Posted pay from 1,803 of 2,596 accounting job postings, intern to senior manager, on employers' own hiring pages. Not a survey: every figure is a range an employer published.
Pick your city, experience and field. You get the pay range employers posted for jobs like yours.
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From pay ranges employers posted, not offers or a survey. Each employer counts once. Shown once there are at least 6 postings from 3 employers: first within about 40 miles of your city, then adding states with a similar cost of living, then nationwide. Pay from other states is adjusted to your state's cost of living (BEA regional price parities).
Each posting is compared with the national median for its level (intern through senior manager), so a state with more senior openings doesn't look richer than it is. This is posted pay, not adjusted for cost of living; the "Where to start" table below adjusts for it. Each employer counts once per state. Shown for states with 5+ postings with pay from 2+ employers; remote postings aren't counted. CPA firms and companies only: government jobs are paid on federal and state scales, so they're left out of state comparisons.
Entry-level: staff and intern postings that ask for 1 year of experience or less, or don't say, and aren't senior or manager titles. Staff pay: the median of employers' posted midpoints, each employer counted once, shown when a state has 5+ staff postings with pay from 2+ employers. Cost of living: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, all items, where the US average is 100. After cost of living: staff pay divided by that price level, in US-average dollars. It compares states; it isn't what an offer will be. Exam support: the share of entry-level postings whose employer says it helps pay for the CPA exam. CPA firms and companies only.
Open intern and staff postings whose title names a start term, like "Audit Intern, Summer 2027". A title naming two terms counts once for each. Most postings don't name a term, so this shows the timing, not the total.
Counts the same fixed group of employers every day, so new sources we add never look like hiring growth. A posting counts from the day we find it until the employer closes it.
Typical range across firms Most individual postings Median
Public accounting firms only. Firm size follows INSIDE Public Accounting's 2026 Top 500 ranking: Big 4 (#1 to 4), National (#5 to 25), Large regional (#26 to 100), Regional (#101 to 500), Local (below the Top 500). The Big 4 post one national pay range that covers every office, from the lowest-cost city to Manhattan, so their middle overstates most offers. Each Big 4 posting is placed in its range by where the job is: the bottom for the lowest-cost state, the top for Manhattan, by cost of living in between. Other firms post local ranges, so theirs use the middle.
Public accounting and industry together. Internships are sorted by their title ("Audit Intern", "Tax Intern").
Companies only, not CPA firms. Staff and senior accountant use the posting's level; accounting manager and controller match the job title (assistant controllers left out). Each employer counts once. A step only shows with 10+ postings with pay from 2+ employers, and the top steps are small samples, so treat them as a guide.
Is the CPA worth it? What changes at manager level, and what it pays →
Read from each posting's own wording, for example "must be authorized to work in the US without sponsorship" or "limited immigration sponsorship may be available". When a posting doesn't say, ask the recruiter.
States with a law requiring a pay range in job postings, in effect September 2026: California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Virginia and Washington (Connecticut from October 2026). Most exempt small employers. Postings without a state (remote or not stated) are left out.
Looking for a job, not a chart? See all the postings, filter by level, pay, cost of living and whether the employer pays for the CPA exam.
As of October 4, 2026. Source: accounting job postings on employers' own hiring pages, collected by ChatCPA.
How this works: only postings that state pay are counted. Each employer counts once, at the typical midpoint of its postings, so a firm that posts one role in 50 cities can't swamp the rest. A bar covers the middle half of employers (25th to 75th percentile) and the dot is the median. The thin line behind each bar covers the middle 80% of individual postings (10th to 90th percentile), to show how much pay varies within and across firms. Intern pay is shown per hour; yearly figures are divided by 2,080 hours. A bar appears once it has at least 6 postings from at least 2 employers. Levels come from job titles. Updated every day from the same data as chatcpa.io/jobs.
Compiled by ChatCPA, a CPA exam practice bank run by Nicholas Miller, CPA. Employers: see firm seats.