Advertising Sales Agents
What the pay figures show
- Washington comes first for advertising sales agents on every measure. $101,320 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $73,791 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For advertising sales agents, Washington's $101,320 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $73,791. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$64,820
People doing it
91,700
Highest paid
$101,320
WA
Best off, really
$73,791
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$35,240
Highest tenth
$146,010
Lowest, really
$36,775
AK
States with data
48
National average
$80,670
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $36,775 up to $73,791.
- Only 91,700 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 48 jurisdictions have a figure, with $64,820 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Washington tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for advertising sales agents approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $36,775 to $73,791, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in advertising sales agents is 91,700. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 48 jurisdictions carry a published median for advertising sales agents. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Advertising Sales Agents
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $35,240 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $64,820 |
| Top tenth earn over | $146,010 |
| This salary | $64,820 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Advertising Sales Agents
The national median for this job
$64,820around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $35,240 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $64,820 |
| Top tenth | $146,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Advertising Sales Agents, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Tennessee · $40,910 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $101,320 |
| Spread | $60,410 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $60,280 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $62,032 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $101,320 | $80,109 | $73,791 |
| NY | $98,360 | $73,263 | $68,072 |
| UT | $74,260 | $57,767 | $60,806 |
| SC | $68,200 | $54,602 | $58,601 |
| SD | $60,190 | $50,543 | $57,373 |
| CO | $73,420 | $57,959 | $57,169 |
| MA | $80,500 | $61,757 | $57,056 |
| NE | $62,890 | $50,554 | $55,938 |
| CA | $80,360 | $61,982 | $55,055 |
| MI | $64,800 | $51,744 | $54,939 |
| WI | $63,270 | $50,716 | $54,477 |
| MO | $61,440 | $49,597 | $54,049 |
| IA | $58,480 | $47,558 | $53,576 |
| IL | $66,290 | $52,307 | $52,913 |
| OK | $57,670 | $46,423 | $52,583 |
| DC | $75,030 | $58,183 | $52,510 |
| TX | $60,280 | $50,615 | $52,086 |
| NJ | $69,620 | $55,509 | $50,980 |
| MN | $62,660 | $49,790 | $50,591 |
| AZ | $62,050 | $50,888 | $50,332 |
| IN | $57,030 | $46,351 | $50,281 |
| VT | $58,750 | $47,619 | $49,277 |
| PA | $58,350 | $47,273 | $48,485 |
| GA | $58,140 | $46,593 | $48,184 |
| ND | $50,110 | $42,443 | $47,920 |
| FL | $58,420 | $49,120 | $47,481 |
| CT | $61,820 | $49,202 | $47,452 |
| ID | $53,460 | $43,155 | $47,203 |
| AR | $49,120 | $40,289 | $46,573 |
| KY | $51,580 | $41,937 | $46,355 |
| MD | $59,830 | $47,775 | $45,953 |
| OH | $50,410 | $42,015 | $45,761 |
| LA | $48,810 | $40,321 | $45,640 |
| OR | $62,810 | $47,702 | $45,552 |
| AL | $50,870 | $40,872 | $45,428 |
| HI | $61,290 | $48,212 | $44,390 |
| WY | $47,290 | $40,178 | $44,225 |
| NH | $54,870 | $46,268 | $43,920 |
| MS | $46,810 | $38,011 | $43,545 |
| KS | $48,660 | $38,852 | $43,185 |
| DE | $52,480 | $42,002 | $42,318 |
| NM | $45,620 | $37,841 | $41,866 |
| MT | $46,040 | $37,766 | $41,849 |
| WV | $44,700 | $36,876 | $41,077 |
| ME | $48,780 | $39,402 | $40,580 |
| RI | $48,040 | $39,399 | $38,850 |
| TN | $40,910 | $35,051 | $37,887 |
| AK | $43,840 | $37,405 | $36,775 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for advertising sales agents, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $64,820 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for advertising sales agents. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Washington keeps the most at $80,109.
- The price adjustment for advertising sales agents uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Alaska anchors the bottom at $36,775. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for advertising sales agents are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $64,820. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- The household modeled for advertising sales agents is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Washington retains the most, $80,109. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for advertising sales agents deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.