Occupation / job
Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants pays $55,570 against $50,020 across all occupations, which is $462 a month ahead. A modest premium, and modest premiums are usually attached to modest requirements — check what this one is attached to.
National employment is 156,280. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
Administrative assistant work suits people who make an organisation function and are content that this is mostly invisible when done well and highly visible when not.
No verified preparation time is on file for Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
From $44,450 to $71,970 is $2,293 a month, or 1.6x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The bottom quarter of Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants earns under $44,450, which is within $5,570 of the $50,020 typical American job. An occupation whose 25th percentile is level with the national middle has an unusually forgiving downside.
Avoid it if you want a visible career ladder; the routes up out of administration are narrow and mostly sideways first.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 156,280 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $55,570 as where you might be after years in Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, and $44,450 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $44,450 at the 25th percentile, $55,570 at the midpoint, $71,970 at the 75th. $27,520 separates the quarter of Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $44,450 and $71,970 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $55,570. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $16,400; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $27,520.
The climb from $55,570 to $71,970 is $16,400, against $11,120 down to $44,450. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants is larger than the realistic downside.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants is $26.71 an hour. The quarters sit at $21.37 and $34.60, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants. The self-employed are excluded, so $55,570 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $55,570 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else