Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
What the pay figures show
- Where are this job paid best? The District of Columbia, at $59,910. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Washington is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and North Dakota wins — the money there behaves like $45,534. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive is the District of Columbia at $59,910, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Washington; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to North Dakota at $45,534 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$47,540
People doing it
1,706,790
Highest paid
$59,910
DC
Best off, really
$45,534
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$33,280
Highest tenth
$66,350
Lowest, really
$35,262
MS
States with data
51
National average
$49,350
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 $35,262 and $45,534. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 1,706,790 Americans do this job. Hold that scale in mind. A few thousand dollars here is a few thousand dollars across millions of households.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $47,540, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $35,262 to $45,534. 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.
- With 1,706,790 workers nationally, secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive is one of the highest-headcount occupations BLS publishes. Aggregate effects of the differentials described above are correspondingly large, even where the per-worker figures appear modest.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $33,280 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $47,540 |
| Top tenth earn over | $66,350 |
| This salary | $47,540 |
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 Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
The national median for this job
$47,540around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $33,280 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $47,540 |
| Top tenth | $66,350 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $37,340 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $59,910 |
| Spread | $22,570 |
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 | $45,140 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $46,452 |
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 | $47,480 | $40,330 | $45,534 |
| WA | $57,330 | $48,245 | $44,440 |
| CT | $57,210 | $45,752 | $44,124 |
| DC | $59,910 | $47,870 | $43,202 |
| MA | $57,940 | $46,158 | $42,645 |
| WY | $45,450 | $38,699 | $42,598 |
| NM | $46,450 | $38,473 | $42,565 |
| NE | $46,760 | $38,328 | $42,409 |
| OH | $46,230 | $38,771 | $42,229 |
| MN | $51,400 | $41,508 | $42,176 |
| TN | $45,810 | $38,988 | $42,143 |
| IA | $45,150 | $37,354 | $42,081 |
| RI | $52,140 | $42,539 | $41,947 |
| WI | $47,710 | $39,016 | $41,909 |
| VT | $48,920 | $40,105 | $41,501 |
| ME | $49,820 | $40,168 | $41,368 |
| NV | $46,570 | $39,599 | $40,832 |
| SD | $41,700 | $35,686 | $40,508 |
| AK | $48,530 | $41,174 | $40,480 |
| SC | $44,880 | $37,581 | $40,333 |
| CA | $55,400 | $45,177 | $40,129 |
| MT | $43,940 | $36,177 | $40,088 |
| KY | $44,200 | $36,265 | $40,086 |
| NC | $45,790 | $37,654 | $39,998 |
| UT | $47,050 | $37,891 | $39,884 |
| MI | $46,020 | $37,452 | $39,765 |
| TX | $45,140 | $38,450 | $39,568 |
| IN | $44,270 | $36,474 | $39,567 |
| AZ | $47,940 | $39,904 | $39,468 |
| CO | $48,690 | $39,868 | $39,325 |
| MO | $43,540 | $36,055 | $39,292 |
| IL | $48,310 | $38,751 | $39,199 |
| ID | $43,710 | $35,838 | $39,199 |
| DE | $47,970 | $38,628 | $38,919 |
| PA | $46,270 | $37,937 | $38,910 |
| NH | $48,080 | $40,812 | $38,742 |
| VA | $47,620 | $38,465 | $38,179 |
| OR | $51,740 | $39,776 | $37,983 |
| NJ | $50,260 | $41,335 | $37,963 |
| KS | $42,270 | $34,074 | $37,875 |
| MD | $48,680 | $39,346 | $37,845 |
| FL | $45,900 | $39,061 | $37,757 |
| AL | $41,630 | $33,854 | $37,628 |
| WV | $40,370 | $33,562 | $37,386 |
| HI | $50,830 | $40,596 | $37,378 |
| NY | $49,600 | $39,952 | $37,121 |
| OK | $39,660 | $32,763 | $37,110 |
| LA | $38,790 | $32,570 | $36,867 |
| AR | $37,630 | $31,482 | $36,392 |
| GA | $41,600 | $34,129 | $35,294 |
| MS | $37,340 | $30,781 | $35,262 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job 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 $47,540.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. 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, Washington keeps the most at $48,245.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Mississippi, on $35,262.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $47,540, 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 secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive 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 Washington retains the most, $48,245. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive 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; Mississippi anchors the distribution at $35,262. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.