Archivists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($39,330) to the 90th ($104,780). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 7,050, or 0.00% of the U.S. total. New York leads the state table with 900 jobs; the top three states sum to 33.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: District of Columbia posts a location quotient of 5.73, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $65,450 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($104,780) is 2.7 times the 10th percentile ($39,330), a gap of $65,450 a year. The mean of $67,620 sitting above the median of $61,570 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts New York first at 900 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, District of Columbia would lead at $92,100. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Archivists stands number 729 by employment and number 384 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Educational Instruction and Library Occupations, the group median wage is $76,210 across 64 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 19% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 14 of the 39 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $61,570, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 720 jobs, 10.2% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $78,240 a year, against $91,430 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $61,570 a year is $5,131 a month gross, $2,368 every two weeks, $1,184 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,890) to the 75th ($79,850) is worth $31,960 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $5,131 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $67,727 would sit between the median ($61,570) and the 75th percentile ($79,850), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,890, is $13,680 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Educational Instruction and Library Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary, History Teachers, Postsecondary, Social Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary, All Other, Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary, Career/Technical Education Teachers, Middle School, Physics Teachers, Postsecondary. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.