Cashiers
What the pay figures show
- A job board will not tell you this about cashiers. The best headline number is the District of Columbia, at $38,880. State taxes differ, so Washington leaves you more. Prices differ too, so Montana leaves you better off again — $31,915 once levelled out. Moving for the biggest salary can leave you worse off.
- Wage data for cashiers places the District of Columbia first at $38,880. That position is not robust: state income tax alone reorders it to Washington, and regional price parity reorders it again to Montana at $31,915. Because published comparisons almost universally stop at the nominal median, the state that appears best for this occupation is routinely not the state where a worker's income goes furthest.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$32,880
People doing it
3,089,410
Highest paid
$38,880
DC
Best off, really
$31,915
MT, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$24,530
Highest tenth
$40,410
Lowest, really
$25,298
WV
States with data
51
National average
$33,180
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.24%
MT, 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 $25,298 and $31,915. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Roughly 3,089,410 Americans do this job. Hold that scale in mind. A few thousand dollars here is a few thousand dollars across millions of households.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $32,880. Nothing is missing.
- Wages for cashiers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $25,298 to $31,915. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 3,089,410 workers nationally, cashiers is one of the highest-headcount occupations BLS publishes. Aggregate effects of the differentials described above are correspondingly large, even where the per-worker figures appear modest.
- Coverage for cashiers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Cashiers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $24,530 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $32,880 |
| Top tenth earn over | $40,410 |
| This salary | $32,880 |
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 Cashiers
The national median for this job
$32,880around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $24,530 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $32,880 |
| Top tenth | $40,410 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Cashiers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $26,370 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $38,880 |
| Spread | $12,510 |
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 | $29,230 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $30,080 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MT | $34,190 | $28,801 | $31,915 |
| ND | $31,460 | $27,458 | $31,001 |
| VT | $35,720 | $29,941 | $30,983 |
| AK | $36,130 | $31,210 | $30,684 |
| WA | $38,720 | $33,292 | $30,666 |
| CO | $36,870 | $30,891 | $30,470 |
| ME | $34,930 | $29,131 | $30,002 |
| WY | $30,810 | $26,936 | $29,649 |
| SD | $29,780 | $26,108 | $29,636 |
| MN | $34,620 | $28,964 | $29,429 |
| AZ | $34,600 | $29,519 | $29,196 |
| DC | $38,880 | $32,253 | $29,108 |
| RI | $34,860 | $29,303 | $28,895 |
| NM | $30,120 | $26,026 | $28,795 |
| CT | $35,550 | $29,800 | $28,739 |
| IL | $34,490 | $28,330 | $28,658 |
| MO | $30,520 | $26,206 | $28,558 |
| NE | $30,250 | $25,778 | $28,523 |
| WI | $30,880 | $26,323 | $28,275 |
| ID | $30,370 | $25,826 | $28,248 |
| IA | $28,970 | $24,968 | $28,128 |
| DE | $33,490 | $27,797 | $28,007 |
| HI | $36,780 | $30,304 | $27,902 |
| OH | $29,260 | $25,602 | $27,885 |
| NH | $33,840 | $29,370 | $27,880 |
| CA | $37,100 | $31,370 | $27,865 |
| AR | $27,670 | $23,827 | $27,544 |
| UT | $31,600 | $26,164 | $27,541 |
| MD | $34,390 | $28,542 | $27,454 |
| IN | $29,670 | $25,174 | $27,309 |
| NY | $35,500 | $29,384 | $27,302 |
| OK | $28,180 | $24,049 | $27,239 |
| TN | $28,590 | $25,152 | $27,187 |
| NJ | $34,590 | $29,455 | $27,052 |
| MA | $35,520 | $29,264 | $27,037 |
| NV | $29,870 | $26,181 | $26,996 |
| KY | $28,590 | $24,269 | $26,826 |
| OR | $35,300 | $28,005 | $26,742 |
| KS | $28,800 | $24,002 | $26,680 |
| SC | $28,530 | $24,835 | $26,653 |
| MI | $29,740 | $25,063 | $26,611 |
| TX | $29,230 | $25,666 | $26,412 |
| AL | $28,250 | $23,706 | $26,349 |
| LA | $26,750 | $23,222 | $26,286 |
| NC | $28,880 | $24,741 | $26,282 |
| FL | $30,530 | $26,711 | $25,820 |
| MS | $26,390 | $22,379 | $25,636 |
| VA | $30,580 | $25,753 | $25,562 |
| GA | $29,070 | $24,686 | $25,529 |
| PA | $29,220 | $24,761 | $25,396 |
| WV | $26,370 | $22,711 | $25,298 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for cashiers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $32,880, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for cashiers, 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 Washington, at $33,292.
- Levelling out prices for cashiers 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 — West Virginia sits at the bottom on $25,298.
- These are distribution medians for cashiers, with a national value of $32,880. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for cashiers 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 $33,292, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to cashiers 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 West Virginia at $25,298. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $25,298 — and the two source series are dated independently.