357 |
| MT | $59,750 | $48,138 | $53,342 |
| MO | $60,320 | $48,749 | $53,126 |
| SC | $60,890 | $49,384 | $53,000 |
| SD | $55,170 | $46,509 | $52,794 |
| ID | $60,200 | $48,213 | $52,735 |
| FL | $64,710 | $54,174 | $52,367 |
| ME | $64,100 | $50,678 | $52,193 |
| CO | $65,850 | $52,901 | $52,180 |
| IN | $59,080 | $47,937 | $52,002 |
| MS | $55,670 | $44,776 | $51,295 |
| UT | $61,130 | $48,578 | $51,133 |
| LA | $53,240 | $43,747 | $49,519 |
| AR | $51,600 | $42,190 | $48,770 |
| WY | $52,210 | $44,131 | $48,576 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $76,590.
- 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, New Jersey keeps the most at $68,295.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Wyoming sits at the bottom on $48,576.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $76,590, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants 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 New Jersey retains the most, $68,295. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Wyoming at $48,576. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Wyoming anchors the bottom at $48,576 — and the two source series are dated independently.