Cargo and Freight Agents
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for cargo and freight agents is the District of Columbia, at $76,250. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and South Dakota comes out ahead, worth $61,158. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for cargo and freight agents: the District of Columbia leads at $76,250 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting South Dakota to $61,158 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$52,260
People doing it
97,670
Highest paid
$76,250
DC
Best off, really
$61,158
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,340
Highest tenth
$79,810
Lowest, really
$31,700
HI
States with data
48
National average
$57,230
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $31,700 and $61,158. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Just 97,670 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 48 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $52,260. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, The District of Columbia pays most.
- Wages for cargo and freight agents cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $31,700 to $61,158. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- 97,670 are employed nationally in cargo and freight agents — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for cargo and freight agents in 48 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Cargo and Freight Agents
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,340 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $52,260 |
| Top tenth earn over | $79,810 |
| This salary | $52,260 |
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 Cargo and Freight Agents
The national median for this job
$52,260around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,340 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $52,260 |
| Top tenth | $79,810 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cargo and Freight Agents, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Hawaii · $42,400 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $76,250 |
| Spread | $33,850 |
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 | $48,470 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $49,879 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $64,340 | $53,877 | $61,158 |
| NE | $62,500 | $50,259 | $55,610 |
| NH | $67,660 | $56,429 | $53,566 |
| DC | $76,250 | $58,959 | $53,210 |
| MT | $59,240 | $47,752 | $52,914 |
| ND | $54,230 | $45,754 | $51,657 |
| SC | $57,000 | $46,516 | $49,922 |
| WI | $57,290 | $46,242 | $49,671 |
| AL | $54,890 | $43,925 | $48,822 |
| RI | $60,310 | $48,797 | $48,118 |
| IL | $59,750 | $47,376 | $47,925 |
| AR | $50,500 | $41,347 | $47,795 |
| MN | $58,650 | $46,840 | $47,594 |
| TN | $51,800 | $43,801 | $47,345 |
| WA | $60,760 | $51,001 | $46,978 |
| MS | $49,920 | $40,386 | $46,265 |
| OK | $49,940 | $40,560 | $45,942 |
| LA | $48,940 | $40,421 | $45,754 |
| MO | $50,840 | $41,578 | $45,310 |
| OH | $49,530 | $41,332 | $45,018 |
| IA | $48,370 | $39,819 | $44,858 |
| WV | $49,100 | $40,226 | $44,809 |
| NJ | $60,210 | $48,780 | $44,800 |
| NM | $48,910 | $40,343 | $44,635 |
| UT | $52,770 | $42,232 | $44,454 |
| IN | $50,020 | $40,925 | $44,395 |
| NY | $60,040 | $47,777 | $44,392 |
| AK | $52,070 | $44,018 | $43,276 |
| MA | $58,680 | $46,715 | $43,160 |
| GA | $51,380 | $41,499 | $42,915 |
| TX | $48,470 | $41,126 | $42,321 |
| KY | $46,230 | $37,825 | $41,811 |
| NC | $48,000 | $39,342 | $41,791 |
| ME | $50,340 | $40,550 | $41,763 |
| CA | $57,690 | $46,880 | $41,641 |
| PA | $49,590 | $40,503 | $41,542 |
| CO | $51,390 | $41,919 | $41,348 |
| MI | $47,940 | $38,913 | $41,316 |
| NV | $47,000 | $39,945 | $41,188 |
| AZ | $49,880 | $41,414 | $40,961 |
| ID | $45,710 | $37,339 | $40,841 |
| VT | $47,560 | $39,057 | $40,418 |
| FL | $48,520 | $41,166 | $39,792 |
| VA | $49,680 | $40,002 | $39,705 |
| KS | $42,500 | $34,246 | $38,066 |
| MD | $48,730 | $39,384 | $37,881 |
| OR | $49,420 | $38,115 | $36,397 |
| HI | $42,400 | $34,429 | $31,700 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for cargo and freight agents as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $52,260, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for cargo and freight 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, the District of Columbia keeps the most at $58,959.
- Levelling out prices for cargo and freight agents is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Hawaii sits at the bottom on $31,700.
- These are distribution medians for cargo and freight agents, with a national value of $52,260. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- The household modeled for cargo and freight 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 the District of Columbia retains the most, $58,959. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to cargo and freight agents uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Hawaii at $31,700. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $31,700 — and the two source series are dated independently.