Proofreaders and Copy Markers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Proofreaders and Copy Markers offer sit among all 5,160 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

May 2024 employment stood at 5,160, or 0.00% of the U.S. total. New York leads the state table with 1,230 jobs; the top three states sum to 35.7% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: New York posts a location quotient of 3.85, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $78,040, which is 2.3 times the $33,530 at the 10th, a difference of $44,510 annually. Because the mean wage ($52,730) sits above the median ($49,210), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts New York first at 1,230 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, District of Columbia would lead at $63,920. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Proofreaders and Copy Markers stands number 759 by employment and number 538 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 3% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.0% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 11 of the 27 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $49,210, 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 1,170 jobs, 22.7% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

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, $62,820 a year, against $62,820 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $49,210 a year is $4,101 a month gross, $1,893 every two weeks, $946 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,590) to the 75th ($62,380) is worth $23,790 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 $4,101 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 $54,131 would sit between the median ($49,210) and the 75th percentile ($62,380), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,590, is $10,620 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Public Safety Telecommunicators, Cargo and Freight Agents, Human Resources Assistants, Except Payroll and Timekeeping, Order Clerks, Library Assistants, Clerical, File Clerks. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.