Library Assistants, Clerical 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 Library Assistants, Clerical ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $30,190. 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

With 80,070 jobs nationally, Library Assistants, Clerical make up 0.05% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 10,420 of those jobs, the top three states hold 27.2%, and the deepest concentration sits in New Hampshire (location quotient 2.82, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $25,090 or less, and one in ten earns $52,790 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.1 to 1 and the annual gap is $27,700. The mean ($37,910) versus median ($36,010) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $52,890, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Library Assistants, Clerical stands number 304 by employment and number 776 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Office and Administrative Support Occupations, the group median wage is $47,850 across 54 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 25% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.4% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 19 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $36,010, 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 5,660 jobs, 7.1% 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, Pittsburgh, PA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $31,040 a year, against $59,910 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, $36,010 a year is $3,001 a month gross, $1,385 every two weeks, $692 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($30,190) to the 75th ($44,200) is worth $14,010 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 $3,001 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 $39,611 would sit between the median ($36,010) and the 75th percentile ($44,200), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $30,190, is $5,820 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Office and Administrative Support Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators, Public Safety Telecommunicators, Cargo and Freight Agents, Human Resources Assistants, Except Payroll and Timekeeping, Order Clerks, File Clerks. The full directory is on the Careers hub.