Merchandise Displayers and Window Trimmers
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: Washington, at $48,780. Tax does not change that. Best off: North Dakota, at $40,635 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Washington's $48,780 median for merchandise displayers and window trimmers survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: North Dakota takes the top position at $40,635. 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
$39,390
People doing it
165,220
Highest paid
$48,780
WA
Best off, really
$40,635
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,760
Highest tenth
$58,370
Lowest, really
$29,498
DC
States with data
51
National average
$42,830
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $29,498 to $40,635. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- About 165,220 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $39,390. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $39,390, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in merchandise displayers and window trimmers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $29,498 through $40,635. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- With 165,220 workers, merchandise displayers and window trimmers 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.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for merchandise displayers and window trimmers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Merchandise Displayers and Window Trimmers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,760 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $39,390 |
| Top tenth earn over | $58,370 |
| This salary | $39,390 |
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 Merchandise Displayers and Window Trimmers
The national median for this job
$39,390around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,760 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $39,390 |
| Top tenth | $58,370 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Merchandise Displayers and Window Trimmers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $33,040 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $48,780 |
| Spread | $15,740 |
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 | $37,260 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $38,343 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $42,080 | $35,991 | $40,635 |
| MT | $43,700 | $35,996 | $39,887 |
| SD | $40,190 | $34,473 | $39,131 |
| AK | $46,530 | $39,567 | $38,900 |
| MO | $42,890 | $35,564 | $38,756 |
| AL | $42,840 | $34,773 | $38,650 |
| ME | $45,750 | $37,172 | $38,283 |
| VT | $44,850 | $36,971 | $38,258 |
| WA | $48,780 | $41,375 | $38,112 |
| MN | $45,730 | $37,296 | $37,896 |
| IA | $39,680 | $33,167 | $37,364 |
| WY | $38,790 | $33,348 | $36,707 |
| OK | $38,380 | $31,792 | $36,010 |
| KS | $39,960 | $32,347 | $35,955 |
| WI | $39,510 | $32,832 | $35,266 |
| CO | $43,230 | $35,722 | $35,235 |
| AR | $36,230 | $30,409 | $35,152 |
| OH | $37,850 | $32,268 | $35,146 |
| ID | $38,770 | $32,130 | $35,144 |
| NE | $37,980 | $31,672 | $35,045 |
| NV | $39,440 | $33,870 | $34,925 |
| CA | $47,010 | $38,936 | $34,585 |
| NM | $36,550 | $30,944 | $34,235 |
| UT | $39,930 | $32,487 | $34,196 |
| WV | $36,660 | $30,699 | $34,196 |
| MD | $43,370 | $35,331 | $33,984 |
| NC | $37,960 | $31,675 | $33,647 |
| SC | $36,810 | $31,323 | $33,616 |
| OR | $45,200 | $35,093 | $33,511 |
| CT | $42,410 | $34,688 | $33,454 |
| LA | $34,860 | $29,530 | $33,426 |
| NH | $40,880 | $35,027 | $33,250 |
| AZ | $39,630 | $33,434 | $33,069 |
| IL | $40,270 | $32,688 | $33,067 |
| TX | $37,260 | $32,118 | $33,052 |
| IN | $36,510 | $30,468 | $33,052 |
| NY | $43,660 | $35,500 | $32,985 |
| KY | $35,820 | $29,825 | $32,968 |
| MA | $43,290 | $35,119 | $32,446 |
| TN | $34,500 | $29,901 | $32,320 |
| MI | $36,710 | $30,367 | $32,242 |
| PA | $37,740 | $31,345 | $32,149 |
| GA | $37,050 | $30,700 | $31,748 |
| MS | $33,040 | $27,498 | $31,501 |
| DE | $37,710 | $30,954 | $31,187 |
| RI | $37,610 | $31,409 | $30,972 |
| VA | $37,750 | $31,102 | $30,871 |
| HI | $40,370 | $32,944 | $30,333 |
| FL | $36,220 | $31,283 | $30,239 |
| NJ | $38,200 | $32,254 | $29,623 |
| DC | $39,460 | $32,685 | $29,498 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $39,390, 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.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $41,375.
- 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 — the District of Columbia sits at the bottom on $29,498.
- These are distribution medians for merchandise displayers and window trimmers, with a national value of $39,390. 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.
- Take-home calculations for merchandise displayers and window trimmers assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $41,375, in Washington. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to merchandise displayers and window trimmers 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 the District of Columbia at $29,498. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — the District of Columbia anchors the bottom at $29,498 — and the two source series are dated independently.