Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for payroll and timekeeping clerks is the District of Columbia, at $74,670. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $57,436. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for payroll and timekeeping clerks: the District of Columbia leads at $74,670 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $57,436 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
$58,260
People doing it
153,140
Highest paid
$74,670
DC
Best off, really
$57,436
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$39,500
Highest tenth
$81,350
Lowest, really
$41,216
AZ
States with data
51
National average
$59,630
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, 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 $41,216 and $57,436. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 153,140 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $58,260. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $58,260, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for payroll and timekeeping clerks cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $41,216 to $57,436. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in payroll and timekeeping clerks is 153,140 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for payroll and timekeeping clerks, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $39,500 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,260 |
| Top tenth earn over | $81,350 |
| This salary | $58,260 |
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 Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
The national median for this job
$58,260around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $39,500 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,260 |
| Top tenth | $81,350 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $45,170 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $74,670 |
| Spread | $29,500 |
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 | $54,090 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $55,662 |
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 | $60,600 | $50,872 | $57,436 |
| DC | $74,670 | $57,953 | $52,303 |
| OH | $57,270 | $47,338 | $51,560 |
| WI | $59,310 | $47,765 | $51,307 |
| AK | $62,210 | $52,166 | $51,286 |
| CO | $64,140 | $51,603 | $50,899 |
| NV | $58,220 | $48,960 | $50,484 |
| NH | $63,090 | $52,873 | $50,190 |
| WA | $64,560 | $54,054 | $49,791 |
| IA | $54,080 | $44,190 | $49,782 |
| KS | $56,590 | $44,781 | $49,776 |
| GA | $59,990 | $47,987 | $49,625 |
| MN | $61,320 | $48,804 | $49,589 |
| MT | $55,040 | $44,574 | $49,393 |
| NE | $54,900 | $44,498 | $49,236 |
| IL | $61,390 | $48,613 | $49,176 |
| WY | $51,940 | $43,914 | $48,338 |
| NM | $53,230 | $43,614 | $48,253 |
| MO | $54,080 | $44,029 | $47,982 |
| MI | $56,160 | $45,169 | $47,958 |
| CT | $62,200 | $49,487 | $47,726 |
| IN | $53,770 | $43,827 | $47,543 |
| KY | $52,890 | $42,944 | $47,468 |
| RI | $59,370 | $48,077 | $47,408 |
| LA | $50,800 | $41,860 | $47,382 |
| UT | $56,430 | $45,010 | $47,378 |
| TN | $51,780 | $43,785 | $47,328 |
| ME | $57,360 | $45,717 | $47,084 |
| TX | $54,090 | $45,641 | $46,968 |
| CA | $65,340 | $52,526 | $46,656 |
| MA | $63,670 | $50,475 | $46,634 |
| VT | $55,340 | $45,048 | $46,617 |
| PA | $55,690 | $45,217 | $46,377 |
| NC | $53,550 | $43,580 | $46,293 |
| SC | $52,240 | $43,007 | $46,156 |
| VA | $58,250 | $46,395 | $46,050 |
| SD | $47,680 | $40,491 | $45,963 |
| OK | $49,920 | $40,545 | $45,924 |
| MD | $59,760 | $47,722 | $45,902 |
| ID | $51,790 | $41,902 | $45,832 |
| DE | $56,430 | $44,957 | $45,295 |
| NJ | $60,750 | $49,184 | $45,171 |
| NY | $61,040 | $48,526 | $45,088 |
| HI | $62,070 | $48,779 | $44,913 |
| OR | $60,980 | $46,392 | $44,300 |
| AR | $46,110 | $37,982 | $43,906 |
| WV | $47,460 | $38,977 | $43,418 |
| FL | $51,910 | $43,890 | $42,425 |
| MS | $45,170 | $36,759 | $42,111 |
| AL | $46,170 | $37,302 | $41,461 |
| AZ | $50,210 | $41,671 | $41,216 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of payroll and timekeeping 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 $58,260.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for payroll and timekeeping 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 the District of Columbia, at $57,953.
- Levelling out prices for payroll and timekeeping clerks 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 — Arizona sits at the bottom on $41,216.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for payroll and timekeeping clerks, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $58,260, 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 payroll and timekeeping 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 $57,953, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to payroll and timekeeping clerks 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 Arizona at $41,216. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Arizona anchors the bottom at $41,216 — and the two source series are dated independently.