Office Clerks, General
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for office clerks, general is the District of Columbia, at $55,040. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $47,965. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for office clerks, general: the District of Columbia leads at $55,040 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $47,965 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
$45,010
People doing it
2,464,940
Highest paid
$55,040
DC
Best off, really
$47,965
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,310
Highest tenth
$64,680
Lowest, really
$28,836
AL
States with data
51
National average
$46,420
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $28,836 and $47,965. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 2,464,940 people in the country do this job. Very few jobs are this big. That is part of why its geography is worth setting out with care.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $45,010. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for office clerks, general is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $28,836 to $47,965. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 2,464,940 workers are employed nationally in office clerks, general. At this scale the occupation's wage geography is a macroeconomic fact as much as a career one, and small per-worker differentials aggregate into substantial regional flows.
- Coverage for office clerks, general is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Office Clerks, General
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,310 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $45,010 |
| Top tenth earn over | $64,680 |
| This salary | $45,010 |
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 Office Clerks, General
The national median for this job
$45,010around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,310 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $45,010 |
| Top tenth | $64,680 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Office Clerks, General, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $31,200 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $55,040 |
| Spread | $23,840 |
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 | $39,000 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $40,134 |
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 | $50,160 | $42,484 | $47,965 |
| AK | $51,890 | $43,874 | $43,134 |
| CO | $53,550 | $43,560 | $42,966 |
| MT | $46,480 | $38,099 | $42,218 |
| IA | $44,310 | $36,711 | $41,357 |
| VT | $48,310 | $39,635 | $41,015 |
| WY | $42,840 | $36,602 | $40,289 |
| ID | $44,830 | $36,678 | $40,118 |
| OH | $43,680 | $36,792 | $40,073 |
| DC | $55,040 | $44,268 | $39,952 |
| NV | $45,460 | $38,707 | $39,912 |
| IN | $44,520 | $36,668 | $39,777 |
| WI | $44,980 | $36,957 | $39,698 |
| MN | $47,840 | $38,879 | $39,504 |
| NH | $49,020 | $41,568 | $39,459 |
| WA | $50,500 | $42,757 | $39,385 |
| MI | $44,820 | $36,539 | $38,795 |
| RI | $47,830 | $39,238 | $38,691 |
| MO | $42,370 | $35,170 | $38,328 |
| AZ | $46,420 | $38,720 | $38,297 |
| ME | $45,300 | $36,841 | $37,942 |
| PA | $44,950 | $36,917 | $37,864 |
| CT | $48,280 | $39,050 | $37,661 |
| SD | $38,560 | $33,163 | $37,645 |
| UT | $44,060 | $35,622 | $37,496 |
| VA | $46,410 | $37,562 | $37,283 |
| IL | $45,730 | $36,805 | $37,232 |
| MA | $49,940 | $40,130 | $37,076 |
| MD | $47,270 | $38,280 | $36,820 |
| NJ | $48,570 | $40,070 | $36,801 |
| NC | $41,770 | $34,584 | $36,737 |
| OR | $49,910 | $38,466 | $36,732 |
| FL | $44,450 | $37,896 | $36,631 |
| TN | $38,860 | $33,404 | $36,107 |
| AR | $37,050 | $31,037 | $35,878 |
| CA | $48,460 | $40,017 | $35,546 |
| OK | $37,240 | $30,927 | $35,031 |
| DE | $42,740 | $34,716 | $34,978 |
| NE | $37,820 | $31,551 | $34,911 |
| NM | $37,130 | $31,385 | $34,723 |
| KY | $37,870 | $31,401 | $34,709 |
| NY | $45,890 | $37,172 | $34,538 |
| GA | $40,590 | $33,367 | $34,506 |
| TX | $39,000 | $33,517 | $34,491 |
| SC | $36,840 | $31,346 | $33,642 |
| MS | $34,900 | $28,918 | $33,128 |
| WV | $35,020 | $29,433 | $32,786 |
| HI | $42,340 | $34,385 | $31,660 |
| LA | $32,480 | $27,690 | $31,342 |
| KS | $32,370 | $26,672 | $29,647 |
| AL | $31,200 | $25,944 | $28,836 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of office clerks, general 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 $45,010.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for office clerks, general. 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 $44,268.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for office clerks, general. 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 Alabama, on $28,836.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for office clerks, general, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $45,010, 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 office clerks, general 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, $44,268. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for office clerks, general 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; Alabama anchors the distribution at $28,836. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.