Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks offer sit among all 156,950 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 156,950 jobs nationally, Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks make up 0.10% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 23,180 of those jobs, the top three states hold 30.2%, and the deepest concentration sits in Oklahoma (location quotient 1.65, 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 $36,670 or less, and one in ten earns $78,830 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.1 to 1 and the annual gap is $42,160. The mean ($56,870) versus median ($55,290) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks runs from the $69,210 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (23,180 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks stands number 192 by employment and number 466 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 16% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.9% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 23 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $55,290, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 8,380 jobs, 5.3% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $33,530 a year, against $84,760 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. 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, $55,290 a year is $4,608 a month gross, $2,127 every two weeks, $1,063 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($45,440) to the 75th ($65,750) is worth $20,310 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 $4,608 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 $60,819 would sit between the median ($55,290) and the 75th percentile ($65,750), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $45,440, is $9,850 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Library Assistants, Clerical, File Clerks, Postal Service Clerks, Couriers and Messengers, Mail Clerks and Mail Machine Operators, Except Postal Service, Procurement Clerks. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.