Receptionists and Information Clerks Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Receptionists and Information Clerks worker at that point in the distribution, so $44,070 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 964,530 Receptionists and Information Clerks jobs in May 2024, which is 0.63% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in South Dakota, where the location quotient is 2.08, meaning the occupation holds 2.08 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 81,110 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 24.7% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $20,590 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($48,870) is 1.7 times the 10th percentile ($28,280), a gap of $20,590 a year. The mean of $38,480 sitting above the median of $37,230 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Alaska posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $44,380, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Receptionists and Information Clerks stands number 35 by employment and number 756 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 22% less than its group median, and it supplies 5.3% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 19 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $37,230, 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 89,130 jobs, 9.2% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $25,210 a year, against $51,940 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. 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

The median annual wage of $37,230 works out to $3,102 a month before taxes, $1,432 per biweekly paycheck, and $716 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($32,660) to the 75th ($44,070) is worth $11,410 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $40,953 would sit between the median ($37,230) and the 75th percentile ($44,070), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $32,660, is $4,570 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: Office and Administrative Support Workers, All Other, Loan Interviewers and Clerks, Court, Municipal, and License Clerks, Bill and Account Collectors, Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan, Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks. The full directory is on the Careers hub.