Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
What the pay figures show
- Hawaii pays hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks the most, at $59,110. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $42,930 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Hawaii leads for hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks at $59,110 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $42,930 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
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
$35,070
People doing it
261,420
Highest paid
$59,110
HI
Best off, really
$42,930
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$27,120
Highest tenth
$45,470
Lowest, really
$25,575
GA
States with data
51
National average
$35,550
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.61%
HI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $25,575 to $42,930.
- About 261,420 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $35,070. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $35,070 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $25,575 to $42,930, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 261,420 workers, hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $27,120 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,070 |
| Top tenth earn over | $45,470 |
| This salary | $35,070 |
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 Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks
The national median for this job
$35,070around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $27,120 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,070 |
| Top tenth | $45,470 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Hotel, Motel, and Resort Desk Clerks, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $26,830 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $59,110 |
| Spread | $32,280 |
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 | $29,630 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $30,491 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HI | $59,110 | $46,626 | $42,930 |
| VT | $44,940 | $37,040 | $38,330 |
| DC | $47,060 | $38,335 | $34,597 |
| NV | $38,900 | $33,436 | $34,477 |
| ND | $34,530 | $29,925 | $33,786 |
| WY | $35,050 | $30,343 | $33,399 |
| MT | $35,330 | $29,664 | $32,871 |
| WA | $40,460 | $34,690 | $31,954 |
| WI | $35,360 | $29,702 | $31,904 |
| MO | $34,560 | $29,262 | $31,889 |
| ME | $37,380 | $30,957 | $31,883 |
| AK | $37,500 | $32,311 | $31,766 |
| UT | $36,250 | $29,694 | $31,256 |
| RI | $37,840 | $31,585 | $31,146 |
| ID | $33,870 | $28,453 | $31,121 |
| MN | $36,320 | $30,239 | $30,725 |
| NH | $37,300 | $32,151 | $30,519 |
| CO | $36,750 | $30,800 | $30,380 |
| IN | $33,280 | $27,968 | $30,340 |
| SD | $30,550 | $26,727 | $30,339 |
| AZ | $35,880 | $30,515 | $30,182 |
| MI | $33,870 | $28,206 | $29,948 |
| CT | $37,000 | $30,855 | $29,757 |
| MA | $39,400 | $32,188 | $29,738 |
| DE | $35,730 | $29,473 | $29,695 |
| NE | $31,490 | $26,731 | $29,577 |
| NJ | $38,110 | $32,185 | $29,559 |
| IA | $30,590 | $26,208 | $29,525 |
| NY | $38,590 | $31,700 | $29,454 |
| CA | $39,360 | $33,096 | $29,397 |
| IL | $35,410 | $29,024 | $29,360 |
| FL | $35,030 | $30,327 | $29,315 |
| OH | $30,630 | $26,665 | $29,043 |
| TN | $30,160 | $26,414 | $28,551 |
| MD | $35,860 | $29,654 | $28,523 |
| AR | $28,300 | $24,325 | $28,119 |
| NM | $29,300 | $25,394 | $28,095 |
| KY | $29,970 | $25,330 | $27,998 |
| OR | $37,020 | $29,237 | $27,918 |
| SC | $30,020 | $26,002 | $27,906 |
| VA | $33,270 | $27,760 | $27,554 |
| KS | $29,750 | $24,713 | $27,469 |
| NC | $29,900 | $25,520 | $27,109 |
| PA | $31,330 | $26,392 | $27,069 |
| LA | $27,420 | $23,754 | $26,888 |
| OK | $27,630 | $23,620 | $26,754 |
| TX | $29,630 | $25,988 | $26,743 |
| MS | $27,300 | $23,092 | $26,453 |
| AL | $28,050 | $23,550 | $26,176 |
| WV | $26,830 | $23,077 | $25,706 |
| GA | $29,130 | $24,731 | $25,575 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $35,070 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 hotel, motel, and resort desk 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 Hawaii, at $46,626.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for hotel, motel, and resort desk 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 Georgia, on $25,575.
- All wage figures for hotel, motel, and resort desk clerks are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $35,070. 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 hotel, motel, and resort desk 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 $46,626, which leads in Hawaii.
- Real-terms results for hotel, motel, and resort desk 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; Georgia anchors the distribution at $25,575. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.