File Clerks
What the pay figures show
- Oregon pays file clerks the most on paper: $50,660. Two things happen before that money is yours. State tax takes a share, which puts Alaska in front. Then local prices decide what is left, and Iowa wins at $43,297. The best offer and the best deal are not the same place.
- For file clerks, Oregon's $50,660 median leads nominally and survives neither adjustment. State income tax differentials alone are sufficient to promote Alaska; regional price parity then promotes Iowa, whose $43,297 real figure is the highest purchasing power available in this occupation. Nominal wage comparisons across states are therefore a poor guide to relocation, and the error compounds rather than cancels.
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
$43,600
People doing it
73,440
Highest paid
$50,660
OR
Best off, really
$43,297
IA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$31,200
Highest tenth
$63,490
Lowest, really
$29,845
WV
States with data
49
National average
$45,590
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.77%
IA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $29,845 to $43,297. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Just 73,440 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $43,600. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Oregon pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in file clerks is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $29,845 through $43,297. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 73,440 are employed nationally in file clerks — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for file clerks in 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: File Clerks
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $31,200 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $43,600 |
| Top tenth earn over | $63,490 |
| This salary | $43,600 |
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 File Clerks
The national median for this job
$43,600around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $31,200 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $43,600 |
| Top tenth | $63,490 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
File Clerks, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $31,260 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Oregon · $50,660 |
| Spread | $19,400 |
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 | $39,480 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $40,628 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IA | $46,560 | $38,433 | $43,297 |
| AK | $49,910 | $42,283 | $41,570 |
| ND | $42,860 | $36,618 | $41,343 |
| ID | $45,910 | $37,489 | $41,005 |
| IL | $49,920 | $39,964 | $40,427 |
| VT | $47,540 | $39,042 | $40,402 |
| WI | $45,130 | $37,071 | $39,819 |
| TN | $43,010 | $36,739 | $39,711 |
| NV | $44,150 | $37,655 | $38,827 |
| MN | $46,640 | $37,979 | $38,589 |
| MI | $43,950 | $35,877 | $38,092 |
| NC | $43,260 | $35,722 | $37,946 |
| KS | $42,130 | $33,969 | $37,758 |
| CO | $46,490 | $38,198 | $37,677 |
| OH | $40,650 | $34,441 | $37,512 |
| NE | $40,640 | $33,689 | $37,276 |
| OR | $50,660 | $39,003 | $37,244 |
| HI | $50,630 | $40,449 | $37,243 |
| AR | $38,470 | $32,126 | $37,136 |
| ME | $43,910 | $35,818 | $36,889 |
| OK | $39,170 | $32,391 | $36,689 |
| PA | $42,920 | $35,349 | $36,255 |
| AZ | $43,690 | $36,595 | $36,195 |
| MA | $48,310 | $38,902 | $35,941 |
| CA | $49,040 | $40,449 | $35,929 |
| WA | $45,830 | $39,004 | $35,928 |
| NH | $44,390 | $37,847 | $35,927 |
| SD | $36,640 | $31,620 | $35,893 |
| KY | $39,250 | $32,461 | $35,881 |
| IN | $39,740 | $32,968 | $35,764 |
| SC | $39,350 | $33,313 | $35,753 |
| MT | $38,370 | $31,964 | $35,419 |
| UT | $41,450 | $33,641 | $35,410 |
| NM | $37,700 | $31,818 | $35,203 |
| CT | $44,810 | $36,418 | $35,123 |
| MD | $44,920 | $36,503 | $35,111 |
| MO | $38,400 | $32,167 | $35,055 |
| TX | $39,480 | $33,902 | $34,888 |
| GA | $41,000 | $33,676 | $34,826 |
| AL | $38,290 | $31,317 | $34,809 |
| FL | $41,750 | $35,726 | $34,534 |
| NJ | $44,400 | $36,950 | $33,936 |
| NY | $44,340 | $36,010 | $33,458 |
| DE | $39,940 | $32,622 | $32,868 |
| VA | $39,900 | $32,706 | $32,463 |
| LA | $32,200 | $27,473 | $31,097 |
| RI | $36,400 | $30,482 | $30,058 |
| MS | $31,260 | $26,139 | $29,944 |
| WV | $31,600 | $26,793 | $29,845 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of file clerks 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 $43,600.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for file clerks, 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 $42,283.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for file clerks. 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 West Virginia, on $29,845.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for file clerks, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $43,600, 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.
- Retained-pay figures for file clerks 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 $42,283, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for file clerks 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; West Virginia anchors the distribution at $29,845. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.