Buyers and Purchasing Agents
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia comes first for buyers and purchasing agents on every measure. $124,090 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $79,873 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For buyers and purchasing agents, the District of Columbia's $124,090 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $79,873. 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
$77,710
People doing it
491,430
Highest paid
$124,090
DC
Best off, really
$79,873
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,380
Highest tenth
$128,870
Lowest, really
$52,352
HI
States with data
51
National average
$83,770
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, 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 $52,352 up to $79,873.
- About 491,430 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $77,710. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $77,710 in the middle.
- The nominal spread for buyers and purchasing agents approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $52,352 to $79,873, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 491,430 workers, buyers and purchasing agents sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- 51 jurisdictions report buyers and purchasing agents, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Buyers and Purchasing Agents
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,380 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $77,710 |
| Top tenth earn over | $128,870 |
| This salary | $77,710 |
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 Buyers and Purchasing Agents
The national median for this job
$77,710around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,380 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $77,710 |
| Top tenth | $128,870 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Buyers and Purchasing Agents, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Montana · $62,850 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $124,090 |
| Spread | $61,240 |
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 | $76,050 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $78,261 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $124,090 | $88,502 | $79,873 |
| ND | $76,400 | $62,347 | $70,391 |
| AR | $75,870 | $59,856 | $69,191 |
| SD | $73,990 | $60,882 | $69,109 |
| NM | $76,740 | $60,376 | $66,797 |
| VA | $89,210 | $67,220 | $66,721 |
| OH | $76,410 | $61,200 | $66,657 |
| AK | $83,460 | $67,544 | $66,405 |
| WV | $75,670 | $59,487 | $66,265 |
| MD | $90,900 | $68,824 | $66,199 |
| RI | $86,240 | $66,686 | $65,757 |
| WY | $72,200 | $59,623 | $65,629 |
| NE | $74,950 | $58,851 | $65,118 |
| NJ | $93,250 | $70,681 | $64,915 |
| MS | $71,850 | $56,594 | $64,834 |
| AL | $74,030 | $57,746 | $64,184 |
| OK | $71,850 | $56,644 | $64,159 |
| TX | $76,050 | $62,331 | $64,143 |
| CO | $83,590 | $64,666 | $63,784 |
| SC | $75,550 | $59,286 | $63,627 |
| NC | $75,880 | $59,693 | $63,409 |
| DE | $82,920 | $62,923 | $63,396 |
| IA | $70,360 | $56,266 | $63,387 |
| WA | $85,130 | $68,719 | $63,299 |
| MI | $75,900 | $59,251 | $62,909 |
| MN | $80,370 | $61,429 | $62,417 |
| NV | $72,990 | $60,178 | $62,052 |
| ME | $77,630 | $59,523 | $61,302 |
| CT | $83,030 | $63,425 | $61,168 |
| UT | $74,540 | $57,952 | $61,001 |
| IL | $78,470 | $60,294 | $60,993 |
| LA | $66,340 | $53,880 | $60,988 |
| MA | $85,970 | $65,331 | $60,359 |
| IN | $69,350 | $55,601 | $60,316 |
| KS | $69,500 | $54,134 | $60,172 |
| GA | $74,530 | $58,142 | $60,126 |
| WI | $70,880 | $55,941 | $60,089 |
| NH | $77,270 | $63,189 | $59,983 |
| ID | $69,240 | $54,724 | $59,857 |
| PA | $73,550 | $58,314 | $59,810 |
| AZ | $75,340 | $60,351 | $59,691 |
| TN | $65,430 | $54,753 | $59,183 |
| FL | $72,850 | $60,080 | $58,075 |
| KY | $65,240 | $52,435 | $57,959 |
| MO | $65,650 | $52,782 | $57,520 |
| NY | $79,460 | $61,036 | $56,711 |
| CA | $82,720 | $63,423 | $56,335 |
| MT | $62,850 | $50,483 | $55,940 |
| VT | $65,330 | $52,471 | $54,298 |
| OR | $75,050 | $55,611 | $53,104 |
| HI | $74,240 | $56,859 | $52,352 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for buyers and purchasing agents, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $77,710 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for buyers and purchasing agents, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is the District of Columbia, at $88,502.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for buyers and purchasing agents. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Hawaii, on $52,352.
- All wage figures for buyers and purchasing agents are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $77,710. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for buyers and purchasing agents model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $88,502, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms results for buyers and purchasing agents rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Hawaii anchors the distribution at $52,352. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.