Tellers
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for tellers. Best paid: Washington, at $47,670. Tax does not change that. Best off: Nevada, at $39,515 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Washington's $47,670 median for tellers survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Nevada takes the top position at $39,515. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
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
$43,030
People doing it
329,480
Highest paid
$47,670
WA
Best off, really
$39,515
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,360
Highest tenth
$49,680
Lowest, really
$31,847
IL
States with data
51
National average
$42,350
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, 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 $31,847 and $39,515. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 329,480 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $43,030. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $43,030 in the middle.
- Wages for tellers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $31,847 to $39,515. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in tellers is 329,480 — 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report tellers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Tellers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,360 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $43,030 |
| Top tenth earn over | $49,680 |
| This salary | $43,030 |
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 Tellers
The national median for this job
$43,030around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,360 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $43,030 |
| Top tenth | $49,680 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Tellers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $34,560 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $47,670 |
| Spread | $13,110 |
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 | $38,050 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $39,156 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $44,980 | $38,321 | $39,515 |
| NC | $44,830 | $36,921 | $39,220 |
| AK | $46,770 | $39,760 | $39,089 |
| SC | $42,280 | $35,597 | $38,203 |
| ND | $39,300 | $33,758 | $38,113 |
| ID | $42,380 | $34,839 | $38,107 |
| VT | $44,030 | $36,339 | $37,605 |
| SD | $38,460 | $33,083 | $37,553 |
| FL | $45,580 | $38,804 | $37,509 |
| AZ | $45,250 | $37,810 | $37,396 |
| CO | $46,060 | $37,871 | $37,355 |
| WA | $47,670 | $40,483 | $37,290 |
| DE | $45,340 | $36,661 | $36,937 |
| OH | $39,810 | $33,789 | $36,802 |
| RI | $45,300 | $37,300 | $36,780 |
| MN | $44,190 | $36,141 | $36,722 |
| VA | $45,120 | $36,600 | $36,328 |
| IA | $38,450 | $32,225 | $36,303 |
| WY | $38,290 | $32,946 | $36,265 |
| CT | $46,320 | $37,564 | $36,227 |
| ME | $42,890 | $35,065 | $36,113 |
| NH | $44,460 | $37,904 | $35,980 |
| MD | $46,010 | $37,327 | $35,904 |
| NJ | $47,210 | $39,053 | $35,867 |
| WI | $39,640 | $32,930 | $35,372 |
| GA | $41,690 | $34,196 | $35,364 |
| NM | $37,680 | $31,803 | $35,186 |
| NE | $38,140 | $31,794 | $35,179 |
| MT | $38,080 | $31,744 | $35,176 |
| MA | $46,900 | $37,839 | $34,959 |
| IN | $38,730 | $32,187 | $34,916 |
| MS | $36,810 | $30,376 | $34,799 |
| AR | $35,710 | $30,010 | $34,691 |
| CA | $46,900 | $38,852 | $34,511 |
| MI | $39,240 | $32,292 | $34,286 |
| TN | $36,750 | $31,709 | $34,274 |
| KY | $37,210 | $30,893 | $34,149 |
| LA | $35,680 | $30,165 | $34,144 |
| PA | $40,200 | $33,247 | $34,099 |
| AL | $37,350 | $30,603 | $34,015 |
| OK | $35,840 | $29,865 | $33,828 |
| TX | $38,050 | $32,753 | $33,705 |
| MO | $36,650 | $30,843 | $33,612 |
| DC | $45,590 | $37,242 | $33,611 |
| NY | $44,400 | $36,055 | $33,500 |
| KS | $36,840 | $30,014 | $33,362 |
| OR | $44,440 | $34,549 | $32,992 |
| UT | $38,370 | $31,303 | $32,950 |
| HI | $43,910 | $35,534 | $32,717 |
| WV | $34,560 | $29,078 | $32,390 |
| IL | $38,670 | $31,482 | $31,847 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for tellers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $43,030, 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.
- Take-home figures for tellers assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $40,483.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for tellers. 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 Illinois, on $31,847.
- These are distribution medians for tellers, with a national value of $43,030. 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.
- Take-home calculations for tellers assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $40,483, in Washington. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for tellers 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; Illinois anchors the distribution at $31,847. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.