Sales and Related: pay for 22 occupations, May 2025

In short

• Highest median pay in this field: Sales Engineers, $124,900 a year.
• Lowest: Cashiers, $32,880 a year.
• Most jobs: Retail Salespersons (3,897,860), Cashiers (3,089,410) and Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel (1,256,010).
• For comparison, the median for all occupations in the country was $50,980 a year.

Sorted by median pay, highest first. "Not published" in the yearly or hourly column means BLS releases only the other one for that occupation.

The field as a whole

Sales and Related holds 13,424,300 of the 155,495,730 jobs in the national figures, about 9 in every 100. Its median pay of $38,530 a year is 24% below the median for all occupations ($50,980), which places it number 17 of the 22 fields. Across the whole field, the lowest-paid tenth earned less than $28,080 and the highest-paid tenth more than $99,850; the middle half earned between $32,440 and $61,100. The average was $54,960, 43% above the median.

Inside the field

Inside the field, the best-paid occupation with a published yearly median earns 3.8 times the lowest ($124,900 against $32,880). 10 of the 22 occupations with a yearly median are above the national median of $50,980, and 12 are below it. The occupation in the middle of the field's list is First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers, at $48,520. Jobs are unevenly spread: the three largest occupations hold 61% of the field's jobs, while the smallest, Door-to-Door Sales Workers, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers, has 2,760. Pay stretches furthest within Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents, where the highest-paid tenth earn over $212,880 and the lowest-paid tenth under $48,040.

Reading the field

Pay also moves with place. For the field's largest occupation, Retail Salespersons, the state medians run from $22,560 in Puerto Rico to $39,560 in Washington; its own page has every state. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts every occupation into one field by the work done, not by the industry of the employer, so an accountant at a hospital is counted under business and financial operations, not health care.

Questions about this field

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Checked in November 2026. Figures are for employees, before tax, and leave out overtime pay and benefits. They are official statistics, not advice or a pay offer; see bls.gov/oes for the original tables.

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