Receptionist salary in South Carolina: what front-office staff earn and cost

The median receptionist salary in South Carolina is $17.07 an hour, or about $35,506 a year for a full-time schedule of 2,080 hours, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) for May 2025. The mean annual wage is $35,330. The middle half of receptionists earned between $29,370 (25th percentile) and $40,580 (75th percentile) a year.

There were 11,280 receptionists and information clerks (SOC 43-4171) employed in South Carolina. The U.S. median was $18.27 an hour, so South Carolina pays about 93 percent of the national rate. In the Columbia metro area, the median was $17.08, essentially the same as the state, across 1,880 jobs.

Front-office work in a service business is often split across several job titles, and pay varies more by title than by city. In South Carolina, the median runs from $17.07 an hour for receptionists to $25.41 for legal secretaries and administrative assistants. Medical secretaries and administrative assistants, who usually handle scheduling, insurance details and patient records, earn a median $19.31. General secretaries and administrative assistants earn $21.58, and customer service representatives $18.69.

Customer service representatives are by far the largest group, with 51,000 jobs in the state. Together the five occupations account for 110,370 jobs in South Carolina.

South Carolina pays less than the national median in every front-office role, but the gap is small for receptionists and secretaries and larger for customer-facing roles. Legal secretaries (95 percent of the U.S. median), general secretaries and administrative assistants (94 percent) and receptionists (93 percent) are all close to national pay. Medical secretaries and customer service representatives are both at 87 percent.

The narrow gap matters for planning. Many businesses assume South Carolina labor is far cheaper than the national average because overall pay is lower, and it is: Census data put the state's payroll per employee at about 77 percent of the U.S. level. Front-office roles are closer to national pay than that, so the savings from hiring locally rather than outsourcing are smaller than the headline numbers suggest. Remote customer service jobs also let South Carolina workers take positions with out-of-state employers, which can add pressure on local pay.

Columbia metro area pay is close to the state for most front-office roles. Receptionists earned a median $17.08 an hour and medical secretaries $19.31, matching the state. Legal secretaries are the exception: the Columbia median of $28.13 is above both the state ($25.41) and the U.S. ($26.72), which may reflect the number of law firms, courts and state agencies in the capital. Customer service representatives earned slightly less than the state median, at $18.00.

BLS publishes the same tables for the Charleston, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, Spartanburg, Florence and Sumter metro areas. Our regional business profiles show that overall payroll per employee is higher in the Charleston area and lower on the Grand Strand than the state average, so businesses in those markets should check their own metro table before setting pay.

Wages are only part of the cost. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) release for June 2026 found that, for private-industry office and administrative support workers, wages and salaries were 68.7 percent of total compensation and benefits were 31.3 percent. That includes 7.0 percent for legally required benefits such as Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, 11.0 percent for insurance and 7.5 percent for paid leave.

Dividing the wage by 0.687 gives an estimate of total cost. For a South Carolina receptionist at the median, $35,506 in wages becomes about $51,700 a year. At the 25th percentile it is about $42,800 and at the 75th about $59,100. A median medical secretary costs about $58,500, and a median legal secretary about $76,900.

Coverage adds a further layer. A full-time employee is paid for 2,080 hours, but paid leave, breaks and lunches mean fewer hours at the desk. A front desk open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays needs 50 staffed hours a week, which is already more than one full-time person can cover, before evenings, weekends or a second phone line at busy times.

For a median South Carolina receptionist, each paid hour costs about $24.85 once benefits are included ($17.07 divided by 0.687). The cost per hour actually worked is higher, because paid leave is included in that figure but the person is not at the desk during vacation or holidays. Nationally, ECEC puts total compensation for private-industry office and administrative support workers at $36.73 per hour worked, of which $25.22 is wages.

Thinking in hourly terms helps when comparing options. If a front desk spends a large share of each hour on calls that are confirmations, directions, hours and simple rescheduling, that is the time worth reassigning to work that needs a person.

It depends on call volume, hours and how much of the job is routine. A receptionist does far more than answer the phone: greeting clients, handling payments, solving problems and representing the business. Those tasks justify the cost for many practices and firms. The routine parts, such as after-hours calls, appointment confirmations, reminder texts, intake forms and basic questions, are the parts that answering services and automation handle well.

Monvell's communications work covers front-desk support, missed-call recovery and after-hours coverage, so a business can decide which conversations need a person and which can be handled reliably without adding another full-time role.

• Count your hours of coverage, not just your headcount. Compare staffed hours with the hours customers actually call, text and submit forms.
• Measure missed calls and after-hours inquiries before deciding; that number tells you what a gap in coverage is costing.
• Price the full cost: median wage plus about 46 percent for benefits and payroll taxes, plus recruiting and training when someone leaves.
• Separate the routine from the judgment calls. Confirmations, reminders and intake can be automated; difficult conversations and in-person service usually should not be.

Wage and employment figures are BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics estimates for May 2025, the most recent release, for all industries in South Carolina, the Columbia, SC metropolitan statistical area and the U.S. We retrieved employment, median hourly wage, mean annual wage and 25th and 75th percentile annual wages for SOC 43-4171, 43-4051, 43-6013, 43-6014 and 43-6012 through the BLS public data API. Full-time annual medians are the median hourly wage times 2,080 hours, which is how BLS converts hourly to annual wages. Our original plan included every South Carolina metro area; we limited the published tables to the state, Columbia and the U.S. because the API's request limit was reached before the other metro series could be retrieved; those metro tables are available directly from BLS.

Total cost estimates divide wages by 0.687, the wage share of total compensation for private-industry office and administrative support workers in the BLS ECEC release for June 2026. That is a national figure; benefit costs vary by employer size, region and plan, and small employers often spend less on insurance and retirement. OEWS covers employees on payroll and excludes the self-employed and contractors. Percentile figures are rounded by BLS.