First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is Washington, at $60,750. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and South Dakota comes out ahead, worth $54,171. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for first-line supervisors of retail sales workers: Washington leads at $60,750 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting South Dakota to $54,171 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
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
$48,520
People doing it
1,121,800
Highest paid
$60,750
WA
Best off, really
$54,171
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$33,120
Highest tenth
$77,080
Lowest, really
$35,789
AR
States with data
51
National average
$53,380
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 $35,789 and $54,171. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- About 1,121,800 people in the country do this job. Very few jobs are this big. That is part of why its geography is worth setting out with care.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $48,520 in the middle.
- Wages for first-line supervisors of retail sales workers cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $35,789 to $54,171. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- 1,121,800 workers are employed nationally in first-line supervisors of retail sales workers. At this scale the occupation's wage geography is a macroeconomic fact as much as a career one, and small per-worker differentials aggregate into substantial regional flows.
- 51 jurisdictions report first-line supervisors of retail sales workers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $33,120 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $48,520 |
| Top tenth earn over | $77,080 |
| This salary | $48,520 |
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 First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
The national median for this job
$48,520around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $33,120 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $48,520 |
| Top tenth | $77,080 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $36,950 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $60,750 |
| Spread | $23,800 |
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 | $46,280 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $47,625 |
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 | $56,680 | $47,722 | $54,171 |
| AK | $57,080 | $48,044 | $47,234 |
| ND | $49,350 | $41,833 | $47,230 |
| WA | $60,750 | $50,993 | $46,971 |
| VT | $55,760 | $45,371 | $46,951 |
| RI | $58,570 | $47,465 | $46,804 |
| CO | $58,200 | $47,091 | $46,449 |
| DE | $55,710 | $44,418 | $44,752 |
| MT | $49,300 | $40,232 | $44,582 |
| ME | $53,580 | $42,935 | $44,219 |
| TN | $47,880 | $40,652 | $43,941 |
| CT | $56,510 | $45,228 | $43,619 |
| WI | $49,550 | $40,404 | $43,400 |
| IA | $46,610 | $38,472 | $43,340 |
| NY | $58,300 | $46,473 | $43,180 |
| WY | $45,980 | $39,125 | $43,066 |
| NJ | $57,320 | $46,617 | $42,814 |
| NM | $46,550 | $38,549 | $42,649 |
| MS | $45,760 | $37,210 | $42,627 |
| SC | $47,770 | $39,712 | $42,620 |
| IN | $47,790 | $39,199 | $42,523 |
| MA | $57,490 | $45,819 | $42,331 |
| DC | $58,470 | $46,807 | $42,243 |
| OK | $45,430 | $37,139 | $42,067 |
| MO | $46,860 | $38,567 | $42,029 |
| KS | $46,950 | $37,573 | $41,764 |
| OH | $45,680 | $38,344 | $41,764 |
| NC | $47,760 | $39,158 | $41,596 |
| NH | $51,650 | $43,681 | $41,464 |
| LA | $43,860 | $36,492 | $41,306 |
| ID | $46,140 | $37,661 | $41,194 |
| NE | $45,280 | $37,206 | $41,168 |
| NV | $46,900 | $39,864 | $41,106 |
| HI | $55,850 | $44,254 | $40,746 |
| TX | $46,280 | $39,366 | $40,510 |
| AL | $44,860 | $36,307 | $40,355 |
| UT | $47,470 | $38,210 | $40,220 |
| MN | $48,770 | $39,574 | $40,210 |
| MI | $46,430 | $37,764 | $40,096 |
| CA | $54,870 | $44,783 | $39,779 |
| FL | $48,410 | $41,077 | $39,707 |
| AZ | $48,010 | $39,958 | $39,522 |
| PA | $46,690 | $38,262 | $39,243 |
| IL | $47,990 | $38,509 | $38,955 |
| GA | $46,150 | $37,557 | $38,840 |
| VA | $47,990 | $38,741 | $38,453 |
| OR | $50,660 | $39,003 | $37,244 |
| WV | $39,740 | $33,076 | $36,844 |
| MD | $47,000 | $38,076 | $36,623 |
| KY | $40,080 | $33,099 | $36,587 |
| AR | $36,950 | $30,961 | $35,789 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $48,520 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 this job, 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 $50,993.
- Levelling out prices for this job 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 — Arkansas sits at the bottom on $35,789.
- All wage figures for first-line supervisors of retail sales workers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $48,520. 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 first-line supervisors of retail sales workers 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 $50,993, which leads in Washington.
- The price deflation applied to first-line supervisors of retail 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 Arkansas at $35,789. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Arkansas anchors the bottom at $35,789 — and the two source series are dated independently.