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Pay · 43-3051

Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks earn $58,260 a year at the midpoint

From about $39,500 at the low end to $81,350 at the top, with $58,260 in the middle — the 2025 survey, published as reported.

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$58,260median a year · United States
$28.01an hour $59,630average 153,140people
Nine in ten people in this work earn between the two ends. The shaded part is the middle half — where most people are.
$47,99025th $58,260median $69,60075th
$39,50010th percentile $81,35090th percentile
$47,990a year at the 25th percentile, nearer a first job
$74,670best-paying state · District of Columbia
$45,170lowest-paying state · Mississippi
+28%top state against the national median
  • Read the spread, not the middle. The median is the midpoint across everyone in the occupation, most of them years into the work. A beginner starts nearer the 10th to 25th percentile, which is why the spread is published alongside it.
  • What the figure counts. The figure counts base pay plus tips, commissions and production bonuses. It leaves out the self-employed, unpaid family workers, private household workers, and the value of benefits or profit sharing.
  • The annual figure is arithmetic. For hourly occupations the annual figure is the hourly rate times 2080 hours. It is a calculation, not observed earnings: part time is the norm in retail and food service.
  • Where you live moves it more than your resume does. National figures. A state or metro area can sit far from the national number, and that gap is usually larger than any difference a resume makes.
  • Not in these numbers. Growth and annual openings are not in this dataset. They come from the separate Employment Projections tables, where an opening is a modelled ten year average and not a posted vacancy.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, 2025. Retrieved through the BLS Public Data API on 2026-08-13. bls.gov/oes “BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.”

State matters a lotThe same job pays $74,670 in District of Columbia and $45,170 in Mississippi — a gap of $29,500 a year.

Payroll and timekeeping clerk earnings, from starting pay to the best-paid 10%

Pick the job, where you work and how long you have done it. The range comes from the published wage percentiles for that job.

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Payroll and timekeeping clerk wages, state by state

The 45 states where the most people do this work, of 51 with a published figure: their medians range by 1.45 times. Figures are the 2025 survey.

State Median a year Where most start 10th to 90th Employed
California $65,340 $46,120 $46,120 — $92,080 20,590
Washington $64,560 $50,220 $50,220 — $89,290 3,560
Colorado $64,140 $46,590 $46,590 — $88,050 2,580
Massachusetts $63,670 $49,110 $49,110 — $86,360 3,280
New Hampshire $63,090 $42,220 $42,220 — $87,140 800
Connecticut $62,200 $47,120 $47,120 — $83,950 1,540
Hawaii $62,070 $45,140 $45,140 — $83,810 700
Illinois $61,390 $39,670 $39,670 — $86,460 5,580
Minnesota $61,320 $49,270 $49,270 — $79,370 2,790
New York $61,040 $45,140 $45,140 — $86,470 8,400
Oregon $60,980 $42,430 $42,430 — $82,080 2,890
New Jersey $60,750 $42,990 $42,990 — $84,990 4,290
Georgia $59,990 $39,590 $39,590 — $76,790 6,720
Maryland $59,760 $31,750 $31,750 — $82,140 1,870
Rhode Island $59,370 $38,080 $38,080 — $82,090 410
Wisconsin $59,310 $42,730 $42,730 — $76,830 2,590
Virginia $58,250 $43,890 $43,890 — $78,800 3,400
Nevada $58,220 $37,850 $37,850 — $78,410 1,390
Maine $57,360 $43,370 $43,370 — $79,040 590
Ohio $57,270 $40,310 $40,310 — $80,650 5,820
Kansas $56,590 $42,340 $42,340 — $79,160 1,400
Utah $56,430 $43,400 $43,400 — $74,530 1,590
Michigan $56,160 $38,560 $38,560 — $78,200 4,050
Pennsylvania $55,690 $39,630 $39,630 — $76,980 5,170
Montana $55,040 $37,910 $37,910 — $78,500 530
Nebraska $54,900 $43,320 $43,320 — $74,360 910
Texas $54,090 $36,040 $36,040 — $75,850 13,220
Iowa $54,080 $39,410 $39,410 — $70,990 1,230
Missouri $54,080 $37,030 $37,030 — $79,470 3,460
Indiana $53,770 $38,910 $38,910 — $77,700 4,020
North Carolina $53,550 $36,620 $36,620 — $74,480 3,630
New Mexico $53,230 $37,230 $37,230 — $69,990 820
Kentucky $52,890 $36,600 $36,600 — $76,590 1,670
South Carolina $52,240 $38,180 $38,180 — $77,660 1,550
Florida $51,910 $35,730 $35,730 — $76,710 10,910
Idaho $51,790 $41,440 $41,440 — $70,390 800
Tennessee $51,780 $36,270 $36,270 — $75,160 3,680
Louisiana $50,800 $29,480 $29,480 — $71,750 2,160
Arizona $50,210 $33,870 $33,870 — $69,980 3,540
Oklahoma $49,920 $32,410 $32,410 — $74,190 2,470
South Dakota $47,680 $38,780 $38,780 — $64,350 370
West Virginia $47,460 $30,990 $30,990 — $63,390 580
Alabama $46,170 $32,210 $32,210 — $64,170 1,360
Arkansas $46,110 $34,270 $34,270 — $71,280 1,220
Mississippi $45,170 $30,560 $30,560 — $66,930 1,330

Examples

Resumes made for this kind of work.

Real sheets, filled in end to end — for this job and the ones beside it.

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Adjacent work, and what it pays

Occupations in the same group of the federal classification — the usual next steps, or the ones beside this one.

Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks$58,260
Financial Clerks, All Other$53,830−$4,430 Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks$50,670−$7,590 Billing and Posting Clerks$48,500−$9,760 Tellers$43,030−$15,230

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  • Verified attendance, hours worked, and pay adjustments, and posted information onto designated records.
  • Processed and issued employee paychecks and statements of earnings and deductions.
  • Computed wages and deductions, and entered data into computers.

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This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The owner of tiersi.com has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Number 428 of 788 by median pay

Better paid than 46% of the occupations in the survey.

  1. 426 First-Line Supervisors of Landscaping, Lawn Service, and Groundskeeping Workers $58,430
  2. 427 Insulation Workers, Mechanical $58,340
  3. 428 Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks $58,260
  4. 429 Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisors $58,170
  5. 430 Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas $58,160

Payroll and timekeeping clerk pay rate, from hourly to yearly

Starts at this job’s median. Change the rate or the hours; a full-time year is 40 hours for 52 weeks.

$58,261a year

Questions people ask most

What is a payroll and timekeeping clerk’s yearly income?

A payroll and timekeeping clerk makes a median of $58,260 a year (2025 survey). The middle half earn between $47,990 and $69,600.

What is a payroll and timekeeping clerk’s hourly pay rate?

The median pay rate is $28.01 an hour; the average is $59,630 a year.

What is the starting pay for a payroll and timekeeping clerk?

Starting pay is usually near the 25th percentile, $47,990 a year, and sometimes as low as the 10th, $39,500.

Which state pays payroll and timekeeping clerks the most?

District of Columbia, with a median of $74,670 a year.

How many people work as payroll and timekeeping clerks?

About 153,140 in the United States — number 428 of 788 occupations by median pay.

Work that pays roughly the same

Median pay within $200 of what payroll and timekeeping clerks earn — $58,260 a year — but not always the same spread.

See all 788 occupations