The bookkeeping profession is easy to guess about and hard to find real numbers for. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is the authoritative source — it surveys employers directly — so every figure on this page comes from it, stamped with the survey period it belongs to.
The bookkeeping and accounting figures
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks two related occupations separately: bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks (code 43-3031), who record and reconcile transactions, and accountants and auditors (code 13-2011), who analyze and attest to financial statements. Wage figures are from the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey; the employment outlook is from the Occupational Outlook Handbook and covers 2025 to 2035.
| Metric | Figure | Source & period |
|---|---|---|
| Bookkeeping, accounting & auditing clerks — employment | 1,532,400 jobs | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 |
| Clerks — median annual wage | $50,670 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Clerks — lowest 10% earned | Less than $36,000 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Clerks — highest 10% earned | More than $74,550 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Clerks — projected employment change | Decline of 6% (2025–2035) | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 |
| Clerks — projected annual openings | About 144,100 per year, on average | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 |
| Accountants & auditors — median annual wage | $83,680 | BLS OEWS, May 2025 |
| Accountants & auditors — projected employment change | Growth of 5% (2025–2035) | BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 |
Statistics verified: September 2026 · each figure re-checked against bls.gov this round
How these figures were compiled
What is counted: only figures the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes for two occupation codes — bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks (43-3031) and accountants and auditors (13-2011). Wages are from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey; employment levels and projections are from the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
What is excluded: anything BLS does not publish. We do not blend the two occupations, estimate a national average across them, adjust for inflation, or derive a figure BLS did not state. Self-employed bookkeepers are counted only to the extent BLS counts them in these codes.
How it is kept current: BLS re-publishes wages each May and re-bases its ten-year projections periodically. When it does, every figure on this page moves together — table, chart, and prose — and the verification date changes only when each number has actually been re-checked against the source. At this re-verification the published figures had gone stale: BLS had moved from May 2024 to May 2025 wages and from the 2024–2034 to the 2025–2035 projection decade, and six of the eight figures shown here changed, including projected annual openings. They are corrected above.
How to cite this page
Bookkeeping statistics, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics · Abid, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor · https://qbspecialist.com/resources/statistics/bookkeeping-statistics/ · verified September 2026. Figures are the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own; cite BLS directly for the underlying data.
The two occupations move in opposite directions, and the reason is instructive. Clerk employment is projected to fall because software has automated much of the routine keying that once defined the role, while accountant and auditor employment is projected to grow slightly because analysis and attestation resist automation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics still projects roughly 144,100 clerk openings a year — almost entirely to replace people leaving the occupation — so the work does not vanish; it concentrates in the judgment that software cannot do.
Wages, drawn to scale
Read this as text
As of May 2025, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks earning a median of $50,670 a year — the lowest 10 percent under $36,000, the highest 10 percent above $74,550 — while accountants and auditors, a separately tracked occupation, earn a median of $83,680. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025.
What the numbers mean for your books
The projected decline in bookkeeping clerks is a statistic about data entry, not about the need for correct books. Software can import a bank feed; it cannot decide that a transfer was miscoded as income, notice that an account never reconciled, or trace an opening balance to its real home. That is precisely the work a cleanup does, and it is why automation has not made careful bookkeeping optional — if anything, it has made the review layer more valuable, because more raw data flows in with less human checking behind it.
So read these figures as context, not as a verdict on whether your books need attention. Whatever the profession's headcount does, the test for your own file is unchanged: does every account reconcile, does the balance sheet balance, and does the profit-and-loss read the way the business actually ran? A free review answers that for your file specifically, with no number invented along the way.
Want your own books checked against that test? Start with a free QuickBooks review, or read the reference docs behind the work.