Driver/Sales Workers
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for driver/sales workers. Best paid: Alaska, at $48,420. Tax does not change that. Best off: Iowa, at $43,780 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Alaska's $48,420 median for driver/sales workers survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Iowa takes the top position at $43,780. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
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
$38,770
People doing it
409,180
Highest paid
$48,420
AK
Best off, really
$43,780
IA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$22,590
Highest tenth
$59,980
Lowest, really
$21,229
SC
States with data
51
National average
$40,730
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.77%
IA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $21,229 to $43,780.
- 409,180 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $38,770. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $38,770 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in driver/sales workers pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $21,229 to $43,780, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- National employment in driver/sales workers is 409,180 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 51 jurisdictions report driver/sales workers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Driver/Sales Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $22,590 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $38,770 |
| Top tenth earn over | $59,980 |
| This salary | $38,770 |
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 Driver/Sales Workers
The national median for this job
$38,770around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $22,590 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $38,770 |
| Top tenth | $59,980 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Driver/Sales Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | South Carolina · $22,240 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $48,420 |
| Spread | $26,180 |
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 | $35,850 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $36,892 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IA | $47,120 | $38,862 | $43,780 |
| SD | $45,050 | $38,378 | $43,564 |
| AK | $48,420 | $41,085 | $40,393 |
| VT | $46,300 | $38,087 | $39,414 |
| TN | $42,220 | $36,104 | $39,025 |
| KS | $43,180 | $34,754 | $38,631 |
| AR | $39,820 | $33,161 | $38,332 |
| ND | $38,610 | $33,203 | $37,487 |
| MO | $40,200 | $33,529 | $36,539 |
| AL | $39,190 | $32,001 | $35,568 |
| CO | $43,420 | $35,866 | $35,377 |
| MA | $46,870 | $37,817 | $34,938 |
| LA | $36,290 | $30,637 | $34,678 |
| MI | $39,610 | $32,574 | $34,585 |
| NJ | $44,720 | $37,189 | $34,155 |
| GA | $40,040 | $32,953 | $34,078 |
| KY | $37,030 | $30,755 | $33,996 |
| ME | $39,900 | $32,836 | $33,818 |
| NH | $41,520 | $35,541 | $33,738 |
| MS | $35,480 | $29,361 | $33,635 |
| CA | $45,600 | $37,860 | $33,629 |
| OH | $35,720 | $30,615 | $33,345 |
| IN | $36,250 | $30,267 | $32,833 |
| WA | $41,570 | $35,581 | $32,775 |
| ID | $35,770 | $29,879 | $32,681 |
| NE | $34,950 | $29,376 | $32,504 |
| NC | $36,540 | $30,591 | $32,495 |
| NY | $42,730 | $34,803 | $32,337 |
| AZ | $38,440 | $32,508 | $32,153 |
| IL | $38,960 | $31,701 | $32,068 |
| TX | $35,850 | $30,985 | $31,886 |
| PA | $37,330 | $31,029 | $31,824 |
| DC | $41,600 | $34,276 | $30,934 |
| OR | $41,080 | $32,143 | $30,694 |
| VA | $37,180 | $30,677 | $30,449 |
| MD | $38,500 | $31,650 | $30,443 |
| FL | $36,260 | $31,315 | $30,270 |
| CT | $36,730 | $30,650 | $29,559 |
| NV | $31,760 | $27,699 | $28,562 |
| NM | $29,770 | $25,756 | $28,496 |
| RI | $34,230 | $28,820 | $28,419 |
| MN | $32,980 | $27,734 | $28,180 |
| OK | $29,120 | $24,768 | $28,054 |
| WV | $28,790 | $24,624 | $27,429 |
| MT | $27,580 | $23,783 | $26,354 |
| DE | $31,200 | $26,084 | $26,281 |
| WY | $26,940 | $23,795 | $26,192 |
| WI | $27,560 | $23,798 | $25,563 |
| HI | $31,270 | $26,251 | $24,170 |
| UT | $26,590 | $22,324 | $23,498 |
| SC | $22,240 | $19,781 | $21,229 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for driver/sales workers, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $38,770 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 driver/sales workers. 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, Alaska keeps the most at $41,085.
- Levelling out prices for driver/sales workers 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 — South Carolina sits at the bottom on $21,229.
- All wage figures for driver/sales workers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $38,770. 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 driver/sales workers 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 Alaska retains the most, $41,085. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to driver/sales workers 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 South Carolina at $21,229. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — South Carolina anchors the bottom at $21,229 — and the two source series are dated independently.