Clergy Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Clergy ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $47,220. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 58,080 Clergy jobs in May 2024, which is 0.04% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Oregon, where the location quotient is 5.87, meaning the occupation holds 5.87 times its national share of local jobs. New York employs the most people outright, 9,210 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 34.3% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $99,720, which is 2.7 times the $37,140 at the 10th, a difference of $62,580 annually. Because the mean wage ($67,160) sits above the median ($60,820), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $77,850, and New York the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Clergy stands number 363 by employment and number 395 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Community and Social Service Occupations, the group median wage is $59,190 across 17 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 3% more than its group median, and it supplies 2.3% of the group's 2,569,640 jobs. In 21 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,820, 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 7,230 jobs, 12.4% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $56,190 a year, against $93,130 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $60,820 a year is $5,068 a month gross, $2,339 every two weeks, $1,170 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,220) to the 75th ($76,340) is worth $29,120 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 $5,068 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 $66,902 would sit between the median ($60,820) and the 75th percentile ($76,340), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,220, is $13,600 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Community and Social Service Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Health Education Specialists, Social Workers, All Other, Community Health Workers, Counselors, All Other, Directors, Religious Activities and Education, Religious Workers, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.