What a payroll clerk costs in the US
The wage BLS measured across 153,140 jobs, what an employer pays on top of it, the pay in every state, and which of the job's core tasks already show up in AI use.
Medians for the whole US. Your own cost depends on where you hire, the benefits you offer and the hours worked.
- Median wage
- $58,260
- Hourly wage
- $28.01
- Loaded per hour
- $34.89
- Middle half earns
- $47,990 to $69,600
- Jobs in the US
- 153,140
Wage × 1.2455 for benefits and payroll taxes, from BLS.
A payroll clerk in the US is paid a median $58,260 a year, $28.01 an hour, across 153,140 jobs. With benefits, a small employer pays about $72,560. Of its 10 core tasks, 1 showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026, and there Claude mostly assisted a person rather than doing it.
The work, task by task
The 10 core tasks O*NET lists for payroll and timekeeping clerks, most important first, and how each showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026. The bar splits those conversations between Claude doing the task and Claude helping a person do it.
- 01Verify attendance, hours worked, and pay adjustments, and post information onto designated records.
- 02Process and issue employee paychecks and statements of earnings and deductions.
- 03Compute wages and deductions, and enter data into computers.Claude.ai: 44% did the task, 56% helped
- 04Process paperwork for new employees and enter employee information into the payroll system.API: 100% did the task, 0% helped
- 05Prepare and balance period-end reports, and reconcile issued payrolls to bank statements.
- 06Review time sheets, work charts, wage computation, and other information to detect and reconcile payroll discrepancies.
- 07Distribute and collect timecards each pay period.
- 08Record employee information, such as exemptions, transfers, and resignations, to maintain and update payroll records.
- 09Issue and record adjustments to pay related to previous errors or retroactive increases.
- 10Keep track of leave time, such as vacation, personal, and sick leave, for employees.
1 of 10 tasks appear in the Claude.ai sample of the Anthropic Economic Index for May 2026, and 1 more only in its sample of API traffic, where businesses run Claude inside their own software. A task without a row had too few conversations for Anthropic to publish, which is not the same as none. Shares are of all sampled Claude.ai conversations, so small figures are normal: 0.01% of every conversation that month was about this occupation.
Pay by state
The median annual wage in each state and DC, and the same wage fully loaded. District of Columbia pays the most, $74,670; Mississippi the least, $45,170.
| State | Median wage | Fully loaded | Middle half | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $46,170 | $57,500 | $37,520 to $55,030 | 1,360 |
| Alaska | $62,210 | $77,480 | $56,430 to $68,650 | 360 |
| Arizona | $50,210 | $62,540 | $42,760 to $60,060 | 3,540 |
| Arkansas | $46,110 | $57,430 | $40,260 to $55,360 | 1,220 |
| California | $65,340 | $81,380 | $56,230 to $78,870 | 20,590 |
| Colorado | $64,140 | $79,890 | $51,650 to $76,040 | 2,580 |
| Connecticut | $62,200 | $77,470 | $55,010 to $74,480 | 1,540 |
| Delaware | $56,430 | $70,280 | $48,400 to $80,250 | 320 |
| District of Columbia | $74,670 | $93,000 | $61,840 to $90,270 | 270 |
| Florida | $51,910 | $64,650 | $45,000 to $63,720 | 10,910 |
| Georgia | $59,990 | $74,720 | $48,760 to $69,990 | 6,720 |
| Hawaii | $62,070 | $77,310 | $54,590 to $76,780 | 700 |
| Idaho | $51,790 | $64,500 | $46,900 to $63,240 | 800 |
| Illinois | $61,390 | $76,460 | $48,560 to $74,820 | 5,580 |
| Indiana | $53,770 | $66,970 | $45,100 to $65,540 | 4,020 |
| Iowa | $54,080 | $67,360 | $46,070 to $61,420 | 1,230 |
| Kansas | $56,590 | $70,480 | $49,750 to $68,100 | 1,400 |
| Kentucky | $52,890 | $65,870 | $43,800 to $62,710 | 1,670 |
| Louisiana | $50,800 | $63,270 | $40,710 to $61,750 | 2,160 |
| Maine | $57,360 | $71,440 | $47,920 to $67,100 | 590 |
| Maryland | $59,760 | $74,430 | $48,740 to $69,350 | 1,870 |
| Massachusetts | $63,670 | $79,300 | $54,890 to $77,960 | 3,280 |
| Michigan | $56,160 | $69,950 | $48,700 to $67,150 | 4,050 |
| Minnesota | $61,320 | $76,370 | $53,450 to $71,190 | 2,790 |
| Mississippi | $45,170 | $56,260 | $36,100 to $56,840 | 1,330 |
| Missouri | $54,080 | $67,360 | $43,080 to $64,120 | 3,460 |
| Montana | $55,040 | $68,550 | $46,500 to $63,060 | 530 |
| Nebraska | $54,900 | $68,380 | $48,210 to $63,500 | 910 |
| Nevada | $58,220 | $72,510 | $45,110 to $70,030 | 1,390 |
| New Hampshire | $63,090 | $78,580 | $52,710 to $74,630 | 800 |
| New Jersey | $60,750 | $75,660 | $50,440 to $73,350 | 4,290 |
| New Mexico | $53,230 | $66,300 | $43,920 to $63,010 | 820 |
| New York | $61,040 | $76,030 | $50,700 to $73,220 | 8,400 |
| North Carolina | $53,550 | $66,700 | $45,680 to $62,650 | 3,630 |
| North Dakota | $60,600 | $75,480 | $53,550 to $66,160 | 300 |
| Ohio | $57,270 | $71,330 | $47,480 to $66,880 | 5,820 |
| Oklahoma | $49,920 | $62,180 | $39,900 to $62,200 | 2,470 |
| Oregon | $60,980 | $75,950 | $51,690 to $72,770 | 2,890 |
| Pennsylvania | $55,690 | $69,360 | $46,540 to $64,590 | 5,170 |
| Rhode Island | $59,370 | $73,950 | $48,310 to $71,800 | 410 |
| South Carolina | $52,240 | $65,060 | $45,500 to $62,400 | 1,550 |
| South Dakota | $47,680 | $59,390 | $43,350 to $56,520 | 370 |
| Tennessee | $51,780 | $64,490 | $45,300 to $61,350 | 3,680 |
| Texas | $54,090 | $67,370 | $45,220 to $63,940 | 13,220 |
| Utah | $56,430 | $70,280 | $49,820 to $65,000 | 1,590 |
| Vermont | $55,340 | $68,930 | $45,010 to $63,710 | 270 |
| Virginia | $58,250 | $72,550 | $49,380 to $68,140 | 3,400 |
| Washington | $64,560 | $80,410 | $58,310 to $76,390 | 3,560 |
| West Virginia | $47,460 | $59,110 | $36,020 to $60,860 | 580 |
| Wisconsin | $59,310 | $73,870 | $50,850 to $66,980 | 2,590 |
| Wyoming | $51,940 | $64,690 | $42,340 to $64,540 | 160 |
The same benefits ratio applies in every state, because BLS does not publish benefit costs by business size for each state. The middle half is the 25th to 75th percentile wage.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is copied from a public file. The only arithmetic is the loaded cost: the wage times 1.2455.
- Wages
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation 43-3051 (Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks). Annual figures are the hourly wage times 2,080 hours, as BLS computes them, so they already include pay for paid leave.
- Fully loaded
- BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (2026 Q2), private businesses with 1 to 49 workers: $37.64 an hour in total compensation over $27.88 in wages plus $2.34 in paid leave gives 1.2455. Paid leave sits in the denominator because the annual wage already pays it.
- Tasks
- O*NET 31.0 core tasks for 43-3051.00, the ten most important by their importance rating. A few occupations list fewer core tasks.
- AI use
- Anthropic Economic Index, release of June 2026, conversations from May 2026. "Did the task" is Anthropic's automation share, where the user directs Claude to do the work; "helped" is augmentation, where the user works with Claude to learn, check or iterate.
- Not measured
- What a particular business pays, and whether an AI system can do a task well. The AI figures count conversations about a task, not jobs replaced.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. AI use data from the Anthropic Economic Index by Anthropic, under CC BY. Wage and benefit data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What would an AI system cost for this work?
Put $72,560 beside the running cost of a system doing the tasks above, with the build counted in year one.
BLS wages May 2025 · O*NET 31.0 · Anthropic Economic Index