CPA salary
What CPAs actually earn
By Joey Arnold, CPA · Last updated August 24, 2026
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024 data.
The median annual wage for accountants and auditors was $81,680 in May 2024.
That’s the number every salary page leads with. It’s also being used to answer a question it can’t answer, and the way it’s usually presented hides more than it shows.
The number everyone quotes, and what it covers
The federal government tracks “accountants and auditors” as a single occupation. Its most recent published median is $81,680.
That figure hides two things. First, it doesn’t separate CPAs from everyone else — it pools licensed CPAs and unlicensed staff accountants together, so “the average CPA salary is $81,680” is really quoting every accountant in the country who never sat for the exam.
Second, and bigger: it measures only one rung. “Accountants and auditors” is a staff-level occupation. The roles a CPA is actually working toward — controller, VP of finance, CFO — sit in different, higher-paid categories. The government files financial managers as their own occupation, with a median roughly double the accountants-and-auditors number, and top executives higher still.
And the seats at the top are, in practice, reserved for people who hold a CPA or a comparable professional credential. A staff accountant may or may not be licensed; a controller or CFO almost always is. That’s what the median can’t show you: the CPA’s real payoff isn’t a bigger starting salary — it’s access to the senior finance roles that unlicensed accountants rarely reach.
So treat $81,680 as a floor for reasoning, not an answer. It’s the entry rung of a ladder, and the license is what opens the rungs above it.
The spread is the real story
The same source reports the ends of the distribution, and they’re a long way apart.
The lowest 10 percent of accountants and auditors earned less than $52,780. The highest 10 percent earned more than $141,420.
That’s a range of nearly three to one inside a single occupation. A median sitting in the middle of a spread that wide isn’t a prediction of what you’ll earn — it’s the midpoint of an enormous distribution, and where you land in it depends on decisions you haven’t made yet.
The useful reading isn’t “I’ll earn $81,680.” It’s “this profession pays anywhere from roughly $53,000 to over $141,000, and I should understand what moves someone from one end to the other.”
Industry moves it more than most people expect
BLS breaks the occupation into four industries. The ranking surprises people.
| Industry | Median annual wage |
|---|---|
| Finance and insurance | $87,980 |
| Management of companies and enterprises | $86,010 |
| Government | $81,120 |
| Accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping, and payroll services | $80,510 |
Public accounting is at the bottom of that list. Finance and insurance pays a median roughly $7,500 higher than accounting and tax-prep firms do.
That’s worth sitting with, because the standard career narrative runs the other way — start in public accounting because that’s where the money is. On this data, that isn’t what public accounting is for. It’s where you build a credential and a base of experience quickly. What it isn’t, at the median, is the highest-paying place to be an accountant.
None of which is an argument against starting in public. It’s an argument against assuming the pay ranking without checking it.
Why nobody can give you a reliable CPA premium
The question everyone actually wants answered is: how much more will I make with the license than without it?
We don’t publish a figure for that, and you should be skeptical of pages that do. The federal data doesn’t separate CPAs from non-CPAs, so any premium number you see is either drawn from a self-reported salary survey with an unknown sample, or it’s an estimate someone constructed and then rounded.
What’s defensible without a number: the license is a hard requirement for a large share of senior accounting roles, and it’s the gate on signing audit reports. Its value shows up in which jobs you’re eligible for at all, which is a different thing from a percentage bump in your current one — and harder to put a figure on precisely because it operates that way.
What the data can and can’t tell you
It can tell you the shape of the profession. Median around $82,000, a floor near $53,000, a ceiling above $141,000, and meaningful differences by industry.
It can tell you the field is still growing. Employment of accountants and auditors is projected to grow 5 percent from 2024 to 2034, with roughly 124,200 openings projected each year over the decade.
It can’t tell you your number. For that, the variables that matter most are geography and experience, and BLS publishes wage data by state and metro area that gets you far closer than any national median will. Start with the BLS occupational handbook rather than a salary aggregator.
Where to start
The license is the part you control. The rest follows from where you take it.
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