Legal Support Workers, All Other

What the pay figures show
- Virginia pays legal support workers, all other the most, at $179,960. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $123,755 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Virginia leads for legal support workers, all other at $179,960 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $123,755 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
$72,110
People doing it
46,760
Highest paid
$179,960
VA
Best off, really
$123,755
VA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$43,800
Highest tenth
$179,960
Lowest, really
$41,495
IA
States with data
45
National average
$89,660
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
100.75%
VA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $41,495 up to $123,755.
- Just 46,760 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 45 jurisdictions have a figure, with $72,110 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Virginia tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for legal support workers, all other approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $41,495 to $123,755, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- 46,760 are employed nationally in legal support workers, all other — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 45 jurisdictions carry a published median for legal support workers, all other. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Legal Support Workers, All Other
The national median for this job
| Lowest tenth earn under | $43,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $72,110 |
| Top tenth earn over | $179,960 |
| This salary | $72,110 |
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 Legal Support Workers, All Other
The national median for this job
| Lowest tenth | $43,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $72,110 |
| Top tenth | $179,960 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Legal Support Workers, All Other, state by state
The national median for this job
| Lowest | Iowa · $44,470 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Virginia · $179,960 |
| Spread | $135,490 |
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 | $63,140 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $64,976 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| VA | $179,960 | $124,682 | $123,755 |
| KS | $88,210 | $66,252 | $73,642 |
| AK | $85,000 | $68,628 | $67,470 |
| MN | $86,940 | $65,604 | $66,659 |
| NH | $82,890 | $67,143 | $63,736 |
| WA | $85,630 | $69,071 | $63,623 |
| DE | $81,170 | $61,807 | $62,272 |
| NJ | $88,210 | $67,457 | $61,953 |
| RI | $79,350 | $62,097 | $61,232 |
| PA | $75,190 | $59,418 | $60,941 |
| NE | $69,010 | $54,942 | $60,793 |
| KY | $68,220 | $54,553 | $60,301 |
| MO | $69,350 | $55,296 | $60,260 |
| DC | $88,480 | $66,523 | $60,037 |
| OH | $67,230 | $54,994 | $59,898 |
| CA | $85,830 | $65,321 | $58,022 |
| ME | $72,110 | $56,012 | $57,687 |
| ID | $64,480 | $51,426 | $56,249 |
| MI | $66,280 | $52,870 | $56,135 |
| MA | $77,830 | $60,012 | $55,444 |
| NY | $76,520 | $59,127 | $54,937 |
| VT | $66,100 | $53,039 | $54,886 |
| TX | $63,140 | $52,913 | $54,451 |
| WI | $63,130 | $50,612 | $54,365 |
| NC | $63,170 | $50,925 | $54,096 |
| UT | $64,380 | $51,044 | $53,730 |
| TN | $58,610 | $49,273 | $53,260 |
| CO | $66,660 | $53,501 | $52,771 |
| NV | $60,820 | $51,049 | $52,639 |
| NM | $57,780 | $47,056 | $52,061 |
| MS | $55,930 | $44,975 | $51,522 |
| ND | $53,980 | $45,553 | $51,430 |
| AZ | $63,160 | $51,753 | $51,187 |
| IL | $63,250 | $50,015 | $50,595 |
| OK | $55,330 | $44,648 | $50,572 |
| WV | $55,890 | $45,395 | $50,567 |
| IN | $56,990 | $46,320 | $50,247 |
| GA | $60,620 | $48,462 | $50,116 |
| MT | $55,850 | $45,187 | $50,072 |
| LA | $51,230 | $42,193 | $47,759 |
| FL | $56,880 | $47,883 | $46,285 |
| HI | $62,530 | $49,114 | $45,221 |
| OR | $60,860 | $46,306 | $44,218 |
| AR | $44,670 | $36,878 | $42,630 |
| IA | $44,470 | $36,834 | $41,495 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for legal support workers, all other as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $72,110, 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 legal support workers, all other, 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 Virginia, at $124,682.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for legal support workers, all other. 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 Iowa, on $41,495.
- These are distribution medians for legal support workers, all other, with a national value of $72,110. 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 legal support workers, all other 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 $124,682, which leads in Virginia.
- Real-terms results for legal support workers, all other 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; Iowa anchors the distribution at $41,495. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.